Pilot error is to blame for a Far Eastern Air Transport aircraft overrunning the runway in Kinmen last year, the Aviation Safety Council said in a report yesterday.
The airplane, an MD-82, took off from Taipei International Airport heading toward the outlying island on June 16 last year. However, the airplane overran the runway when it landed at Kinmen Airport. Nobody was injured in the incident.
The council’s report said that the pilots were not sufficiently alert to potential incidents when they tried to land the plane in bad weather that day. They were late in putting the plane’s landing gear down and when the plane touched ground, they struggled to maneuver the aircraft toward the central line of the runway because of a strong crosswind.
The pilots failed to immediately reduce power to slow down, the report said, adding that the aircraft spoilers retracted after the plane landed, and the pilots did not quickly redeploy the spoilers by switching to manual mode. Neither did the pilots apply maximum reverse thrust and the achievable braking rate to reduce the airplane’s speed, the report said.
These errors subsequently led to the airplane running through the stop line of the runway, it said.
As part of the investigation, the council also consulted the airline’s flight operations manual for its pilots, which listed methods to be used when calculating the distance required for takeoff and landing of an aircraft. The manual states that pilots need to confirm the distance with the control tower personnel when approaching the runway.
According to the council, this requirement was written in the manual after a similar incident in May 2012, when an airplane overran the runway at Magong Airport in Penghu County.
“The same incident happened two years after this requirement was included in the flight operations manual. Obviously, the airline’s flight crew is still unfamiliar with the practice of calculating the landing distance as listed in the manual,” the report said.
Following the conclusion of the investigation, the council recommended that the airline improve training for its flight crew on landing on wet and slippery runways to make them more alert and adept in dealing with all possible scenarios that could happen under the stated circumstance.
It should also review all monitoring mechanisms to avoid incidents such as airplanes overrunning or veering off runways, the council said, adding that the airline should review procedures that pilots need to follow when analyzing flight data.
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