we’re really you know stuck and there’s
no
Fuel
New York September 11th, 2018 High up in the skies Air India 101 is approaching JohnF. Kennedy International Airport for a second attempt to land.
This plane has just suffered multiple sensitive instrument failures.
After a 14-hour flight, they are running low on the fear they also lost the ILS the device that helps the pilots land the plane, especially in poor weather.
Outside the cockpit it’s raining heavily with clouds all around them the pilots are Flying Blind and it’s next to impossible to spot the runway with every passing minute they are using up more fuel and they have to land now.
The lives of 357 people on board now depend on what the pilots do in the next few minutes.
With they are able to avoid another tragedy on September 11th in New York.
let’s find out
this is a story of Air India Flight 101.
Air India Flight 101:Indira Gandhi International Airport Delhi Air India Flight 101
It’s a warm Autumn night in New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport 342 passengers and 15 crew were preparing for their 14-hour-long flight to New York
The US is a popular destination for Indian students and tourists and the plane was at maximum capacity.
This flight from Delhi’s IGI to New York’s JFK is Air India’s Flagship route.
This flight would take the passengers over the polar route flying over the rugged terrain of Pakistan, Russia, Finland Greenland, and Canada before entering the USA.
The plane for today’s flight was a Boeing 7300 extended-range twin jet.
It’s fitted with two ge90 1115b engines. This plane was first delivered to Air India in 2009 and it has been in operation for over 9 years the 777 can be flown by two pilots but because this flight was 15 hours long and needed to cover around 12,000 km ai101 had four Pilots two served as a main crew and the other two as a relief crew.
The commander was Captain Rustam Palia a 49-year-old with 3,500 hours on the type with him in the cockpit were Captain Vikas Captain Shashank Singh and Captain Ds Butty.
It was the first time the four of them were flying together.
During the pre-flight briefing, the engineering staff reported that the flight’s auxiliary power unit the APU was not functioning.
The APU on an aircraft like the Boeing 7 ER is not typically considered critical for the safe operation of the aircraft while the APU provides auxiliary power for various aircraft systems when the main engines are not running.
It is not a primary propulsion system hence the pilots agreed that this issue was non-critical and elected to proceed with their flight to New York.
Weather Forecast
With the possibility of inclement weather in the forecast, the captain opted to unload an additional 800 kilos of fuel to take them to an alternate airport if required
This decision would end up being crucial the crew then asked for pushback and taxic clearance and the plane then departed Delhi at 0300 local time delayed by around 1 hour.
The departure itself was uneventful.
The first signs of problems occurred 40 minutes into the flight whilst over Pakistani airspace and just after reaching 30,000 ft.
A warning message appeared on the Pilot’s screen saying single Source Radio Altimeter.
Air India Flight 101: Radio Altimeter Failed
A Radio Altimeter is like a magic ruler for airplanes that tells them how high they are above the ground.
It does this by sending invisible waves down to the ground and timing how long it takes for them to come back.
This helped Pilots land safely and fly at the right altitude.
The Boeing 777 like many modern commercial aircraft includes three radio altimeters for redundancy and safety
They do it so that if one radio Altimeter fails the aircraft can rely on the other two Altimeter to provide accurate altitude information.
But what this plane was telling the pilots was that two radio Altimeter had failed and only one was working.
The problem was how can you be sure that the one Altimeter that is working is actually showing the correct height.
Now this isn’t an issue in cruise flight because during a cruise a different type of Altimeter called the Barometric Altimeter is used.
The Barometric Altimeter uses the air pressure to determine how high they are above sea level.
It operates based on the principle that atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing altitude, but this is less accurate than the Radio Altimeter.
Radio Altimeter becomes very important when accurate height information is critical like during departure and more importantly during landing.
Keep this in mind for now we’ll come back to it soon.
Fast forward 10 hours and the flight is now flying across the Atlantic Ocean and this is where the second issue appears.
There was another 3 hours to go before it was time to land in New York.
The pilots got a warning that their TCAS system was not working, TCAS, the Traffic Collision Avoidance System is like a smart traffic cop for airplanes.
It uses radar to see other planes in the sky and if two planes get too close it tells the pilots of each of the planes to either go up or go down to avoid a collision clear conflict.
It helps keep the sky safe by preventing planes from bumping into each other.
The loss of the TCAS itself was again not a major concern because during cruise it was a backup system to prevent collisions.
However, it’s a handy wingman during takeoff and Landing when you’re usually flying in crowded airspace and your workload is very high.
Air India Flight 101: Pilot’s Red Flag
Now this started to concern the crew because it’s usually uncommon for unrelated instruments to stop working.
The APU was not working prior to take off the Radio Altimeter failed just after takeoff and now the TCAS also failed.
What they were concerned was whether there was an unknown issue with the plane that was causing all these failures to happen but there was nothing much they could do now so they pushed on to New York.
It’s now around 10 minutes past 600 in the morning in New York.
The weather was overcast with rain and clouds the Metar indicated visibility of a quarter statute mile for Runway 04 right and a vertical visibility of 200 ft
Air India 101 entered the New York airspace and made contact with the approach controller
“good morning Air India 101 final1 heavy good morning you’re following a short final 1 0 4084 rvr 3000 Runway 4 right clear to land right clear to land.”
After obtaining their approach clearance for a runway for right at JFK the pilots attempted to use their ILS to capture the localizer and the Glide slope to guide them toward the runway.
However, try as they may the ILS just wasn’t capturing the localizer signals.
Air India Flight 101: Instrument Landing System (ILS) Failed
Their Instrument Landing System had also failed. The ILS is super helpful for planes when they are landing.
It uses special radio signals and antennas on the runway to guide the plane down safely showing the pilots where to go and how high they are.
It’s like following invisible lines in the sky to make sure the plane lands smoothly, especially in bad weather this is also the device that enables the plane to auto-land.
In this plane, the ILS wasn’t locking onto the signals being sent from the runway
The crew then manually pointed the plane at the correct heading and then tried what’s called an LNAV VNAV approach.
LNAV VNAV approach uses GPS similar to what you have in your cars to take the airplane close to the runway.
However, unlike the ILS the LNAV VNAV is precise and has a lateral Precision of 0.3 nautical miles.
Hence the pilots need to be able to visually see the runway at their decision altitude before they land.
If they aren’t able to see the runway at their minimas they’ll need to go around and try again.
As they were closing towards the runway the pilots extended the landing gear and immediately another warning sound started to go off in the cockpit
This warning was telling the pilots that the landing gear was not fully down and that immediate action needed to be taken.
Upon hearing this sound the pilots are trained to act instinctively to check and solve the issue and then after going through the checklist found that the gear was indeed down and that it was a false alarm.
For the pilots who were already experiencing a heavy workload, this was a significant distraction.
At this point in time the plane was covering 3 to 4 miles a minute. With all the instrument failures and the incorrect gear warnings, the pilots weren’t able to stabilize the aircraft for landing and hence decided to go around and try again.
The main aircraft climbed back to 2000 ft and the pilots then got in touch with Newark’s departure.
The crew then informed the ATC that they required longer holding vectors to try to solve the problems that they were having and that they were not ready for a second attempt to land just yet
Now to understand what happens next you’ll need to understand what a Cloud Ceiling is.
Air India Flight 101: What is Cloud Ceiling?
A cloud ceiling is a height at which the lowest part of the clouds are above the ground it tells the pilots at what height above the ground can they start seeing the ground
If the plane had a working ILS and the ability to Autoland the pilots can land the plane at a clown ceiling of 0 ft.
However, since these Pilots were doing a non-precision approach they needed to visually see the runway to ensure that they were landing at the right place and for that they required a minimum ceiling of 600 ft.
JFK Airport had a ceiling of 200 ft alternate airports of NUK and Stewart were also at 200 ft.
The other issue that the pilots were having was that they wanted to conserve any remaining fuel to allow them to carry out multiple go-arounds if they so had to do them.
This meant that they had to land at an airport near the New York area and couldn’t fly further out to Boston or Washington to land there.
They were depleting their fuel and were beginning to use their reserves.
The additional 800 kilos that they had loaded in Delhi were now proving to be helpful
The departure controller then told the pilots of a new special Metar that was released by Newar that showed that the ceiling had lifted to 400 ft
The pilots decided to attempt to land at Newark with a 400 ft ceiling.
Remember this is still lower than the 600 ft that they had initially wanted so they were still not out of the woods.
At this point, the plane had just around 7,200 kg of fuel left just enough to complete the trip, and in a grim reminder to the pilots of how precarious their position was the controller asked them…
one um so just when you get a chance give me the people on board and the fuel on board, please?
Pilot: uh we have a total of 370 and fuel of 7,200 kgs
The pilots were then handed off to the Newark approach controller who cleared them for the four right approach
Air India 101 heavy one mile from doing turn right 101 meizer clear approach.
The controller then scrambled the emergency vehicles in case assistance was required once a plane landed.
Heavy emergency. Person one while we wait here uh nature of emergency is a computer failure aircraft pipe is a uh Boeing 777, 270 souls on board and 72,000 kilos of fuel.
Now at this time, the crew had been flying for over 14 hours in a high-stress environment trying to land a massive fully loaded airplane in one of the busiest air corridors in the world without all their usual instruments and to add to that when they saw outside the cockpit all they saw was clouds.
With each passing minute, the pilots were hoping that the clouds would lift and that they would see the Runway below.
As the plane kept descending and when it passed 1,000 ft the plane was higher than what their ideal descent path required and if this wasn’t immediately corrected the plane would have to go around a second time and use more fuel which they didn’t have.
Captain Palia corrected this by pushing the plane’s nose down to get back to the ideal path but this caused the plane to speed up further and at one point the controllers saw a warning on their screen indicating that the plane was too low to the ground and then relate that to the pilots1 and at 400 ft they finally broke through the clouds and at that point, they saw that they were too high and further right of where they needed to be.
Captain Palia corrected the flight by pushing the nose down and to the left to get the plane to line up with the center line.
Air India Flight 101:Unbelievable Landing
Finally, after 15 hours of flying the plane landed safely on Runway 4 right at Newark Airport.
Emergency service then got in touch with the pilots to ask them whether they required any assistance but the pilots declined.
10 minutes after they landed as they were taxing to the gate the entire airport was engulfed by a thunderstorm if the crew had delayed their approach by 5 minutes or had to make a second go around they would never have been able to land.
Investigation Report
Unfortunately, the root cause of these numerous instrument failures remains unknown as neither an incident report nor an investigation report has been released by Air India.
However, a prevailing hypothesis suggests that the aircraft’s main computer which controls the flight tech the diagnostic systems, and maintenance systems malfunctioned presenting inaccurate values to the pilots
Despite being a crew of four individuals who had not previously collaborated the pilots demonstrated commendable crew resource management by effectively coordinating with each other and with air traffic control ultimately ensuring a safe landing of the plane
The plane was flown back to India the next day as a ferry flight for relocation.
Source: WYNGX