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Report looks at flight's final moments Navigation and flight instruments still to be reviewed by First Air crash investigatorsLaura Busch Northern News Services Published Wednesday, January 11, 2012
A technical review of the navigation and flight instruments remains to be completed, said Brian MacDonald, investigator in charge for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada team looking into the incident, which left 12 dead after the Boeing 737-200 crashed while trying to land at Resolute Bay, Aug. 20, en route from Yellowknife.
"Once we have that, then hopefully we'll have a clearer understanding of what took place in those final portions of the approach."
The most significant insight offered in the safety board's progress report last week was that the flight crew had attempted to abort the landing two seconds before impact. This conclusion was made after the team investigating the crash studied the flight data recorder, an instrument that records throttle position and engine revolutions per minute during flights.
"As the aircraft comes down on approach it descends in somewhat of a controlled glide, if you like, with throttles retarded," MacDonald told Yellowknifer. "And then, just two seconds before impact we see the throttle position and rpm increase to indicate a go-around was being initiated."
This indicates that the cockpit crew of the doomed flight tried to pull the plane up just before crashing into a hill less than one nautical mile from the Resolute Bay runway.
Much of the plane's structure was destroyed on impact and in the subsequent fire, states the report.
Four crew members and eight passengers were killed, while three injured passengers were rescued by Canadian Forces members were conducting military operations nearby, including a plane crash simulation.
The Resolute Bay airport usually does not have a manned control tower to guide planes in. There is one person stationed in a community radio station on site whose job it is to report weather conditions, MacDonald said.
On the day of the crash though, there was a control tower in operation at the airport because the Canadian military was on hand running the training exercises.
"The military had established a temporary control tower to deal with the increased air traffic that was there to support Operation Nanook," said MacDonald. "They were communicating with all air traffic."
When the plane went down, military personnel served as the first responders on the scene. This is also not what would have happened on a typical day at the Resolute Bay airport, said MacDonald. Normally, the airport is not equipped with fire and crash rescue response crews.
"However, the community does have a somewhat limited ability to respond to emergencies in the community, which is some 10 km, I think, from the airfield," he said.
The report states that weather conditions during the flight's runway approach "required the crew to conduct an instrument approach using the aircraft flight and instrument landing system (ILS) approach and this method should have been adequate to guide the plane safely in the reported weather conditions."
The report does say that another aircraft made a successful ILS landing on the same runway about 20 minutes after the crash, and that the ground-based ILS equipment at the
Resolute Bay airport was inspected on Aug. 22 and reported to be working.
The federal government proposed new regulation in December requiring all aircraft carrying six or more passengers be equipped with a terrain awareness warning system (TAWS) - a tool that sends out a warning if the aircraft's path is headed for an impact with the ground. The plane in question "had an older generation system called GPWS, which is a ground proximity warning system," said MacDonald, adding that whether this equipment was functioning normally has yet to be determined.
The investigation team, led by MacDonald, has gathered information from flight recorders, wreckage of the plane and dozens of interviews to determine what went wrong that day.
"We're in the midst of the most work-intensive portion, or phase, of the investigation right now, which is the analysis of all of the volumes of information we've gathered," said MacDonald. "And we still probably have a few months ahead of us to complete that phase. And then we're into the report production phase, which takes a few months, as well."
There is no set date as to when the final report, which will include an analysis of the accident and the findings of the board, will be released.
"It's going to be a while yet," said MacDonald.
First Air is not answering any questions until after the Transportation Safety Board issues its final report, said Jennifer Alldred, manager of marketing and communications for the airline.
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