West Caribbean Airways Flight 708

West Caribbean Airways Flight 708
HK-4374X, the aircraft involved in the accident, pushing back from a gate at Jose Maria Cordova Airport in July 2005.
Accident
Date 16 August 2005 (2005-08-16)
Summary Deep stall due to pilot error, wind updraft
Site Machiques, Venezuela
9°39′59″N 72°36′40″W / 9.66639°N 72.61111°W / 9.66639; -72.61111Coordinates: 9°39′59″N 72°36′40″W / 9.66639°N 72.61111°W / 9.66639; -72.61111
Aircraft
Aircraft type McDonnell Douglas MD-82
Operator West Caribbean Airways (chartered by the Globe Trotters de Rivière Salée travel agency)
IATA flight No. YH708
ICAO flight No. WCW708
Call sign WEST 708
Registration HK-4374X
Flight origin Tocumen International Airport, Panama
Destination Martinique Aimé Césaire Int'l Airport, Martinique
Occupants 160
Passengers 152
Crew 8
Fatalities 160
Survivors 0

West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 was a West Caribbean Airways charter flight which crashed in a mountainous region in northwest Venezuela in the early hours of Tuesday, 16 August 2005, killing all 160 passengers and crew on board. The plane, a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, registration HK-4374X, was en route from Tocumen International Airport (PTY) in Panama City, Panama to Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport (FDF) in Fort-de-France, Martinique, France. While flying at 33,000 ft, the aircraft's speed gradually decreased until it entered an aerodynamic stall. The crew, probably under the mistaken belief that the aircraft had suffered a double engine flame-out, did not take the necessary actions to recover from the stall. The confusion and lack of action resulted in the crash. [1]

All the passengers were French citizens from Martinique, with the exception of one Italian, acting as the tour operator. The crew was Colombian. The flight was chartered by the Globe Trotters de Rivière Salée travel agency in Martinique. Most of the passengers were tourists returning from a week's vacation in Panama.

The 160-person death toll made the accident the deadliest of 2005. It is the deadliest aviation disaster in the history of Venezuela, the deadliest involving a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, and the third-deadliest involving a McDonnell Douglas MD-80 in general after Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308 and Dana Air Flight 992. It was the deadliest aviation accident worldwide since the loss of China Airlines Flight 611 until the loss of Air France Flight 447.

Background

The flight's intended route and the crash site's location.

Medellín-based West Caribbean Airways started as a charter service in 1998. It specialized in flights to San Andrés in the Caribbean, parts of the Colombian mainland and Central America. A few months before the accident, the airline had been fined $46,000 for lack of pilot training and failure to log required flight data.[2]

The aircraft involved in the incident was delivered to Continental Airlines on November 4, 1986 as N72824, which operated it until approximately 2001.[3] At this point the airframe was put into storage in the California desert for four years, and eventually purchased by MK Aviation, a United States-based company. On January 10, 2005, the aircraft was transferred to West Caribbean Airways, and registered as HK-4374X, leased to WCA by MK Aviation.[3][4]

The jet's tail cone fell off in early July 2005 and was replaced.

The captain of flight 708 was 40-year-old Omar Ospina, and the first officer was 21-year-old David Muñoz. The captain had 5,942 hours of experience, and the co-pilot 1,341 hours.[5][6]

Accident

Flight 708 took off from Tocumen International Airport at 00:58 local time (05:58 UTC).[7] It climbed initially to flight level (FL) 310, and subsequently to FL 330. The aircraft reached FL 330 (nominally 33,000 ft) at 06:44. Five minutes later, the crew turned the aircraft's anti-icing systems back on (having turned them off during the final part of the climb).[8] The system uses power from the engines, thus reducing their maximum performance. With the anti-ice system on, the highest altitude at which the engines could keep the overloaded aircraft in the air – without stalling – was reduced to 31,900 feet (9,700 m). The aircraft was being flown too high for its weight and the weather conditions it faced.

The captain noticed the reduction in engine power, but he did not realize the source of the problem. Therefore, he started a rapid descent as a precaution. At that time, the airspeed was already near stall speed, and the autopilot had already compensated with a nose-up attitude (angle of attack, or AOA) of 5.8 degrees in an effort to maintain a constant height. West Caribbean, like all owners of the MD-82, had received an operation bulletin from the planes' manufacturer three years earlier, warning that the autopilot could try to compensate for inadequate speed, even allowing the speed to continue to drop towards a stall situation, without sending a warning nor disconnecting; the bulletin advised pilots to simply monitor airspeed during autopilot level flight, but West Caribbean had not shared this bulletin with its pilots.[9] Already approaching a stall condition, the airliner was pummeled by a sudden updraft, tilting the nose up even further, reducing the airflow into the tilted intakes of the engines, which instantly reduced thrust even more, compounding both the thrust and wing uplift components and finally entering stall conditions. Although the cockpit voice recorder picked up the first officer correctly diagnosing the situation as a stall and attempting twice to communicate this to the captain, the captain was likely confused by the unusual behaviour of the engines, due to the anti-ice system and probably the air flow disruption caused by the updraft. The captain thought he was struggling with an engine flameout, which he told the first officer to communicate to the ground controller, and did not recognise the deep stall situation; he then mishandled the stall by increasing the nose-up attitude to an AOA of 10.6 degrees, which compounded the drop in airflow the engines needed to maintain thrust, all deepening the stall further.[10] In less than three minutes, the aircraft plunged from over 33,000 feet, reaching a maximum rate of descent of over 300 ft/s (205 mph; 329 km/h), crashing belly-first and exploding at 07:01 UTC.[9][11] The crash site was in a field on a cattle ranch near Machiques, in the western Zulia State, Venezuela (about 30 kilometres from the Colombian border).

Timeline

All times are UTC. (For local time in Panama and Colombia, subtract 5 hours; for Venezuela subtract 4:30 hours; for Martinique, subtract 4.)

  • 06:00 Flight 708 Departs from Panama en route to Martinique.
  • 06:51 Crew reports trouble in one engine.
  • 06:58 Crew requests and receives permission to descend from 31,000 feet to 14,000 feet.
  • 06:59 Crew sends distress call: both engines malfunctioning, aircraft uncontrollable.
  • 07:00 Plane crashes near Machiques, Venezuela.

Investigation

The Comité de Investigación de Accidentes Aéreos (CIAA, Aircraft Accidents Research Committee) of Venezuela led the investigation on the causes of the accident. The French Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) was assigned the main responsibility of investigative analysis of the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), with the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) also taking part in recovery of FDR data. On 22 November 2005, the CIAA released an initial report (significantly changed by the time of the final report) suggesting that a buildup of ice inside each engine's PT2 probe was responsible for the accident. Analysis of the cockpit voice recorder showed that the crew discussed weather conditions, including icing, and continually requested and performed descents which is the usual response to a low power or low airspeed situation.

Analysis of the debris showed that both engines exhibited indications of high-speed compressor rotation at the time of impact, which enabled investigators to conclude that the engines had not been previously damaged, and were functioning at the time of impact. Ground scars showed that the aircraft impacted with its nose up.

The CIAA, which by then had been renamed the Junta Investigadora de Accidentes de Aviación Civil (JIAAC, Civil Aviation Accidents Investigation Board), released their final report into the accident and found the probable underlying causes of the crash to be the result of pilot error.[10] Underscoring the finding listing pilot error as a cause, the JIAAC noted a lack of both situational awareness and crew resource management (CRM) which would have better enabled the crew to properly respond to the stall and the severity of the emergency. The report stressed that the crew failed to operate the aircraft within its normal parameters, which resulted in a stall that was not properly recovered from due to poor decision-making and poor communication between the pilots. In addition, West Caribbean Airways came under criticism: West Caribbean failed to provide an operation bulletin from the planes' manufacturer, specifically addressing the autopilot issue, to its pilots; failed to emphasize CRM in ongoing pilot training; created stress for its pilots by not providing regular paychecks for a nearly six month period leading up to the accident (the captain had been forced to moonlight as a bartender to provide income for his family); and further created stress for the accident crew when the airplane was delayed and almost refused takeoff at their previous stop due to West Caribbean‘s non-payment of catering and food service fees.[9]

Dramatization

The hourlong Discovery Channel Canada TV series Mayday (other names in other countries) featured the crash and investigation in a Season 11 episode titled "The Plane That Flew Too High".[9] The episode title references the fact that the cruising altitude of 33,000 feet was too high for the aircraft’s weight in the weather conditions it faced.

In 2010, the documentary Panamá-Fort-de-France : autopsie d'un crash, [Panamá-Fort-de-France: autopsy of a crash] (in French) by Stéphane Gabet and Luc David, traces the event, as well as the investigation.[12][13]

A short film, Crossing Away, was produced for the Tenth Anniversary of the Martinique-Panama plane crash, not released until 2017.

In music

  • On n'oublie pas [Don't Forget], (Tribute to the 152 Martinique victims), 2014, written by Serge Bilé, sung by several artists and personalities including Jocelyne Beroard, Alpha Blondy, Harry Roselmack and Admiral T, to remember this event and to help the AVCA, the association of the victims of the air disaster, to raise funds. [14]

See also

References

  1. ↑ JIAAC final report, section 3.3, pages 123–124
  2. ↑ Ellsworth, Brian; Forero, Juan (17 August 2005). "160 Die in Crash of Airliner in Venezuela – New York Times". The New York Times.
  3. 1 2 "Caribbean Net News: Victims' families file suit against West Caribbean Airways over 2005 crash". www.caribbeannewsnow.com. Retrieved 2016-04-08.
  4. ↑ "HK-4374X West Caribbean Airways McDonnell Douglas MD-82". Archived from the original on 8 October 2012. Retrieved 28 August 2011.
  5. ↑ JIAAC final report, section 1.5 "Personnel information", pages 11–13
  6. ↑ JIAAC final report, section 1.13 "Medical information and pathology", page 72
  7. ↑ JIAAC final report, section 1.1 "History of the flight", page 2
  8. ↑ JIAAC final report, section 1.1 "History of the flight", pages 2–4
  9. 1 2 3 4 "The Plane That Flew Too High". Mayday. Season 11. Episode 2. Cineflix. 2011-08-19. Discovery Channel Canada. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  10. 1 2 Hradecky, Simon (2010-09-05). "Report: West Caribbean MD82 at Machiquez on Aug 16th 2005, did not recover from high altitude stall". The Aviation Herald. Retrieved 2018-08-28.
  11. ↑ JIAAC final report, section 1.1 "History of the flight", page 9
  12. ↑ "Panama - Fort-de-France : autopsie d'un crash" [Panamá-Fort-de-France: autopsy of a crash] (in French). Le Monde.
  13. ↑ "Panama - Fort-de-France : autopsie d'un crash" [Panamá-Fort-de-France: autopsy of a crash] (in French). Film Documentaire.
  14. ↑ "Crash du 16 août : « On n'oublie pas »" [Crash of August 16: "We don't forget"] (in French). Martinique France-Antilles.
External image
Photograph of aircraft at Airliners.net

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