Thursday, July 29, 2010
Thin smoke was still visible at the site of the crash of the Airblue Airbus A321 late on Wednesday afternoon. The aircraft appeared to have made a 'controlled flight into terrain' (CFIT) impacting on a near-vertical cliff and killing all 152 people on board. Eyewitnesses spoke of the aircraft flying very low and going north on a path they had never seen aircraft fly before. The crash site is densely wooded and difficult to access and it will take days to retrieve all of the bodies and longer to get the wreckage down to a place where it can be examined. Despite the difficulties and because of the proximity to Islamabad and Rawalpindi it was possible to get rescue services on-site fairly quickly, but it was obvious that this was a non-survivable incident and it is something of a puzzle as to where early reports of as many as five survivors came from. Also quick on the scene were the media and footage was being aired by midday not just of the crash site, but of grieving relatives who had been waiting at Islamabad airport.

It is far too early to point to a definitive cause of this terrible tragedy, and we will have to await the report of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Questions such as if the flight appropriately cleared for take-off from Karachi when local conditions at Islamabad were very poor need to be answered. Were standard operating procedures (SOPs) followed by both pilot and ground control relative to an aborted landing and a 'go around'? Why was the aircraft flying north and not south and at such a low altitude? Was the pilot – a retired PIA officer aged 65 – fit for duty? Did the aircraft have a good safety and maintenance record? Answers to all these questions lie in the future – or maybe they do not. It will be recalled that a PIA Fokker F27 crashed at Multan in the summer of 2006 killing 45 people. The CAA report on the crash has yet to find its way into the public domain, and there are strong suspicions voiced on aviation websites and technical forums that the reason for this is that to publish the report would open the door for relatives of the deceased at Multan to begin litigation. We need to know, and as quickly as possible, why 152 people died in a 'young' aircraft on a misty rainy morning in the hills above Islamabad. We have no interest in face-saving cover-ups or mealy-mouthed obfuscation. And it would be a considerable service to the relatives of the dead in the Multan crash if the report on that incident was published, and fast, as well.