The pilots of a Garuda airliner that crashed in Indonesia, killing 21 people including 5 Australians, were arguing moments before the accident, a senior Indonesian investigator has said.
Garuda Airlines Boeing 747-400 caught fire after overshooting the runway at Yogyakarta airport in Indonesia on March 7.
The chief Indonesian investigator Tatang Kurniadi today said the plane’s black box recordings show the pilot and co-pilot were involved in an argument over the plane’s speed and wing flaps moments before the crash.
He said his preliminary findings would point to human error, and “absent mindedness” as the cause of the disaster.
“Absent mindedness – I worry that this accident came from the absent-mindedness from the cockpit,” Mr Kurniadi said on Channel 9’s Sunday program.
The captain and first officer were flying together for the first time, he said.
“The co-pilot is a young pilot with just 2000 flying hours and the captain, experienced, having enough experience, more than 15,000 flying hours,” the investigator said.
Mr Kurniadi said the black box revealed the captain and first officer were arguing just before the plane came down, with the co-pilot demanding the pilot “go around” and delay the landing.
“There was some argumentation between the co-pilot and the pilot and captain relating with the speed and flaps,” he said.
Mr Kurniadi said the flaps did not jam, rather the co-pilot did not put them down properly because the plane was going too fast.
Mr Kurniadi and his team will finalise their results within a month.
By: Deano - 3rd April 2007 at 13:43
True Si
The accident at Guam was a clear case of this, and it’s amazing how it’s always a chain of events, it was a Non Precision approach in the way of a VOR/DME as opposed the NDB as the Glide Slope was inop on the ILS, but still had a GS signal which was erroneous, which they should have ignored instantly because if the GS is inop then any signal you get should be treated as erroneous. Then comes the VOR/DME approach, all the relevant info should have been in front of them to conduct this approach, why did they bust the step down fixes? fatigue? experience? stress? or all 3? shows how important these issues are, I can’t wait to do my MCC course in 10 days time, should be very enlightening.
Dean
By: Si Jones - 3rd April 2007 at 12:23
I suspect that if this transcription of the incident is the case then CRM will be at the forefront of training again. Having completed a CRM course last year as part of a bi annual flight safety course this would be a great example to use on cross cockpit procedures and experience over hours. On my course we used the example of the Korean 744 incident landing at Guam; almost the same senario (experience that is) as the Garuda incident in that Captain was a highly experienced 744 pilot with many many hours and the First Officer was just from training. The First Off insisted on a go around due to the deteorating wx conditions on the NDB approach but the Captain ignored him and went ahead with the approach which ended in the aircraft landing short of the runway (I think it was featured on a Discovery programme). European airlines are now at the forefront of developing good CRM and cross cockpit co-operation and it forms a large chunk of training new pilots.
Si
By: steve rowell - 3rd April 2007 at 10:11
It’s hard to believe an argument by two trained professionals caused the death of all those innocent people
By: Newforest - 1st April 2007 at 08:18
Thanks Steve for that illuminating report, lack of CRM rears its head again.:(
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April 1, 2007 at 7:25 am