Report on the Tame accident in Cuenca

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He passed 1 year and 3 months since Tame's accident in the capital of Azuay to finally, at least preliminary and partially, see the report on the Tame accident in Cuenca, although for now we only have information on the probable causes that generated this event.

Final report

Background

It was a day 28 of April 2016 when the flight EQ-173 operated on an Embraer aircraft 190 license plate HC-COX, serial number 19000372 and with year of manufacture 2010, began its approach procedure to the city of Cuenca from Quito. It's about 07:50 the Cuenca control tower authorized the landing of this flight under limited weather conditions on the runway 23 (north to south).

The METAR for that day in Cuenca showed light rain over the station and reduced visibility from 8 kilometres, although hours before the rain had been more intense. Before Tame's landing, some 20 minutes before, a LATAM Airlines Ecuador flight operated on an Airbus A319 had landed without apparent inconveniences or at least that have been made public.

At 07:51 The plane hit wheels on a contaminated runway and on several occasions there had been reports of "skidding" or reduced or poor braking efficiency over several flights., airlines and aircraft type, despite the fact that she had recently been intervened with a job of runway rejuvenation which took place between 6 February and Monday 8 of that same month in 2016.

after running into wheels, the aircraft runs the runway as normal, starting braking procedures on the complex and short Cuenca runway, what happens next, we all know.

The Embraer plane 190 stops in the safety zone after having performed a maneuver where the aircraft turns in 180 degrees leaving his nose in the opposite direction to which he landed, and the partial report could only be known on Saturday 29 July 2017.

Report on the Tame accident in Cuenca

Now we are going to review point by point the possible causes that generated the accident according to the JIA report – Accident Investigation Board and try to explain it in simpler terms so that everyone understands it, even if they have no knowledge of Aviation:

Report on probable causes of the Tame accident #Embraer190 on #Cuenca in April of 2016. Full document pending ✈️ pic.twitter.com/DcZh9cp7Jw

— Nicholas Larenas ✈️ (@n_larenas) July 29, 2017

Probable Causes

• The conditions of the runway at the Cuenca airport, which at the time of the landing of the TAME plane was contaminated with water and slippery.

A critical point and it is known in the industry that the Cuenca Airport runway had very poor braking conditions in rainy conditions., The water accumulated and caused "skids" to the landing planes.. Although there are no official reports that have been made public in this regard, several pilots were able to tell me that they felt these conditions in various types of aircraft that fly to Cuenca. For this same reason, after the February runway rejuvenation and the accident, the track was intervened again to change its asphalt layer and improve drainage, which caused significant accumulation of water on the runway.

• The landing was made after an unstabilized approach with a tailwind..

An unstabilized approach is when the airplane was unable to “line up” to the normal parameters indicated on the approach procedure charts., This may be due to a higher speed or, for example, a late descent start and that implies a descent greater than the -1000 feet per minute.

An unstabilized approach is an undesired aircraft configuration that subjects the aircraft and its crew to unnecessary pressure during one of the most critical phases of flight., reducing the

time available to complete checklists and prepare for landing, and that may incur a safety risk if not identified and controlled by the crew. Source Flap152.

• Failure to apply the Maximum Performance Landing procedure recommended by the aircraft manufacturer to land on contaminated runways.

There is an endless number of let's call it, types of landings or configurations, where the pilots, according to the length of the track, if it is wet, dry or even if it has another type of material like snow on it, they will configure the flaps and autobrakes to achieve braking in the space available on the track. According to this point, the pilots had to apply a better braking configuration, under known conditions. in a personal way,

Contributing Factors

• The flight conditions with 1.500 kg more fuel than the quantity with which this flight was usually carried out.

Indicates that the aircraft was flying with a load greater than normal for that route, but it is not indicated if on that occasion the fuel was increased due to possible contingencies such as carrying out a holding pattern or approach due to the bad weather that was known at the time of dispatching the flight.

• The omission of the calculation of the length of the runway necessary to carry out the landing using the information of braking efficiency.

A series of factors could lead to the omission of this calculation by the crew due to an overload of work due to the previous factors that the report details..

• The crew's decision to make the final approach with three red lights and one white, using the PAPI system, induced by the information in the Terminal Information document issued by TAME authorizing this procedure.

As indicated, it is an authorized procedure, but above all, normal in Tame. PAPI lights is a system that indicates to pilots if their approach is too high, medium high, perfect, medium low or very low. With 3 red lights the system is indicating that the aircraft is halfway below the recommended glideslope for that airport, but is normal. Normal to Cuenca have a short runway, airline procedures recommend hitting the runway as soon as possible, in order to have more runway surface to decelerate the plane.

• The use of confusing terminology in the Terminal Information document, which used terms applicable to the Airbus fleet, instead of Embaer's.

This point, although it is the sole responsibility of the airline, it can be assumed that all the Embraer crew was correctly instructed in this regard to differentiate the different terminologies and terms applicable to their respective aircraft.

• The crew's decision not to carry out the missed approach maneuver after the maximum allowed vertical speed was exceeded and visibility was apparently limited after the minimums were exceeded.

A missed approach is the pilots' main resource for situations of non-visibility of the runway., some problem with the plane, runway interference, unstabilized approach or any situation that may create a risk to the flight. It is assumed that this JIA information is based on the black box recordings., but if that's the case, the crew should have made the missed approach and retry the landing under better conditions than the indicated points. The minima are a height that is indicated on the approach chart and are the critical point where the crew makes the decision to land or rise again..

• Incorrect use of aircraft braking aids, in this case the reversals.

There's not much to explain, the planes in their engines have in easy to explain mode, two powers, one forward to take off and fly and the other reverse to brake, which to redirect a percentage of the thrust flow vectorially down and forward. The report does not indicate at what point the reversals were not applied, they were not activated, were partially activated?

• The application of the emergency brake that inhibits the antiskid system

The anti-skid system can be compared to the ABS system of cars, which helps to equalize the speed of rotation of all the wheels, this system is help to precisely avoid track departures.

• The lack of application of an adequate management of crew resources, particularly inside the cockpit.

This is part of what is known as CRM (Cabin Resource Management), in which, in general terms, the responsibilities of each crew member are better managed during the flight and even on the ground at managerial administrative levels. The CRM was generated after serious air accidents between the 70s and early 90s and seeks to reduce accidents due to human errors of pilots mainly.

• Lack of training in the use of track distance calculation tables.

Surely the pilots who read this point will have a hard time understanding that an experienced crew lacks training in the use of these tables.. The important thing here and what remains to be read in the rest of the report is to know what the pilots' calculation was, to determine so failed.

Conclution

This is what the first information in the report says they would be 258 pages. We will have to wait for the complete document to be able to read more in detail what caused the accident and the transcription of the voice and data recorders (black boxes), since these probable causes and in a personal way, are focused on a 96% in the responsibility of the pilots and the subject of the track left to a single point, being that the problems of the same were known and that they led to a second recap in the period of just 3 months and if the influence of the track would not have been so important, the second job would not have been done.

of what is known, the plane must be dismantled after insurance report, where its repair would be possible, but with a high cost to the Cuenca, not having any hangar and less prepared to carry out the required work that would be deep and require a workshop and certified personnel, without knowing the potential damage or not in the aircraft fuselage. Another alternative that would have been considered, was to fly the ferry plane to Guayaquil to carry out the repair work there, since the plane, under manufacturer supervision, could have made this flight at low altitude and not pressurized.

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