Macau (MNA) – The Civil Aviation Authority (AACM) concluded its investigation on the Beijing Capital Airlines accident at the Macau International Airport (MIA) in August, 2018, stating that several factors led to the incident, including weather conditions, several consecutive aircrew mistakes, and the absence of adverse weather detection equipment in the airport.
On August, 28 of last year a Beijing Capital Airlines flight carrying more than 160 flight crew members and passengers and destined to Macau from Beijing had an accident when landing at MIA.
The AACM final report mentioned that the flight encountered ‘severe low-level wind shear at the runway with rapid tailwind increase and downdraft,’ resulting in higher-than-usual vertical acceleration at touchdown and leading the aircraft to bounce up in the air.
At the second landing attempt, all three landing gears touched the runaway within the same second, resulting in damage to the nose landing gear.
Meanwhile, the aircraft flew in circle around MIA but the Authority said that the ‘thrust lever of the right engine was incorrectly moved to an idle position triggering the stall warning twice.’
The captain of the flight also missed some landing procedures and ended up having to divert the flight to Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, the report pointed out.
In addition, the AACM pointed out that the MIA does not have equipment to detect low-level wind shear.
The flight landed at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport safely, though five of the passengers had minor injuries during evacuation.
The final report recommended that safety measures be enforced to both the airport and the airline to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
The airport was recommended to install appropriate equipment to detect hazardous weather conditions, as well as to review the current operation procedures concerning Foreign Object Debris (FOD).
On the other hand, the airline should enhance operation training for pilots and flight crews.
The investigation was jointly carried out by the aeronautical authorities of Macau and Shenzhen, following the standards in Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation.
