Transcript analysis says engine failure cause of accident

Havelian plane crash

ISLAMABAD: The transcript analysis of the black box of PK-661 flight of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) that crashed near Havelian while traveling from Chitral to Islamabad on December 7 last year confirmed that ‘engine failure was the cause of this tragic incident,’ the sources told The News here on Wednesday.

Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Secretary Irfan Illahi was quoted as saying, “The report containing transcript analysis was received by them from the French aircraft manufacturing company last week that confirmed that PIA’s PK-661 flight crashed near Havelian due to the engine failure.”

“The cockpit recording also showed that the engine failure created panic among the crew that were striving hard to cope with the situation. Now certain parts of the crashed airplane have been airlifted to France for further investigation while its engine has been sent to Canada for detailed analysis by a team of experts,” he said.

The CAA secretary said the detailed analysis of the engine would take some three months so “I can say the report about the engine analysis will be presented to us after three months.” He said PIA and CIA had no role in compilation of the latest report as the investigation into the plane crash incident was carried out independently and the black box data was unaltered for the satisfaction of the experts. It is pertinent to mention here that the initial report of the plane crash prepared by the CAA had suggested that the ill-fated aircraft had been flying smoothly at 13,375 feet when its left engine malfunctioned, exploded and damaged a wing bringing down the plane in the mountainous area near Abbottabad.

The sources said the report had now ruled out the possibility of human error in the PK-661 crash and the rumours about any kind of mistake by the pilot would now die down on the technical grounds.

According to the reports, ATR plane that crashed near Havelian was delivered to the PIA on May 14, 2007. The aircraft had one instance of an engine failure in 2014. The engine was replaced and since then, it had been operating smoothly.

When contacted, CAA Director Amir Mehboob told The News that the Safety Investigation Board had become independent from the CAA and it was directly dealing the issue of the plane crash under the Aviation Division.

CAA spokesman Aftab Gillani told this correspondent that they had nothing to share with the media regarding Havelian plane crash incident because the CAA secretary supervised the Safety Investigation Board that was now not working under CAA.