TUI Belgium B738 at Marrakesh on May 2nd 2018, tail strike on landing

Last Update: March 11, 2021 / 19:42:51 GMT/Zulu time

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Photo of TUI Airlines Belgium OO-JAY, Boeing 737-800 — TUI Airlines Belgium OO-JAY, Boeing 737-800 (Photo credit: dylan3300 / Flickr / License: Public Domain Dedication (CC0))

Incident Facts

Date of incident
May 2, 2018

Classification
Accident

Cause
Tail strike on landing

Airline
TUI Airlines Belgium

Flight number
TB-3640

Departure
Brest, France

Destination
Marrakesh, Morocco

Aircraft Registration
OO-JAY

Aircraft Type
Boeing 737-800

ICAO Type Designator
B738

Airport
Menara Airport, Marrakech

Airport ICAO Code
GMMX

A TUI Belgium Boeing 737-800, registration OO-JAY performing flight TB-3640 from Brest (France) to Marrakesh (Morocco), landed on Marrakesh's runway 10 at 12:18L (12:18Z) but struck its tail onto the runway surface on touchdown. The aircraft rolled out without further incident and taxied to the apron. There were no injuries, the aircraft sustained substantial structural damage however.

The aircraft was unable to depart for its return flight and was still on the ground in Marrakesh 20 days later.

Some time in the past Maroc's BEA released their final report in French only (editorial notes: discovered only on Mar 11th 2021 after a re-design of their website; to serve the purpose of global prevention of the repeat of causes leading to an occurrence an additional timely release of all occurrence reports in the only world spanning aviation language English would be necessary, a French only release does not achieve this purpose as set by ICAO annex 13 and just forces many aviators to waste much more time and effort each in trying to understand the circumstances leading to the occurrence. Aviators operating internationally are required to read/speak English besides their local language, investigators need to be able to read/write/speak English to communicate with their counterparts all around the globe).)

The report concludes the probably causes of the accident were:

- inappropriate execution of the landing procedures by the flight crew

- excessive correction by the first officer to reqacquire the landing trajectory

- late reaction by the captain to rectify the situation

- inadequate decision by the captain to continue landing

Contributing factors were:

- Lack of experience by the first officer

- Unfamiliar terrain for the first officer

- Lack of experience by the Type Rating Instructor (TRI) training pilot

The BEA reported the first officer under training (25, ATPL, 650 hours total, 500 hours on type) was pilot flying, the captain (29, ATPL, 6,000 hours total, 4,000 hours on type) qualified as TRI was pilot monitoring supervising the first officer.

The crew performed a visual approach to runway 10 in favourable weather conditions. About 25nm before the runway threshold the flight directors were disengaged, the approach was flown manually on raw data. Based on the FDR data the aircraft became too low when descending through 200 feet AGL, the first officer corrected, the aircraft now became too high with high engine thrust, at 100 feet AGL the thrust was reduced to near idle, a high rate of descent developed. Without taking control of the aircraft the captain increased thrust to reduce the rate of descent, however, the aircraft touched down hard and bounced. The captain now took control of the aircraft but continued the landing, the tail skid as well as the aft fuselage of the aircraft struck the runway surface (tail strike).

The BEA analysed that although the approach was performed manually and the flight directors were off, the ILS was tuned on both receivers.

Following the correction by the first officer after being too low on the approach, becoming too high on the approach and the reduction of thrust to near idle the captain had to decide whether to go around or take control to arrest the rate of descent. As the approach was no longer stabilized the decision to continue the landing was inappropriate. However, the action to increase thrust should have been accompanied by another action to arrest the sink rate and restore the desired trajectory. As result the aircraft touched down hard, the speedbrake automatically deployed upon first contact, the aircraft bounced. At that point the captain took control and continued landing reducing thrust, however, underestimated the height of the aircraft and initiated the new round out too early. As result the pitch angle became too high, the aircraft's tail contacted the runway surface resulting in structural damage to the aircraft.

Metars:
GMMX 021400Z 00000KT 9999 FEW020 SCT200 21/06 Q1016 NOSIG=
GMMX 021330Z VRB03KT 9999 FEW020 20/05 Q1016 NOSIG=
GMMX 021200Z 36004KT 310V090 9999 FEW020 18/06 Q1017 NOSIG=
GMMX 021130Z VRB03KT 9999 FEW020 17/06 Q1018 NOSIG=
GMMX 021100Z 01006KT 290V060 9999 FEW020 17/06 Q1018 NOSIG=
GMMX 021030Z 01005KT 330V070 9999 FEW020 16/06 Q1018 NOSIG=
GMMX 021000Z VRB03KT CAVOK 16/07 Q1018 NOSIG=
GMMX 020930Z VRB03KT CAVOK 15/07 Q1018 NOSIG=
GMMX 020900Z 03004KT 350V090 CAVOK 14/07 Q1018 NOSIG=
GMMX 020830Z 05004KT 010V090 CAVOK 13/07 Q1018 NOSIG=
GMMX 020800Z 04004KT 360V080 CAVOK 13/07 Q1017 NOSIG=