Oriental Air Bridge DH8B at Nagasaki on Feb 12th 2014, hard landing

Last Update: May 24, 2016 / 17:21:38 GMT/Zulu time

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Photo of Oriental Air Bridge JA801B, De Havilland DHC-8-200 Dash 8 — Oriental Air Bridge JA801B, De Havilland DHC-8-200 Dash 8 (Photo credit: Alec@B92 / Flickr / License: CC by-sa)

Incident Facts

Date of incident
Feb 12, 2014

Classification
Accident

Cause
Hard landing

Airline
Oriental Air Bridge

Departure
Nagasaki, Japan

Destination
Nagasaki, Japan

Aircraft Registration
JA801B

Aircraft Type
De Havilland DHC-8-200 Dash 8

ICAO Type Designator
DH8B

An Oriental Air Bridge de Havilland Dash 8-200, registration JA801B performing a training flight from Nagasaki to Nagasaki (Japan) with captain and two trainee pilots, was performing touch and goes with the intention to conduct six touch and goes. While touching down for the 4th time the aircraft touched down very hard with the nose gear first causing substantial damage to the forward portion of the airframe. The aircraft did not "go" again but rolled out.

Japan's Transportation Safety Board rated the occurrence an accident and opened an investigation, reporting that the aircraft touched down hard on its 4th of six planned touch and goes resulting in damage to the forward fuselage outer panels.

The airline reported that as result of the accident, which left the training captain and two trainee pilots uninjured, two aircraft are out of service causing disruption to their schedule until February 15th (including), at which time the second aircraft is expected to return to service. The airline cooperates with the investigation led by the JTSB.

On May 19th 2016 the JTSB released their final report concluding the probably cause of the accident was:

It is probable that the accident occurred while the aircraft was landing under strong crosswind, under the condition that the main landing gear grounded without sufficient load being applied, the nose of the airplane downed excessively and the nose landing gear grounded heavily, which caused damage on the nose landing gear and the deformation of the right and left fuselage skins.

As for the nose landing gear of the aircraft grounding heavily, it is probable that the trainee continuously downed the nose, and subsequently the captain who was the instructor failed to provided an appropriate corrective operation.

The JTSB reported the first officer (trainee, 25, CPL, 273 hours total, 3 hours on type) occupied the left hand seat, the captain and instructor (40, ATPL, 5,595 hours total, 5,355 hours on type) occupied the right hand seat.

The aircraft had completed three of planned 7 touch and goes on runway 32 of Nagasaki and was on its fourth approach for another touch and go with winds reported from 040 degrees at 17 knots. The fourth approach was planned to be a simulated left engine out approach, the first officer adopted the wing low rather than the crab method, as result the right main gear touched down first, the weight on wheel sensor did not activate. A pronounced nose down input over the next 4 seconds occurred accelerating the nose down, about 3 seconds after the right main gear touched down a vertical acceleration of +2.016G occurred with the right weight on wheel sensor activating briefly, the aircraft bounced. A second later the pitch changed to 4.56 degrees nose down, the nose gear touched down with a severe impact sound. The captain commented on the impact sound, but feeling no sign of irregularity like strange noise or vibrations instructed to continue the touch and goes and the aircraft completed two more touch and goes and the last full stop landing.

Ground personnel then discovered damage to the nose gear.

The JTSB reported the aircraft received substantial damage listing the nose gear received partial attrition of the lowest end of the shock strut brace, damage to the shock strut parts, deformed marks to both tires and the fuselage received deformation of the right and the left fuselage skins on the rear of the nose landing gear mounting areas.

The first officer reported he felt there was no weight on the right main gear after touch down, as he had been told by the instructor before that he tended to raise the nose too much, we was correcting the attitude, which according to his impression caused nose gear and left main gear touch down hard simultaneously.

The JTSB annotated, that the maximum vertical acceleration of +2.016G remained within the limit of +2.1G provided by the aircraft manuals, a landing with 2.1G or more would require a hard landing inspection.

With respect to the weather the JTSB analysed: "it is highly probable that the status of the wind over the runway 32 around the time of the accident was that the wind direction was from the right 70° direction, and the crosswind component was on average 20 kt and maximum about 25 kt. Although it did not exceed the maximum crosswind value that is applicable to the aircraft upon take-off and landing, it is probable that the flight training that includes touch-and-goes that simulates one engine, was of a considerably high level for a trainee who had a lack of experience with the same type of aircraft."

With respect to the landing the JTSB analysed: "after first the right main landing gear touched the ground, the trainee thought that it was taking longer than one thought for the nose of the Aircraft became to be low and there was no load on the right main landing gear. Also judging from the fact that, before the landing, the trainee had also received advice and assistance by the instructor who is also the captain that the trainee had a tendency to pitch-up the nose too high during the change from crab method to wing low method in situations when there was crosswind situation, and had also received advice that as regards maintaining the direction during the take-off roll pushing forward the control column was insufficient, it is somewhat likely that the trainee was conscious of having to push the control column forward and had conducted the operation to down the nose continuously. Moreover, due to this operation to down the nose , it is probable that a significant pitch down moment (the turning force that works in the direction of the nose down) caused , and then the nose landing gear to touch the grounding with strong impact."

With respect to corrective action by the instructor the JTSB analysed: "it is somewhat likely that the captain had not carried out a corrective operation was caused by the fact that captain did not have prior experience as an instructor , and there was a lack of awareness as regards taking over and corrective operation . It is probable that the captain should give adequate consideration to the training environment and have a strong awareness of take over, and that before the trainee enters a realm that exceeds his/her capability, and before the instructor himself/herself becomes unable to comply, the take over should be conducted at a suitable timing."