White AT72 at Lisbon on Oct 22nd 2016, both nose wheels separated on hard landing

Last Update: March 15, 2019 / 18:30:08 GMT/Zulu time

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Incident Facts

Date of incident
Oct 22, 2016

Classification
Incident

Airline
White Air

Flight number
TP-1971

Departure
Porto, Portugal

Destination
Lisbon, Portugal

Aircraft Registration
CS-DJF

Aircraft Type
ATR ATR-72-200

ICAO Type Designator
AT72

A White Avions de Transport Regional ATR-72-212A on behalf of TAP Portugal, registration CS-DJF performing flight TP-1971 from Porto to Lisbon (Portugal) with 20 passengers and 4 crew, performed a normal ILS approach to Lisbon's runway 21, however, suffered a hard touchdown, bounced, touched down hard again with the nose gear causing both nose wheels to separate while the nose gear strut remained intact. The aircraft bounced a second time, touched down a third time and rolled out on both main gear and nose gear strut at 22:34L (21:34Z). The aircraft came to a stop about 290 meters/950 feet past the intersection with runway 17/35 (minimum distance to left runway edge of runway 35 150 meters/500 feet).

Both runways were closed, per NOTAM for operational reasons.

ATC told aircraft on approach frequency, that both runways were temporarily unavailable after an ATR had "crushed" its nose gear and left a lot of debris on the runway. Runway 35 might open about in about 30 minutes (later adding estimated times for arriving aircraft in the hold starting 60 minutes after TP-1971 landed).

The airport reported there had been fire and sparks from the nose gear during landing.

The airline reported the aircraft burst a nose tyre, nothing more happened.

A ground observer reported it appeared the nose gear collapsed, the photo taken by the observer however does not suggest the collapse of the nose gear strut (but does not rule out the wheels might have broken).

Runway 17/35 re-opened about 105 minutes after landing of TP-1971.

Portugals GPIAA opened an investigation. The GPIAA indicated preliminary findings suggest the aircraft touched down hard, possibly as result of a downdraft, bounced, touched down hard with the nose gear causing both nose wheels to separate, bounced another time and rolled out on nose gear strut and main wheels.

On Oct 25th 2016 the GPIAA reported the crew was on their 6th leg of the day, the day featuring poor weather conditions. The aircraft was conducting an ILS approach to Lisbon's runway 21 when below 50 feet AGL the aircraft was "shaken" in severe rain and the aircraft touched down hard, bounced, touched down with excessive load on the nose gear a second time causing both nose wheels to separate while the nose gear strut remained intact, the aircraft bounced again and settled on the runway on third touchdown rolling out on main wheels and nose gear strut leaving a substantial trench in the runway surface and causing substantial damage to the nose gear strut. There were no injuries, passengers and crew disembarked normally via stairs. The GPIAA released runway 03/21 back to service at 04:14Z (6:40 hours after landing).

In an additional note to The Aviation Herald the GPIAA pointed out on Oct 25th 2016, that both wheels' tyre rims were damaged and jumped out of the tyre cavity.

On Mar 15th 2019 the GPIAA released their final report (combining English and Portugese versions in one document) concluding the probable cause of the accident was:

PIC/PF decision to proceed and force the landing not complying with the unstabilized approach criteria, with air speed well above the reference VAPP.

Contributing factor:

Fatigue may have contributed to the accident by directly affecting pilot (PIC/PF) performance.

The GPIAA described the sequence of events:

During the final approach to runway 21 at LPPT, pilots found conditions of rain and wind 240/09 with gusts up to 20kt.

At 21:34 UTC, the aircraft made a first touch on the runway, bounced, and touched hard again with the nose gear. Still with too much kinetic energy, the aircraft bounced again and came to touch for the third time on the runway, continuing the phenomenon of porpoise landing, causing the separation of the wheels and respective axles of the nose landing gear.

Finally, after the fourth touch, the aircraft stabilized and completed the landing, with the nose landing gear leg structure in contact with the runway surface, stopping after crossing the runway 17/35.

The crew did not carry out the emergency evacu-ation procedure and the passengers were trans-ported to the airport terminal without registered injuries.

The aircraft received substantial (structural) damage, the runway minor damage (due to fractured wheel rims).

The captain (51, ATPL, 5,502 hours total, 1,586 hours on type) had been pilot flying, the first officer (26, CPL, 704 hours total, 377 hours on type) was pilot monitoring. The GPIAA annotated: "The repeatability of the tasks on the same route led the pilots to make partial briefings and in some cases performed out of sequence as deter-mined in the SOPs. It was also noticed fatigue in both crew members, especially the PIC / PF during the entire flight and that turn into an apparent apathy in the post event, leading the PIC to take a few minutes to react to the accident."

Related NOTAMs:
A4518/16 NOTAMN
Q) LPPC/QMRLC/IV/NBO/A /000/999/3846N00908W005
A) LPPT B) 1610222308 C) 1610230200 EST
E) RWY 17/35 CLOSED DUE TO OPS REASONS.

A4517/16 NOTAMN
Q) LPPC/QMRLC/IV/NBO/A /000/999/3846N00908W005
A) LPPT B) 1610222307 C) 1610230600 EST
E) RWY 03/21 CLOSED DUE TO OPS REASONS.

Metars:
LPPT 222300Z 25013KT 9999 -RA FEW008 FEW020CB BKN040 15/14 Q1001 RESHRA
LPPT 222230Z 25014KT 8000 SHRA FEW006 BKN012 FEW020CB 15/14 Q1002 RESHRA
LPPT 222200Z 24012KT 9999 FEW006 BKN012 FEW020CB 16/15 Q1002 RESHRA
LPPT 222130Z 22015KT 190V270 9999 FEW010 BKN018 FEW020CB 18/16 Q1002
LPPT 222100Z 21015KT 9999 SCT008 SCT014 FEW020CB 19/17 Q1002
LPPT 222030Z 20016KT 9999 BKN008 19/17 Q1002
LPPT 222000Z 20015KT 9999 BKN010 19/17 Q1002
LPPT 221930Z 19014KT 9999 SCT010 SCT030 19/17 Q1002
LPPT 221900Z 20015KT 9999 BKN008 19/18 Q1002
LPPT 221830Z 20014KT 9999 SCT008 BKN012 19/18 Q1002
LPPT 221800Z 20014KT 9999 SCT008 BKN010 19/18 Q1002
LPPT 221730Z 20015KT 9999 FEW008 BKN010 19/18 Q1002
LPPT 221700Z 21013KT 9999 SCT009 SCT014 20/17 Q1003
Incident Facts

Date of incident
Oct 22, 2016

Classification
Incident

Airline
White Air

Flight number
TP-1971

Departure
Porto, Portugal

Destination
Lisbon, Portugal

Aircraft Registration
CS-DJF

Aircraft Type
ATR ATR-72-200

ICAO Type Designator
AT72

This article is published under license from Avherald.com. © of text by Avherald.com.
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