AACM issues preliminary report on Capital Airlines’ incident

The Civil Aviation Authority of Macau (AACM) has issued a preliminary report on the incident involving a Capital Airlines Airbus A320-214, listing the plane’s encounters, but not yet identifying who should take the responsibility for the hard landing at Macau International Airport.

As the aircraft is registered with mainland China, the investigation is being jointly carried out by the aeronautical authorities of both mainland China and the SAR.

In the investigation report, AACM noted that the flight was normal until final approach.

The incident, which occurred on August 28, was a result of the aircraft being in its final stages of approach to the local airport. It was descending from 50 to 30 feet above ground level, and its airspeed decreased from 134 to 122 knots.

According to the report, the airspeed decrease occurred within one to two seconds and at touchdown, the aircraft was affected by a 28-knot tailwind. When the aircraft first touched down on the main landing gear, the peak vertical acceleration was 2.359 g. The aircraft then touched down again on the nose landing gear, with peak vertical acceleration reaching 3.406 g four seconds later.

Following that, the nose landing gear was damaged and debris entered both engines, resulting in both engines becoming damaged.

According to the A320 Aircraft Maintenance Manual, any touchdown with a vertical acceleration equal to or greater than 2.86 g is seen as a severe hard landing.

“After the second touchdown, the captain conducted miss approach procedures with a low climb rate,” the report noted.

The captain then declared mayday and requested full emergency landing at Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport.

According to AACM, the navigation system was inoperative after the hard landing and backup navigation system was activated.

The incident damaged the nose landing gear, the forward fuselage and the two engines of the aircraft.

All 35 fan blades in the left engine were damaged, including severe damage to the engine’s acoustic panels, and damage to the low-pressure compressor and high-pressure compressor blades was sustained due to foreign object debris.

Damage also occurred to the six fan blades on the right engine, along with two acoustic panels. Some damage was also found on the high-pressure compressor blades and low-pressure compressor blades.
AACM has invited aircraft manufacturer Airbus, as well as the aeronautical authorities of France, where the aircraft was manufactured, to take part in the investigation.

There were a total of 157 passengers, three flight crew
members and six cabin crew members on the plane.
Five of the passengers sustained minor injuries during the evacuation at Shenzhen airport.

AACM pointed out that a comprehensive investigation
was still underway, and that the investigation would focus on analysis of the wheel debris, flight data, flight performance, crew training and qualifications, weather and environment influences, aircraft maintenance history, air traffic control procedures, as well as other areas.
The authorities also emphasized that the purpose of the investigation was to identify the cause of the incident, so as to prevent similar occurrences in the future.