Description

On 28 January 2019, an Airbus A320 (SX-ODS) being operated by Orange2fly on a scheduled international passenger flight from Dubai to Muscat for Salamair was making an ILS approach to runway 26R at destination in night VMC when it progressively became unstabilised and at a very low altitude, the automatic ALPHA FLOOR protection system was activated and a normal touchdown then followed.

Investigation

On receiving a report of the event by the Greek operator of the aircraft nine days after it had occurred which contained no indication of its seriousness, the Hellenic Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board (AAIASB) initially took no action. However, when the Board received and reviewed a copy of the operator’s internal investigation two months later, the event was categorised as a Serious Incident and the State of Occurrence was notified accordingly and information provided. When the State of Occurrence subsequently decided not to undertake an investigation due to “lack of adequate information”, the AAIASB opened its own Investigation and notified the appropriate parties accordingly. Relevant FDR data were available but relevant CVR data had been overwritten.    

It was noted that the Captain had a total of 13,522 hours flying experience of which 73 hours had been flown since joining the operator one month prior to the event under investigation when already qualified on type. The First Officer had a total of 1,489 hours flying experience of which 328 hours had been flown since joining the operator, which he had joined 4½ months earlier also already qualified on type.