A332, vicinity Tripoli Libya, 2010

A332, vicinity Tripoli Libya, 2010

Summary

On 12 May 2010, an Afriqiyah Airways Airbus A330 making a daylight go around from a non precision approach at Tripoli which had been discontinued after visual reference was not obtained at MDA did not sustain the initially established IMC climb and, following flight crew control inputs attributed to the effects of somatogravic illusion and poor CRM, descended rapidly into the ground with a high vertical and forward speed, The aircraft was destroyed by impact forces and the consequent fire and all but one of the 104 occupants were killed.

Description

On 12 May 2010, an Airbus A330-200 (5A-ONG) being operated by Libyan airline Afriqiyah Airways on a scheduled passenger flight from Johannesburg to Tripoli as BU771 with a cruise relief First Officer on board and observing in the flight deck for the approach, commenced a go around in day Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) after failing to obtain the required visual reference to land following a non precision approach to runway 09. However, soon afterwards, it crashed short of the intended landing runway just outside the aerodrome perimeter and was destroyed by the impact and subsequent fire with all but one of the 104 occupants being killed.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the Libyan Civil Aviation Authority. Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) data was successfully downloaded from the recovered recorders. It was noted that both pilots and the observing relief First Officer had recorded exactly the same A330 flying hours total of 516 since qualifying on type at the manufacturer’s training facility the previous year and had all been previously rated on the Airbus A320.

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