Description

On 24 January 2012, a Boeing MB83 being operated by Spanish ACMI operator Swiftair for South African operator Gryphon Airlines on a scheduled passenger flight from Dubai to Kandahar struck the ground in the undershoot area of the landing runway at destination with one wing in day Visual Meteorological Conditions (VMC) before completing a landing on the runway. After clearing the runway, TWR, with service provided by a supervised trainee who had observed the ground impact and corrective action, instructed the aircraft to hold position and shut down the engines to facilitate an Rescue and Fire Fighting Services inspection to check that there was no fuel leak and that the wheels and brakes were apparently undamaged. Nothing untoward was found and the aircraft was permitted to restart engines and taxi in for a normal passenger disembarkation. There were no injuries to the 86 passengers and 5 crew.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the Spanish investigation agency CIAIAC as the State of the Operator. It was noted that following the accident, the flight crew had made “no effort to preserve the contents of either the cockpit voice or flight data recorders”. As a result the data from the 30 minute Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) had been overwritten but fortunately the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) data was still available and was successfully downloaded for use in the Investigation.