Pakistan 8303 is approaching Jinnah International airport for a second attempt to land. The plane is severely damaged and it has lost both it's engines. The under carriage of the plane is visibly damaged. Oil is spilling out and low oil pressure warnings are blaring in the cockpit. The landing gear is not down. The First Officer's panels aren't working and they are barely 2000 feet off the ground They still have 2 left turns to make before they can reach the safety of the runway, But, their plane is losing altitude and dropping to the ground by the second…. And as the runway comes closer…. Mechanical Sound: "STALL… STALL.... STALL" How did this plane end up in such a disastrous situation? And the question now is will the 99 souls on board this plane make it home safe? This is the story that will change Pakistani aviation forever! This is the story of Pakistan Airlines 8303. Because you obviously love aviation, you’ll also love today’s sponsor Conflict of Nations. It’s a free online Player vs Player strategy game. You can match with 128 other players, each controlling a real world country. Your job is to lead your country into World War 3. You can declare war with your neighbors, or forge alliances with other players to conquer. Your strategy is up to you. Your goal is to take on the world. The best thing is, You can play with the same account both on your PC and on your mobile. And if you use my link in the description below, you’ll get an exclusive gift - 13000 gold and 1 month of premium subscription for free. Remember that this offer is only valid for the first 30 days that this video is out, so don’t lose time. It's May 2020, and the world is in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic and Pakistan is under strict lockdowns. At Lahore International Airport, Flight 8303 is preparing for departure. This is a daily passenger service between Lahore and Karachi. But, due to the pandemic, this is one of just a handful of flights in the sky today. Captain Sajjad Gul and First Officer Usman Azzam are in the cockpit. With them are six cabin crew and 89 passengers. Lahore ATC clears the plane for departure. The plane pushes back and lifts off from Lahore International airport ten minutes later. The plane being used today is a 16 year old Airbus A320. It was manufactured and delivered to PIA in 2004. Due to the pandemic, the plane was grounded for two months and it just started flying again a week earlier. Regular maintenance checks were still being carried out and the plane was in a good condition. This plane was installed with two brand new CFM-56 turbofan engines a year prior to this flight - the engines were in pristine condition. Today, the first officer is the pilot flying and the captain is pilot monitoring. These two people are going to play a major factor in the events today. So, let’s take a closer look at them. The captain is 58-year-old Sajjad Gul. He joined PIA in 1996 and was promoted to Captain in 2015. But he has had a controversial career. When he first applied to join PIA in 1996, he failed his mandatory psychiatric evaluation, which all pilots need to undergo. He was described as being bossy, dominant, overbearing, and having poor stress tolerance. Normally a report like this would disqualify the pilot from joining the airline. But Gul was adamant, and he was determined to join PIA. He went and sought second opinions from five other psychiatrists - three from the UK and two from Pakistan and they all declared him fit to be a cadet pilot. and he was allowed to begin training with the airline. Sitting to the captain's right, is first officer Usman Azzam. He was 33 years old and with significantly less experience compared to the captain. Azzam had joined the airline in 2010 and he had around 2300 hours of flying experience, most of them on the A320. The first officer exhibited deficiencies during his career as well, and because of that, the airline withheld his promotion to first officer in 2016. But after undergoing correctional training, he was promoted. What this tells us is that this plane is being flown by two people with questionable training histories and specifically with a captain who has been considered an underperformer. There’s also a steep experience and age gap between the two, resulting in a significant power gradient. This too will become a factor in this flight. It’s the month of Ramadan, and the pilots, both muslims are fasting. They haven’t eaten or drunk anything since sunrise, 8 hours ago. Although International regulations prohibit fasting and flying, because reduced sugar levels can affect your decision making skills, since this was a Domestic flight within Pakistan, international rules weren’t enforced, and the pilots were free to fly. The plane continued it’s climb and is it now cruising at an altitude of 34000 feet. The skies are clear. The weather is calm. It’s a perfect day for flying. They are about 150 nautical miles from the airport. The ATC clears them to approach the airport via this route. This route is called NAWABSHAH 2A. To follow this route, they need to fly at a heading of 205 degrees from the city of Nawabshah, and then take a right at around this point near the city Hyderabad. Their goal is to hit this waypoint called MAKLI at an altitude of 8000 feet. 4 nautical miles after MAKLI is another point called SABEN, they’ll need to do a holding pattern to reduce altitude from 8000 feet to 3000 feet. They don’t know it yet, but their first problem has just started. The crew skipped their mandatory approach briefing. The FO enabled the NAWABSHAH2A approach on the flight computer. Since the crew are busy talking about things unrelated to the flight, the captain doesn’t cross verify this change. Now, You might think that this is a major deviation to the standard operating procedure, and yes it is, but hold on, we are just getting started. At around 2.15pm, the first officer calls up the ATC to request permission to descend. ATC: “Pakistan 8303 Descent FL100, pilot discretion proceed direct MAKLI” Focus on the words “Proceed Direct MAKLI”. Because there’s not many flights in the air, the ATC decides to give them a shortcut. Although they were originally cleared for this route, the ATC now permits them to skip Hyderabad and fly directly to MAKLI. This new route is called NAWABSHAH 1C. They have also been cleared to descend to FL100. The first officer changes the altitude assignment in the autopilot. But once again, there’s no cross-check of this change done by the captain. This cross check exists so that if one pilot makes a mistake, the other pilot can identify it and correct it before it becomes a significant problem. But this crew just didn’t care to do it. And this behaviour is going to take a dark turn. The pilots set up the autopilot to follow a Managed Descend. In this mode, the autopilot will calculate a path taking into consideration the total number of track miles left to fly, the speed at which the pilot wants to fly, and any altitude restrictions that are present for any waypoints along the route. Usually in this mode, if everything is setup correctly, the plane should descend at a rate of around 2000 feet per minute. This plane, though, is only descending at 1000 feet per minute. A slower descent usually happens when the computer thinks there’s a long way to go to the airport. But given they are less than 150nm from the airport, the plane should have started a proper descend already. So, why does this plane think there’s longer to fly, when there’s less than 150 nm left? Let’s take a closer look at the original route that the crew were asked to fly. Remember this holding pattern at SABEN that’s designed for them to descend from 8000 feet to 3000 feet? But with the ATC now providing a DIRECT route, both the ATC and the pilots now intend to arrive at MAKLI at 3000 feet, without needing to do the holding pattern. The first officer clicks the “DIRECT” button on the FMC, and instructs the flight to fly straight to MAKLI. But unfortunately, he hasn’t told the computer that the holding pattern should not be flown. The plane thinks that there’s around 30nm further to fly than what the pilots expect. After a while, the plane now hits the point where it thinks it needs to start the descent from. The engines are brought back to idle, and the plane begins to descend at 2400 feet per minute. Karachi ATC further clears them down to 5000 feet. Once again, the first officer silently changes the altitude target to 5000 feet in the autopilot. There’s no cross verification or verbal confirmation done by the crew. Usually at this point in the flight, the plane is handed off from Karachi Area Control to Karachi Approach control. Out of habit, and without clearance, one of the pilots changes the frequency on the radio box. And not only did they change the frequency without approval, they also entered the incorrect frequency - instead of 125.5, the crew entered 126.5. This meant that the ATC Wasn’t able to contact the plane at all. After about 5 wasted minutes, the ATC was able to contact the plane by calling them on the Guard frequency. Karachi Approach clears them to descend further to 3000 feet. Since the plane started descending late, it’s extremely high compared to where they should be for a straight in approach. The crew still isn’t aware, though. All they needed to do was to pay attention to screens in front of them to see the U turn indicator at SABEN, or for the word HOLD in the FMC. But since they were not following procedure, they completely missed this. The plane is now around 5 minutes away from the MAKLI waypoint and it then crosses MAKLI at 9300 feet. They should have been at 3000 feet by now. They are too high to land safely. But all’s not lost. As long as the pilots don’t do anything, and let the plane follow the computed path, the plane will simply execute the holding pattern, reduce altitude to 3000, and land safely. But their problems are about to compound. A minute later, with the runway in view, the first officer arms the “APPROACH” mode to make the plane capture the glideslope. But in this mode, once the glideslope is captured, the computer will ignore all programmed navigations, including the HOLD at SABEN. And without this Hold, the plane will continue to be too high when it reaches the airport. Karachi ATC who’s monitoring the plane’s path notices that they are more than twice the height they are supposed to be at, and gets concerned. He calls out to the plane. *“Pakistan 8303 confirm track mile comfortable for descent?”* to which the crew responds “Affirm”. This call must have awakened the captain, and he must have wondered why such a question was being asked. So, he checks the screens in front of him, Only then does he realize their mistake that they haven’t removed the Holding pattern at SABEN. He becomes alarmed “What has happened? Stop Stop Oh No! Take out the Hold take out the Hold, take out the HOLD”. But, the HOLD was the only thing that was going to get the plane down to the runway in time. Unfortunately, The first officer responds immediately and cancels the hold. He then asks the captain “HOLD taken out, should we report this issue?” The captain says No, over rules the first officer and instructs him to tell the ATC that everything is fine. The First officer agrees with his senior and relays it to Karachi ATC. Remember the steep power gradient that we initially discussed. That’s now influencing the first officer’s decisions here. The first officer, fully aware that they goofed up, and can visibly see that they are too high, wants to take corrective action. He wants to bring the plane down further so that they can intercept the proper descend path. So, he switches the plane from the Managed Descent mode to an Open Descent Mode. In the open descent mode, the plane will stop following the computed path, and merely start descending at a pre-determined speed, until it hits the target altitude in the FMU - which in this case is 3000 feet. To further reduce the speed, and to descend faster, the first officer deploys the speed brakes to increase the drag on the plane. The plane is now at 9210 feet, just a mere 15nm from the runway threshold. To capture the 3 degree glideslope, they should have been at 4700 feet. They are almost twice as high as where they should be. The Karachi Tower Controller has also now noticed that the plane is too high. It was at this point that the plane flew over the SABEN waypoint. The ATC continued “ You are at 7500, 10 miles from touchdown”, trying to prompt them to realize that the approach isn’t stable. But the crew respond with “No problem, Sir”. The crew is displaying a complete lack of situational awareness even after their trajectory was challenged by the ATC multiple times. But why isn’t it obvious to the captain that something’s wrong? During later investigation, the past records of flights flown by the captain was looked at. And what they found was just crazy! In the past 12 months prior to this flight, there were numerous flights where the captain flew with High Speed, High Path, Height, Rate of Descent, and GPWS Warnings and No Go-Arounds were initiated and several unstabilized approaches were continued. This captain clearly didn’t care about rules and established procedures and has a history of unstabilized approaches, and for him, the current situation that this flight is in, doesn’t seem like an issue at all. A minute later, at 7400 feet, the landing gears are brought down and the flaps are set to the FLAPS1 position. The vertical speed increases from 2300 feet per minute to an astonishing 7500 feet per minute. This is a ridiculously extreme angle to be approaching the runway from. The Approach controller, who is still worried, reminds them with “Sir, Orbit is available if you want”… saying that they could make a 360 degree turn to lose altitude and get back to the normal flight path. The captain sees no issue with their approach and tells the first officer to say no. The first officer responds “Negative Sir, we are comfortable. We can make it, Inshallah”. The plane continues to barrel towards the ground. The plane crosses 4500 feet, just 7 miles away from the runway. Since the target altitude set in the autopilot is 3000 feet, the plane begins to reduce it’s descend to level off at 3000 feet. At almost the same time, the captain says “He will be surprised what we have done”, indicating that he was proud of what they have done to bring the plane to 3000 feet without doing an orbit. But the approach controller at this point, has had enough. He gives them an order - “Pakistan 8303. Disregard. Turn left heading 180”. “Sir, we are comfortable now, and we are out of 3500 for 3000 established on the ILS 25L” Did you catch something? He says that he’s established on the ILS. The glideslope requires a 3 degree slope to lock on to, but they are almost twice as high as where the 3 degree slope is. Then how is he claiming that they are established on the ILS? Is he lying? Here’s where an unfortunate technical limitation begins to play a part. At this altitude, the 3 degree glide slope and the 9 degree glideslope both interfered, causing perturbations, and creating a phantom 6 degree glideslope. The plane latched on to this 6 degree glideslope and began following it down to the ground. And although the target altitude is set to 3000 feet, because the glideslope is now captured, the plane disregards that setting and begins descending down towards the runway. And because of this extreme angle, the speed of the plane begins to increase as well. The Approach Controller gives them another direct order - “Negative TURN LEFT HEADING 180”. Any other pilot would have turned left, but this one just responded with “Sir, we are established on ILS 25L” and completely disregarded the instruction. The plane is continuing an extremely high angle, the computer is commanding the plane to pitch further down to stay on the glideslope - it’s now at a frightening -12.6 degrees. Because of the steep angle, and the high speed, several warnings start blaring in the cockpit. It echoes with “OVERSPEED” and “DONT SINK” warnings… 30 seconds later, the plane’s pitch further increased to -13.7 degrees. At this point, the auto pilot disengages as it is not programmed to fly at such steep angles. The auto pilot disconnect sound is heard, and the first officer takes manual control. But again, no communication between the two pilots occur. Suddenly a GPWS “Pull UP” warning comes on - when this warning comes on, the pilots are trained to immediately execute a Terrain Escape Maneuver. Out of habit, the first officer pulls back on the side-stick, reducing the descent rate from -7400 fpm to -2000 fpm. In an attempt to stabilize the approach, and possibly do the orbit, the first officer retracts the landing gear, and the speed brakes. But no verbal communication was done between the pilots and the captain isn’t aware that the wheels are up. The first officer asks the captain whether they should do a 360 degree turn - the captain overrules him yelling “No No” “Leave It”. The captain then immediately takes over control by pressing the side stick priority button and continued to fly the plane down towards the runway. Just at the same time, The ATC clears the plane to land on Runway 25L. The captain, who’s mentally prepared to land, moves the FLAPS to the FLAPS2 position, to increase the drag to slow the plane down further. The plane now enters what’s called the 1000 feet Stabilization gate. It’s the point at which the plane should be absolutely stabilized in order to carry out the landing. But in this plane, the air speed, the vertical speed, the pitch and the glideslope were all out of range. The plane was absolutely unstabilized and should go around. Take a wild guess what they did! The plane is now at 750 feet in altitude just 1.5 miles from the runway threshold. The plane tries to warn the crew that the landing gear is not down. A Red ECAM message “Landing gear not down” is displayed on the screen. There’s also a red arrow near the landing gear lever. As the plane kept going down, more TOO LOW TERRAIN, SINK RATE and PULL UP warnings were triggered. The landing gear is still up. The plane crossed the threshold at 200 knots. Because this plane was flying so fast, it completely overshot the touchdown zone. When the plane descended to 7 feet off the ground, the captain selected full reverse thrust. Even if the reversers are armed, it will only deploy once the wheels touch the ground. But since the landing gear has not been extended, the reverse thrust never engages. As the plane floats over the runway, the engine nacelles of both engines impact the ground. The entire plane starts vibrating. The engines begin to scrape along the runway. The friction of the engines with the ground causes sparks and fire to erupt. The sparks were so bright that it was visible from the terminal building. The captain tries to slow the plane down by applying maximum brake inputs. But since the wheels aren’t on the ground, the brakes don’t do anything. The plane continues to bounce on the runway up to 4 times, scraping and creating sparks every time. The captain continues to push the side-stick down. The first officer who’s clearly realizing the major trouble the plane is in, hesitantly pulls his stick back 2/3rd of the way. When two different inputs are provided, the plane takes the average of the two inputs, and so the plane continues to go further into the ground. This causes the plane to lean towards the right making the number 2 engine touch the ground for a prolonged period, scraping it on the ground and causing it to sustain significant damage. A fire erupts on Engine 2 and the Fire warning lights up in the cockpit. Engine 2 fails. All electrical systems are switched over from Engine 2 to Engine 1. The first officer shouts “Take off Sir, Take off sir”. 2 seconds later, the captain advances the thrusters to the TOGA MODE and the since the plane was already at 160 knots, the plane gets airborne again, almost immediately. Engine 1 had to do all the heavy lifting to get the plane back in the air. The first officer informed the ATC that they were going around. But the ATC had seen the belly landing, and a full fledged emergency was already initiated in the airport. As the crew retracted the flaps, Engine 2 went into an auto-start mode and began to recover. Because of the prolonged scraping of the engines on the runway, a major hole had formed and engine oil was leaking out of it. As the plane crossed 1200 feet, LOW OIL PRESSURE Warnings for both engines were triggered. The Master Caution warning also lit up, putting immense pressure on the two pilots. In order to focus, the crew cancelled the warnings and continued to to 3000 feet. ATC then instructs them to turn left to 110 degrees and to level off at 3000. At about the same time, due to the severe impact it had undergone, engine 1 fails. Remember, Engine 1 was the only engine powering all the electrical equipment on the plane. All they have left is the APU and the RAM turbine for electrical power. But thankfully, Engine 2 which was attempting to auto-restart, successfully begins to turn on…. But sadly, the first officer notices the earlier Fire Warning for Engine 2 and moves the thrust lever for engine 2 to idle to try to protect the engine. The engine that had just turned on, is now back in idle. The plane continues to fly downwind, losing altitude and losing speed. It is now at 1900 feet. The captain, clearly disoriented, asks the first officer where the runway was. The first officer points to the runway out of the captain’s left window. ATC seeing the plane losing altitude, calls out “Pakistan 8303, you are dropping, altitude 2000”. The crew then requests a clearance to remain at 2000 feet, which is cleared. The plane keeps descending further. ATC warns them again, and the first officer responds, “Copied we are maintaining… Trying to maintain”… The first officer reminds the captain to maintain a minimum speed of 140 knots as the RAM Air turbine will stop working at any speed under that. If they lose the Ram Turbine, they will lose all electrical systems. The captain, who at this point notices that the engine 2 thrust lever is in idle, says at the first officer “You have selected Engine 2 to Idle. Engine 1 is Gone”, The first officer responds with “Yeah”. Almost at the same time, Engine 2 also shuts down due to the previous damage. They are now flying with no engines, and just with the RAM Turbine. The First officer pleads with the captain “Increase the speed”. The captain, obviously flustered, responds “How will I increase my speed?” ATC says “Looks like you are turning left”. The First officer responds “We are proceeding direct sir, we have lost both engines”. The controller then asks the crew to confirm whether they’ll be attempting a belly landing again. The first officer responds with “Negative Sir”. The captain instructs the first officer to bring the landing gear down. The first officer complies, and brings the lever down. This was the last nail in their coffin. With no engines on the plane, the plane was just a glider. They were already very close to the ground with a slim chance of making it back to the runway. But by extending the landing gear they substantially increased the drag on the plane and reduced the distance that the plane could fly. The First officer calls out “May Day May Day May Day” as the plane descends to 700 feet. Soon after this the STALL STALL warning blares in the cockpit. The plane turns left towards the runway. The Karachi controller informs them that all runways were available. The situation in the cockpit was tense and confusing with all sorts of warnings going off simultaneously. As the plane descends through 400 feet The captain called out “DONT TAKE FLAPS DONT TAKE FLAPS” obviously trying to avoid any extra drag on the airplane but with the gear hanging out, they had already sealed their fate. At 2:40:18 seconds, the plane crashed into a densely populated residential area called 'Modal Colony', about 1300 meters short of runway 25L. The plane immediately broke apart and an intense fire erupted, which also engulfed several buildings around the crash site. Only 2 people survived this crash, and another person on the ground was also fatally injured. Emergency services were immediately dispatched around the site but they were impeded by the narrow streets and the crowd of locals who were trying to help them. The final report found the cause of the crash to be the non-adherence of the rules and regulations by the crew. They also found that the pilots fasting could have been a secondary contributor as they may have had reduced spatial awareness. The flying while fasting rule has since been fixed by Pakistan International Airlines. During the investigation It was also found that a shocking 40% of all pilots flying in Pakistan were flying with Fake flying licenses. This revelation caused Pakistan International Airlines to be blacklisted by both the EU and by the USA. Once again, thanks to my sponsor, Conflict of nations, for making this video possible. Conflict of Nations is a free online PVP Strategy game happening in a modern global warfare. Choose your own strategy, engage in epic battles and take over the world. If you use my link in the description below, you’ll get 13000 gold and 1 month of free subscription. Do it now! Don’t lose time. Choose your country and fight your way to victory!