an Emirates Boeing 7 is in serious trouble on its Final Approach to Dubai International Airport 300 people cling to their seats as strong gusts shake the plane preventing it from touching down puzzled the captain decides to go around but before he can even climb 100 ft the plane begins to drop the passengers sense that something is a Miss but in the cockpit the pilots know that their situation is dire will they be able to make it back into the air or will they come crashing down onto the runway below with catastrophic consequences this is the story of Emirates flight 521 it was a clear Summer Morning in 2016 when 282 passengers boarded an Emirates boow and Triple 7 in through van antapuram airport on the southern tip of India they were Bound for the Airlines hub in Dubai 3 and 1/2 hours to the Northwest the majority of the passengers were from India but a total of 20 different nationalities were represented on board including some from the United Kingdom the United States turkey and my own country of irand among others for many passengers the flight to Dubai was just a stopover on the way to their final destination up in the cockpit preparing the aircraft for departure was a 34-year-old Captain he was a UAE national who had been with Emirates for 15 years he joined the airlines Cadet program in 2001 before starting as a first officer on the airb 330 2004 he began his training on the Triple 7 in 2009 and was promoted to captain in 2015 by this point he had logged more than 7,000 total hours over 5,000 of which were on the Triple 7 the captain had been described by colleagues as being a very competent pilot who had settled well into the left seat and who set a nice tone on the flight deck he would be flying the aircraft for this flight while the first officer monitored the aircraft and handled the radios that first officer was 37-year-old Australian National Jeremy Webb Webb was a rather recent hire at Emirates having joined the airline 2 years previously in that time he had built up over 1,200 hours on the Triple 7 making up a not insignificant portion of his almost 9,000 total hours which was more experienced than the captain Webb was described as being a competent pilot with no significant negative comments made by his evaluators during training the two pilots had never flown together but they had flown this route before they were well rested and both had a spotless safety record along with the two pilots and 282 passengers were 16 flight attendants bringing the grand total to 300 people on board time at around half 9 local time the doors were closed and the giant aircraft was pushed back from the gate passengers had every reason to think they were in safe hands with two experienced Pilots at the helm and an airline which had never lost a single aircraft since it first started operating in 1985 but on this day the unprecedented would happen as the aircraft made its Final Approach to Dubai after a short taxi flight 521 lined up on the runway the captain pushed the massive engines to take off thrust and within a few moments the plane was Airborne not long after takeoff the captain engaged the autopilot it would stay in control of the plane until just a few minutes before landing the pilots climbed straight up to the cruising altitude of 36,000 ft and continued out over the crisp blue Arabian Sea as the plane climbed the cabin crew went down the aisles serving food and drinks the atmosphere was calm and what was one of the shorter routes in the airlines vast Network a few hours later flight 521 was flying over om man and almost reaching the point where it could begin its descend into Dubai it was now time for the captain to brief the first officer on the approach and Landing the pilots got hold of the latest weather report in Dubai and it wasn't looking good even though it was a clear day in terms of clouds there was reduced visibility due to dust and the wind was unpredictable given the variable wind conditions the captain decided to brief an approach both onto Runway one2 left and the opposite direction Runway 3 left at Dubai planes almost always land and take off into the wind the reason for this is that it uses less Runway giving the pilots more space if something goes wrong on this afternoon as the captain briefed the approach the wind was coming from a direction of 1 10° at a speed of 15 knots this was basically a perfect headwind for roman2 at Dubai the pilots had calculated the landing speed of the plane to be 147 knots on this day if there was no wind an air speed of 147 knots would mean a ground speed of 147 knots on touchdown but with this afternoon's 15 knot headwind on touchdown flight 521 would have an air speed of 147 knots but a ground speed of 132 knots and it's a lot easier to stop a plane traveling at 132 knots than it is to stop one traveling at 147 knots as it would be if there were no wind now just flip the situation for a Tailwind an air speed of 147 knots plus a Tailwind of 15 knots gives a ground speed on touchdown of 162 knots this is very fast and would require the plane to use a lot more Runway to stop for this reason planes are tightly restricted in terms of how strong a Tailwind they can land with for the Triple 7 this limit is 15 knots to give a sense of how strict this really is the limit for Crosswinds is 40 knots so the pilots in conjunction with air traffic control would try their best to land on whichever Runway had a headwind on this afternoon this would not be easy to arrange a windshire warning had just been issued by the country's National meteorological Center which reported moderate wind shear for all runways at Dubai wind shear is a sudden change in Wind speed or Direction over a short distance it poses a serious threat to aircraft of all sizes and if the pilots of fight 5 to1 encountered it during their approach to the runway they would need to go around immediately because Dubai is situated on the coast it is vulnerable to windsh arising from a Sea Breeze a Sea Breeze forms during the day when the sun heats the land faster than it heats the sea the air over the land gets heated and as a result it rises when it rises the air Over the Sea swoops in to take its place seab breezes can be very strong during the summer and can blow its speeds of up to 50 km hour or 27 knots so expecting that wind shear might be a problem on the approach the captain briefed the winder Escape maneuver with the first officer the maneuver called for the pilot flying which in this case was the captain to press the takeoff gound button on the throttle levers check that togga mode was active on the flight mode annunciator confirmed that the throttles advanced to go round power retract the speed brakes monitor the aircraft performance and not raise the landing gear or flaps until windshire was no longer a factor the procedure also dictated that in the case of severe wind share the pilot must be ready to manually push the throttles to go around power rather than trusting the autopilot to do it during the maneuver the pilot monitoring in this case first officer web was required to ensure that maximum thrust had been set to verify that all of the required actions have been completed and to call out any missions by the captain with the briefing complete flight 521 began its descent towards Dubai the passengers were unaware of all of this as they fastened their seat belts and settled in for landing all they knew was that it was a bit Gusty at their destination and scorching hot many of the passengers wouldn't even be entering Dubai however they would just be waiting in the airport for the next flight so the weather would be Irrelevant for them they figured the captain entered into the fight management system the plane's flap configuration and touchdown speed fight 521 will be landing with flaps 30 a Final Approach speed of 152 knots and a touchdown speed of 147 knots the pilots were given the latest wind information which had them touching down with a 13 knot Tailwind this was just below their limit of 15 knots but even though it was close to the allowable limit it didn't pose a threat to safety Dubai has a very long Runway measuring 12 ,000 ft and both Pilots were well accustomed to Landing there but wind shear from a Sea Breeze wasn't the only problem the pilots were anticipating on Landing the temperature at Dubai on this afternoon was a staggering 48° C that's 118° in American English the problem with temperatures like this is that pockets of heat known as thermals begin bubbling up from the hot ground especially from surfaces which heat quickly like runways and taxiways this can itself cause windar and even when it doesn't it can threaten the stability of an aircraft on Final Approach despite how practiced they were the pilots would need to keep their wits about them on this approach to Dubai as they descended they began discussing their previous encounters with windshire the first officer said that he had experienced it on Descent 3 months previously and the captain added that he had experienced it 2 months previously in June but that it turned out well as they had just carried out a go round as normal but as is often the case when humans interact with complex systems it is not a singular Factor like maintaining control of the plane in a windshire event that POS the biggest threat here rather it was the particular and unforeseen ways in which different elements would coincide creating a problem where one didn't even need to exist in this case the main problem had not to do with the weather but with how the pilots had been trained to use the planes automation the crew pressed on getting ready for their approach to Runway one two left as helpful as it is to have up-to-date weather information from the airport's weather instruments Pilots often rely on reports from other Pilots to get a sense of the real conditions as they approach an airport this would have been especially useful on this afternoon as flight 521 descended an Iraqi Airways Boeing 737 had landed on Runway 12 left with the pilots reporting light to medium wind shear on short final a few minutes after that two planes ahead of flight 521 had gone around due to the wind however because they were on the Dubai tower frequency rather than the approach frequency the pilots of flight 521 were not aware of this what's more the pilots of these planes didn't tell the controllers why they had carried out missed approaches as a result the controllers didn't tell fight 521 that multiple aircraft were now going around due to windshire what this meant was that the pilots now had an incomplete picture of the situation at the airport nonetheless Pilots are supposed to be ready for a missed approach for every Landing they do and the pilots of fight 5 to1 had briefed this procedure for Runway one2 left earlier on which involved among other things climbing to 3,000 ft within a few minutes fight 5 to1 was handed off to Dubai tower in front of them were two trip 7s which landed without any issue the aircraft was now just over 1 minute from the runway the pilots lowered the landing GE armed the spoilers on the wings and set the flaps to 30° spoilers are panels on the wings that pop up when the plane touches down they're extremely useful in helping the plane to slow down because not only do they dramatically reduce the amount of lift that the wings produce but by deflecting the fast oncoming air upwards they push the plane down onto the runway making the wheel brakes more effective by putting the speed Brakes in the armed position the pilots had ensured that when the wheels touched down or more specifically when weight is detected on the main wheel sensors the spr brake handle automatically moves to the fully extended position without the pilots needing to do anything with the landing gear down un locked speed RS armed and flap set the Triple 7 was fully set up for landing the first officer set the missed approach altitude of 3,000 ft on the autopilot panel both as a reminder of what the missed approach altitude was and so it would already be set for the autopilot to climb to if they used it for a missed approach the controller cleared fight five to one to land and instructed them to exit the runway via taxiway Mike 9 after landing the controller also gave them a wind report of 340° at 11 knots 34° was behind the pilots so they now knew that they would be landing with the Tailwind however 11 knots was still within safe limits their Tailwind limit was 15 knots but what neither the pilots nor the controller knew was that as flight 5 to1 approached the runway the seab breeze from had reached the middle of the runway so while there was a Tailwind at the touchdown zone for Runway one two left at the other end of the runway there was a headwind these two winds met right in the middle of the runway and this was about to play a crucial role in what will now happen at 38 minutes 12 the aircraft ascended through 1,000 ft the captain turned the autopilot off and began flying manually towards the runway he left the auto throttle engaged though in casee he wanted to use it for a gound the auto throttle was in Speed mode set to maintain the desired approach speed of 152 knots when the aircraft was just a few feet above the runway the engines would switch to idle so far the approach was in Industry jargon stabilized meaning that the captain was flying no more than 5 knots below his Target approach speed or no more than 10 knots above that he was within half a DOT of the Glide path and descending at less than 1,000 ft per minute neither pilot was expecting to carry out to go around they had heard windshire warnings many times in Dubai's weather reports without actually encountering it and besides they had heard no reports from controllers of any aircraft carrying out missed approaches or encountering windshire in the Pilot's Minds The more likely issue would come from thermals with the runway temperature now scorching 68° C or 154° F things could get a little bumpy as they approached the airport as pockets of warm air bubbled up from the surface when they reached 400 ft above the ground the aircraft's computerized voice called out minimums telling the pilots that they were now at their decision height the captain announced Landing the captain was now switching his attention between the runway out his windscreen and his instruments the first officer was looking inside ensuring that the plane remained stabilized it was his job to offer Corrections if necessary or warn if anything unusual occurred and indeed as they descended through 190 ft the first officer called 16 knots Tailwind he was telling the captain that the Tailwind strength had increased beyond their limit of 15 knots but seconds later he announced the Tailwind had decreased to 13 knots which the captain acknowledged they were back on track to land the plane was now just 100 ft above the ground 100 the captain was aiming for the large white strips here which marked the beginning of the touchdown Zone but the wind had other things in store for fight fight 21 the Tailwind was getting weaker causing the plane's air speed to increase with more air now going over the wings they generated more lift this in turn made the plane's descent more shallow as the aircraft descended through 50 ft its computers disabled several warnings because at this point Pilots are committed to Landing importantly among the warnings disabled was the wind shear alert at 40 ft above the runway the captain started to flare the aircraft by lifting the nose up just enough to slow the plan's descent for a smooth Landing ideally he would have begun this flare about 20 to 30 ft above the runway rather than at 40 ft but an extra 10 ft usually isn't a big deal however this wasn't about to be a usual Landing as the headwind continued getting stronger the plan's air speed kept increasing again to distinguish between air speed and ground speed air speed is what makes a plane fly if a plane is standing still on a Runway and the wind is blowing towards it at 10 knots its air speed is 10 knots even though its ground speed is zero more headwind means more air speed which means more lift which means a slower descent flight 521 now began to float less than 30 ft above the runway coasting right over the 1,000 ft markers the point where it should have touched down the planes air speed had now increased to 158 knots 11 knots above its Target approach speed as it neared the runway the auto throttle went from speed mode to idle mode and the engines moved back towards idle at just 13 ft above the runway the headwind suddenly got stronger but the pilots weren't paying attention to their air speed and they didn't notice this this headwind pushed the plane's air speed up to 165 knots 18 knots above its Target touchdown speed this was windshire but because the aircraft was below 50 ft the windshire warning didn't sound with the aircraft now barely descending the pilots were under the mistaken impression that they were encountering thermals Hot Pockets of air rising up from the runway the plane was now barely 10 ft above the runway with the main Wheels gliding along just waiting to make contact with the ground every second that the plane stayed flying it ate up precious Runway that it could be using to land and stop the runway behind it was getting longer and longer and the runway ahead of it shorter and shorter but now this already bad State of Affairs was about to get a lot worse in the next few seconds an incredibly unfortunate series of events was about to unfold which would endanger the lives of everyone on board the flight the wind suddenly shifted causing the plane to roll slightly to the left to correct this the captain rolled the plane back to the right but the plane was now so low to the ground that this simple input caused the right main Wheels to touch the ground when this happened the speed brakes deployed before quickly retracting back to their armed position as soon as the gear lifted off again so soft was this contact that the pilots didn't even know they had touched the ground boyed by an ever increasing headwind the plane seemed completely unwilling to touch down the captain lowered the nose trying to bring his plane onto the runway but it simply kept on floating the captain was experiencing tunnel vision if he had looked at his radio altimeter he would have seen that he was mere feet above the ground all he needed to do was to give the control colum one more nudge forwards and the plane was settle on the runway but his attention was outside suddenly the plane sent out a warning long Landing long Landing this told the pilots that they had flown more than 33% down the runway well past the point where they should have touched down this warning meant that the pilots had to go around the captain pressed the toga button telling the auto throttle to advance the throttles to go around power he still believed that hot air rising up from the runway had prevented him from touching down without any reports of windshire from air traffic control or other Pilots this wasn't exactly a farfetch conclusion but the fact was that the massive increases in air speed which showed up on his instruments could only have come from windshire nonetheless operating under this false impression the captain now began carrying out the normal go around procedure rather than the windshire Escape maneuver and this was where a gap in the Pilot's training would now come into play while the captain had conducted 54 go rounds at altitude of at least 50 ft above the ground in the simulator neither he nor the first officer had ever conducted a go around below 50 ft in the Sim or in real life this was simply a scenario that they were not familiar with and the reason this mattered was that a critical safety feature in the trip 7s automation would now lay a trap for the pilots they didn't know that during their Landing attempt both main Wheels had touched the ground twice when this happened the toga switch the switch the captain would then use to command the auto throttle to provide gound thrust was disabled Boeing had cleverly designed it this way to prevent pilots from carrying out a go around when they were already on the ground this feature was noted though not very well in the Pilot's training manual however during the captain's initial and recurrent training it was not emphasized what all of this meant was that when he pressed the toga button the throttles stayed right where they were at idle as far as the the plane was concerned it was landing and as far as the pilots were concerned they were going around the captain pulled back in his control colume and the plane began climbing neither pilot noticed that their engine instruments very clearly showed the engines to be at idle they also didn't notice on their primary flight displays that the auto throttle was still in idle mode when it should have been at toga and In the Heat of the Moment the captain didn't even notice that in his right hand the throttles themselves hadn't move forwards they were still back at the idle position flight 521 was now climbing away from the runway bleeding off speed rapidly as part of the go round procedure the first officer raised the flaps to 20° as they climbed past 50 ft he announced positive rate and the captain retracted the landing gear even between raising the flaps in the gear the two pilots still didn't notice that the engine instruments showed idle thrust what's more raising the gear made their speed problem even worse in a normal go around which the pilots were carrying out raising the gear was fine but in a windshire Escape maneuver which the pilot should have been doing they were supposed to keep the gear extended this is because when the gear is raised the landing gear doors first open increasing the amount of drag experienced by the aircraft at a time when it really needs as little drag as possible so they can get away from the ground but again the pilots didn't know that that they should have been carrying out the windsh Escape maneuver in other words it wasn't just that they were doing the right procedure but in the wrong way they were doing the wrong procedure and they were doing it wrong they were doing a go round with the engines on idle in the cabin the passengers and cabin crew were completely oblivious to what was now unfolding in the cockpit it was clear that the plane was beginning a go round but they were no more clued in that the pilots that the engines were at idle the plane continued to trundle uphill running out of speed passing 77 ft its ground speed had now decreased to 135 knots unless the pilots did something fast they would soon come crashing back down to earth in the tower the controller saw that the plane had aborted its Landing attempt and instructed the crew to climb up to 4,000 ft the first officer acknowledged this and for a precious few moments that he could have used to noticed that the engines were still at idle thrust he changed the autopilot altitude to 4,000 ft as the lumbering plane got slower it began to approach the biggest danger yet an aerodynamic stall this happens when the air approaches the wings from such an angle that rather than flowing smoothly over their upper surface it breaks off essentially disconnecting the plane from the sky at 85 ft above the runway and at a speed of 131 knots the plan's computers warned them of this fact this caught their attention how the pilots processed this information would would be crucial because this was the first time during the go round that they were even paying attention to the plane speed they assumed that it had been fine up until this point and that they had only now suddenly lost a lot of speed and what could be the culprit for such a sudden change in air speed windshire of course windar toga the captain called ironically the pilots were wrong again their low speed had nothing to do with windar in fact if anything the headwind they were now experiencing was giving them an extra few knots rather their low speed had to do with the fact that they had tried to make the plane climb with the engines at idle with barely enough speed to stay in the air fight 521 began sinking don't sink finally at this late stage the pilots realized to their horror that the throttles had been at idle the entire time the captain slammed them to maximum power and then pushed the togga button again just to be sure the auto throttle mode was now at toga but it was much too late it's a design feature of jet engines that they don't spool up immediately when full power is commanded as doing so would disrupt the flow of air over the fan blades causing them to stall therefore the trip 7's engines take at least 6 seconds to go from idle to full power and with the plane now descending towards the runway from just 80 ft this was 6 seconds it simply didn't have check speed shouted the first officer seeing how low the air speed was the flight computer chimed in with its own alert but it was too late late just 18 seconds after the pilots had decided to go around and 3 seconds after they finally applied full power the Triple 7 slammed onto the runway the impact sheared the right engine completely off along with the right landing gear which had not finished retracting the plane skidded on its belly and left engine spun completely around and went off the side of the runway it finally came to rest at the end of the runway with fire erupting from the right wing rescue vehicles raced to the scene as fire began to engulf the aircraft the first of the fire trucks arrived at the scene within 90 seconds and the firefighters quickly started dousing the plane with foam it was pandemonium on board the aircraft as the nearly 300 passengers began rushing to evacuate through the few emergency exits which could actually be used only three out of the 10 exits were usable with the others being blocked by smoke or by the emergency shoots themselves which had been blown up against the exits by the wind in all it took almost 7 minutes until the Last Passenger was off compared to the 90 seconds which is required by law the captain and Senior cabin crew member were the last ones on board making their way through the Smoky cabin on oxygen looking for any remaining passengers in the burning aircraft when suddenly as they searched the center Wing tank exploded this sent a piece of the right wing flying off which hit a firefighter killing him the senior cabin crew member and Captain then quickly evacuated in all everybody on board the aircraft survived with four cabin Crews sustaining serious injuries from when the aircraft impacted the runway the crash was the first whole loss and fatal accident for Emirates and it came as a huge shock to the airline and the industry itself it revealed that lessons about Pilot's understanding of automation had still not been learned from the crash of another Triple 7 at San Francisco 3 years previously you can watch my video about that incident here now using the link appearing on the top right of the screen as a result of the crash emirats began training its pilots on how to carry out go rounds after touchdown rather than just from Heights above 50 ft it also altered its simulator training so that instructors acting as pilot flying make small mistakes in order to see whether the pilot monitoring notices these mistakes and calls them out air traffic controllers at Dubai now pass on information about windshire to Pilots including reports from other Pilots about how much speed they gained or lost during a landing attempts as a result of windshire they also now tell arriving aircraft the reason that other planes have gone around crashes like that of flight 521 highlight a kind of paradox of automation on one hand increased automation makes Pilots lives Easier by lightening their workload and allowing them to focus on the bigger picture this is especially important at high workload moments of flight on the other hand the more complex automation gets the harder it is for Pilots to understand and predict it what this means for air safety is that planes crash less often but they crash for different reasons this problem of the interaction between man and machine is only bound to get more relevant over the coming years as aircraft manufacturers like Boeing and Airbus strive to design ever more advanced automation for their aircraft