Quote: As per the statement of PIC he left the cockpit for the washroom as it was occupied wanted to return back to cockpit. However cockpit door was not opening. He used the emergency access code to enter the cockpit. His duration out of the cockpit 40 seconds out of which 30 seconds elapsed for the activation of Auto unlock features. There was no answer from cockpit. On entering the cockpit he saw the aircraft in 26° pitch down (approx) attitude and speed in red band, throttles full back with 5° of bank. He manually controlled the aircraft and resumed flight using LVL change to climb and arrest ROD. The Cont relight was switched ON. He climbed to FL 370 right turn to get on track then A/P was engaged, LNAV/VNAV (normal modes) engaged. When he asked F/o why he did not open the door he said he was panic stricken. CIC was informed about operations normal. No Passenger or crews were hurt. PA announcement was made to Passenger and normal flight operated to Pune. On being queried as to why he did not follow the RVSM contingency procedure and climb back to the assigned flight level of 370. He stated he forgot the procedure. He was also asked as to why he did not direct CCIC to be in cockpit during his absence from the cockpit, he stated that it was not in SOP.
The First officer stated that as soon PIC left the Cockpit. He was doing his paper work with Flight Plan. The A/T was engaged and speed was 0.76 Mach on the MCP Speed LNAV and VNAV was also engaged. Suddenly CWSR came and I was trying to engage other 11 mode but later on very quickly CWSP both came. After that very rapidly speed increased. He tried to control the speed by reducing the thrust. In mean time he tried calling PIC as well as through the Attendant button continuous 4 – 5 times. The speed increased rapidly he tried to control the aircraft. The Warning sound started coming than he got into panic situation and couldn’t control the aircraft neither open the cockpit door and answer the cabin call. During the pitch down attitude he tried to leave the control column to open the cockpit door but the aircraft pitch increased further and altitude was losing rapidly. In the mean time PIC came through the Emergency access entry. He took over the controls. He reduced the aircraft speed and climbed back to the FL 370. The whole incident was done within 30 – 40 seconds approximately. After the situation was under control the position report was given to DOKET. Aircraft landed safely in Pune. There was no injury to passenger or other cabin damages. The copilot was not involved in any incident as per the records of DGCA.
Quote: 3.1 Findings:
3.1.12 The copilot has not put the seat harness and probably had no clue to tackle this kind of emergency. The jet upset exercise is carried out during simulator check in manual mode and not done with autopilot engaged.
Quote: 3.2 Probable cause of the serious incident:
The incident occurred due to inadvertent handling of the control column in fully automated mode by the copilot which got compounded as he was not trained to recover the aircraft in automated mode.
Subsequent recovery actions by the PIC without coordination with copilot was the contributory factor.
The Captain had 6000 hours with 900 hours on type. The First Officer had 1300 hours with 1000 hours on type.
From the DGCAs investigation report: http://dgca.nic.in/accident/reports/incident/VT-AXJ.pdf |
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