AIR SAFETY RECORD ~ B777

Air Safety Record

In this chart, you can see the ratio of total accidents over the years of history of each airline. As this chart represents AirAsia has the highest ratio of accident and UPS airlines has the lowest ratio of accidents. We can easily indicate that, through these 5 airlines, AirAsia is the worst one.

Having established the causes of an accident, it is insightful to consider the consequences of such a mishap. Not only represent accidents a loss of economic resources both for the airlines involved and the society, but also an irreplaceable loss of human lives. Also, loss of business -since passengers are likely to switch to other airlines due to safety problems- image and reputation damage, legal actions towards the airline company by victims’ families, increased insurance premiums, with the accident the risk category of the airline increased, and loss of production, if crew is injured, then replacement needs to be found and trained, resulting in time loss and costs, while still paying injured crew members or their families. Usually, the national economy as a whole isn't hugely affected by a single crash.

Accident: Iberia Flight 610

Iberia Flight 610 departed Madrid at 08:47 for a scheduled flight to Bilbao, where it was scheduled to land at 09:35. Aircraft was the Boeing 727, named "Alhambra de Granada". At 09:09 the crew were instructed to descend. Seven minutes later the copilot contacted Bilbao Tower. The controller then declared that they must descend. The controller subsequently offered them a direct clearance to the approach. The captain declined and decided to fly the standard approach procedure. Since the crew descended below the minimum sector altitude, the altitude alert horn sounded at 4040 feet. The crew interpreted this being the approach mode alert, and continued their descent. Fifty-seven seconds after passing through the minimum sector altitude, the airplane struck the base of a structure of antennas located close to the top of Mount Oiz (3356 feet high). The left wing broke off and the remaining fuselage crashed onto the hillside, cutting through the trees. It caused widespread damage like 148 people died.

Cause:

“Their confidence on the automatic capture performed by the Altitude Alert System, the misinterpretation of its warnings, as well as misreading of the altimeter made the crew to fly below the safety altitude, colliding into the television antennas' base, thus losing the left wing, falling to the ground with no possible control of the aircraft."

This map shows the airport of departure and the intended destination of the flight. The line between the airports does not display the exact flight path.Distance from Madrid-Barajas Airport to Bilbao Airport as the crow flies is 315 km (197 miles). Accident location: Approximate; accuracy within a few kilometers.

Consequences:

As we mentioned above, the misreading of the altimeter and and the pilots’ confidence on the automatic capture performed by the Altitude Alert System made the crew fly below the safety altitude and it resulted with a disaster. Therefore, Flight 610 accident damaged Iberia Airline’s reputation due to the pilots’ mistake. Also, the damaged aircraft Boeing 727 and the lawsuits from families’ of victims against the company caused an economic loss to the Iberia Airlines. Neither of the consequences can be as important as the passengers’ precious lives.

REFERENCES:

B777

18 Ekim 2017 Çarşamba