A US NTSB report into the 1997 crash on landing of a FedEx Boeing MD-11 freighter at Newark International Airport has declared the probable cause to be the captain's overcontrol of the aircraft and failure to execute a go-around from a destabilised flare.
The board's abstract of its final report says that contributing to the accident was the captain's concern with touching down early to ensure adequate stopping distance. It adds that the aircraft "performed normally in response to the captain's flight control inputs" until after a second hard touchdown. Operating as flight 14, the MD-11 crashed on 31 July 1997 at 01:32 eastern daylight time. The scheduled cargo service originated in Singapore and made intermediate stops at Penang in Malaysia, Taipei in Taiwan and Anchorage in Alaska.
On board were the captain and first officer, one jumpseat passenger and two cabin passengers. All five escaped serious injury in the fiery crash, which completely destroyed the aircraft.
The NTSB says the energy transmitted into the right main landing gear during the second touchdown was 3.2 times greater than the MD-11's maximum certificated energy "and was sufficient to fully compress the right main landing gear strut and cause structural failure of the right wing spar".
It says this resulted in the rupture of the right wing fuel tanks and subsequent fire, adding: "The failure modes and effects for vertically fused and overdesigned landing gear designs may have been inadequately researched to identify whether, under overload conditions, one design might provide a safer break-up sequence for the airplane than the other design. The NTSB says the captain was concerned about the aircraft's touchdown location on runway 22R and "intended to take measures during the landing to achieve an early touchdown and minimise the length of the rollout on the runway".
As a result the captain's nose-down elevator input beginning at 17ft radio altitude was "not consistent" with the airline's guidance for MD-11 landings.
"The captain's overcontrol of the elevator during the landing and his failure to execute a go-around from a destabilised flare were causal to the accident," the report says."
The captain's control inputs during the flare and bounce were not consistent with landing procedures and techniques outlined in the Federal Express MD-11 pilot training procedures, McDonnell Douglas flight crew operating manual, or with Federal Express' MD-11 tailstrike awareness and high sink rate and bounce recovery training."
Source: Flight Daily News
