UK cargo operator Channel Express has been criticised for inadequate crew training and cargo loading supervision which led to a fatal crash on 12 January, 1999.
The UK Air Accident Investigation Branch's (AAIB) report on the Fokker F27 freighter crash in Guernsey, Channel Islands, relates it to two similar cargo F27 accidents, involving Philippine and Danish carriers, in what amounts to an indictment of the system of the safety oversight of freight operations.
With the April 1999 out-of-control crash of a Korean Air Boeing MD-11F just after take-off from Shanghai, China, and the August 1997 load-shift disaster at Miami, Florida, USA, involving a Fine Air McDonnell Douglas DC-8-60F, a trend appears to be well established.
The F27 took off from London Luton Airport with a 3t cargo of newspapers for Guernsey. The aircraft crashed on the final approach to Guernsey Airport's runway 27.
The AAIB says that when full flap was selected for landing, the aircraft's nose pitched up uncontrollably, its airspeed reduced to zero, and it fell almost vertically about 1.5km (0.8nm) short of Guernsey's runway 27, crashing into a house.
The cause, says the AAIB, was that poorly supervised loading put the aircraft's centre of gravity well aft of safe limits. The two pilots died on impact.
Criticism is directed at almost every point of the regulatory and training system for ensuring safe cargo loading, including:
• Civil Aviation Authority regulations governing the cargo-management knowledge required by air transport pilots to gain their pilot licences;
• inadequate CAA regulation of cargo loading guidance to handling agents;
• the captain of the aircraft had signed the loadsheet without an adequate check on the cargo in the F27's hold.
Source: Flight International
