Airline scoffs at ‘pilot error’ verdict in report

A Boeing 767 passenger jet rests at the end of the runway after making an emergency landing at Arusha Airport, which is designed to handle only light aircraft.  PHOTO | JOSEPH LYIMO 

By Frank Kimboy,The Citizen Reporter

In Summary

• Ethiopian Airlines says in an email that air traffic controllers at KIA failed to guide the pilot to the airport

 

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Dar es Salaam. Ethiopia Airlines has agreed with the preliminary report by Tanzania Air Accident Investigation Branch (Taib) about wrong airport landing incident at Arusha, involving its Boeing 767 last month.

However, the airline dismissed suggestions that the accident was caused by a pilot error and insisted that the break of communication between Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA) and the plane crew was the main reason behind the incident, as the report itself said.

According to Ethiopia Airlines’ Public Relations and Publication officer Biniyam Demssie, KIA controller failed to guide the pilot properly.

“Kilimanjaro controller failed to ask the pilot about his mandatory point and guide him properly in this unusual landing circumstance. And this was highlighted by the report,” Mr Demssie told The Citizen via email. Taib released a report a fortnight ago saying the pilot wrongly landed at Arusha Airport even after he confirmed to the KIA control tower that he had seen the KIA airport. The two airports are seven flight minutes apart.

But the report also said the controller at KIA was supposed to crosscheck with the pilot because the landing involved a runway that had no automatic landing controlling instruments. The runway that had such instrument was temporarily closed after an incident in which an aircraft had crash-landed following defaults on its landing gear.

“The Taib report specifically states that ‘…the pilot failed to report at the mandatory reporting point, LOSIN. He was also not asked by the Kilimanjaro approach to do so… His downwind position report was not challenged by the Kilimanjaro controller, who should have had him in sight in that position...’ We totally agree with this observation,” Mr Demssie.

On December 18 the jet. en route to Mombasa from Addis Ababa via KIA, landed at the Arusha Airport. The Boeing 767 made a safe landing on the runway, which is only 1,631 metres long. The aircraft came to a stop on a soil patch as the pilot attempted to prevent the giant aircraft from overshooting the runway