Travel This Week With Cushrow And Kerwin Podcast – Episode 7 – May 23, 2020
In this episode, we talk about the crash of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) Airbus A320 near Karachi, Pakistan
Show Notes
Kerwin
Hello everyone, this is Kerwin and, he’s not listening…
Cushrow
Cushrow
Kerwin
with Travel This Week With Cushrow and Kerwin. And this is kind of a somber episode because we are going to talk about the crash of Pakistan International Airlines Flight. And we’re, we’re here to give the facts as we know it, because this is very recent as recently as yesterday, right? It’s 23rd.
Cushrow
Yeah,
Kerwin
Yes, as recent as yesterday. So this is we want to throw the facts out there so you guys can can see what the facts are. And of course, the story is going to be developing, you’re going to hear lots of rumors because everybody wants to be first when they when a aircraft accident happens. But our goal here is just to try to show you what are the exact facts and what’s going on. So let me share my screen because we’ve created a presentation that should make our lives easier, okay. And I hope you can see my screen there. So okay, so Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320. And it crashed in May 22. And It’s PK8303 is the flight number. Okay, so Cushrow, maybe you just want to talk about where Pakistan International Airlines is based?
Cushrow
They are based in Karachi in Pakistan, of course. And this particular aircraft is,I believe, one of 12
Cushrow
Airbus 320s that they have in their fleet, and I believe it was made, it was manufactured in 2004 and was first delivered to China Eastern Airlines. And then Pakistan leased it from GECAS in 2014. So it’s been in service for about six years.
Kerwin
Okay
Cushrow
With PIA and it’s about a 16 year old airframe. So, its really not that old. It’s not exactly brand new either.
Kerwin
Exactly.
Cushrow
And also, I believe, last, regularly scheduled flight was in around the 21st of March, but it has flown a few. I think, they mentioned eight flights since then. And this one was apparently a regularly scheduled departure. Also, it had to do with EID coming up, depending on what branch of Islam you follow, either on Saturday which is Today or on Monday most probably.
Kerwin
Okay, so Cushrow, maybe we can explain what EID is to some of the viewers
Cushrow
EID is the day that Muslims celebrate after the Ramadan. I don’t want to call it a celebration, but it’s where Muslims fast for about a month
Kerwin
Okay
Cushrow
So nothing during the day you have to eat before sunrise and after sunset and EID is the holiday or the festival after that.
Kerwin
Okay, gotcha.
Cushrow
When most families get together and celebrate with a meal and things like that. This flight had a lot of EID traffic on it from Lahore to Karachi
Kerwin
To Karachi. And the registration for the aircraft is AP-BLD. The first two letters A P that is a country code. And then the last three letters are assigned to that particular airplane so AP is the country code for Pakistan. You can, we don’t have rights to the photo of the actual airplane itself.
Kerwin
In it’s sadly better days, but you can go to jetphotos.com/photos/9674949. And you can see a photo of that. So it was going from Lahore to Karachi as Cushrow said and May 22, 2020 that’s when the accident happened. If you go to flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/ap-bld, the registration of the airplane which is ap-bld you will be able to see the more information about the flight, you won’t see too much information because typically when an accident happens, the information is closed because there’s a lot of people trying to look at the information and investigators need that information. So typically you won’t be able to see that but you can see previous flights that this aircraft had made. And also if you go to piac.com.pk, you can get more details about what happened with the flight. If people are not familiar with where Pakistan is, it is between Afghanistan and India. And I think it also borders is that China at borders with under the other side?
Cushrow
And Iran
Kerwin
and Iran up there in the lower in the lower section. So this map gives you an idea of where it was and how far it has been from Lahore to Karachi. And it takes about an hour and 45 minutes, usually for this flight.
Kerwin
Okay, so Cushrow let’s talk about this for a little bit. So basically
Cushrow
A residential complex
Cushrow
apparently, well, it was on the on the outskirts of the airport with several high rises, but I don’t believe they were in any way obstructing the runway. It was sort of airport adjacent, but very close to the end. And there is a video that has been shown, at least when I saw it on the BBC that actually showed this aircraft on its final approach.
Kerwin
Yeah. The weird thing, the weird thing…
Cushrow
Again, I don’t believe we have rights or Kerwin has rights to show this.
Kerwin
No, we don’t have any rights. And you know what the thing is about crashes is there is such a thin line between showing the information and, you know, you’re thinking that people are on this airplane and there are only two survivors and so there are families that have it’s very heart wrenching for for family to watch to watch that but it’s it’s the kind of stuff that’s shown all the time so I mean we don’t have rights to it and thankfully and so we’re not going to show it anyway even if we did but if you want to see you can search online and find and and see that.
Cushrow
I thought that there were survivors. Sorry, Kerwin. The fact that there were two survivors, I find was absolutely remarkable considering the remains of the aircraft it’s literally in smithereens. And the fact that they were conscious is really amazing?
Kerwin
Yeah, so in Jamaica, we’d say the same side you slept on last night you should sleep on the same side as tonight because we’re very fortunate, in in in surviving that accident because you’re right when I saw some of the pictures it basically crashed in like the streets pretty much right?
Cushrow
Yup. I think in between buildings yeah these narrow alleyways
Kerwin
I guess the good thing is that it was in daylight so it was easier to kind of see what happened and and retrieve the remains of the people onboard
Cushrow
and most importantly the black boxes
Kerwin
Yes.
Kerwin
And they did find the black box
Cushrow
Before they were damaged or
Kerwin
Yeah or taken because, there’s like a lot of people and I guess that’s good because now we can go you know, they can use a blackbox to figure out what’s going on. Now. I surprisingly Pakistan International didn’t put any information in Instagram there was nothing in Twitter and I didn’t see anything on YouTube either. However, they were using Facebook so if you go to https://www.Facebook.com/PakistanIntAirlines, you will be able to see all the coverage that they have on it. It is only in Pakistani is that the name of the local language that?
Cushrow
Urdu
Cushrow
U-r-d-u
Kerwin
U-r-d-u, so its Urdu
Kerwin
Yeah, okay. So it’s only in the local language I couldn’t understand. There was some shouting so I don’t know what was going on. But if you go, there is information on the Facebook page. Also, if you go to https://www.piac.com/pk/corporate/press-releases, you can find they’ve issued a press release on it. And basically the press release that says, you know, we’ve had an interview, we’ve had an accident, our condolences to the families and they are gathering information information on it and This is a message that they actually have on Facebook. That says with utmost regret PIA announced that one of our Airbus A320 operating Flight PK8303 on approach to karachi airport met a sad fate and crashed just before the runway with 99 people on board including eight crew members.
Kerwin
Just a little note about PIA since probably the most people because it’s not it, it’s not on this side of the world. Most people don’t know about it. But they serve 25 domestic destinations that’s within Pakistan itself and they do 27 international destinations including Toronto and they were planning on flying to New York at the end of this year. Then they’re going to go from Islamabad to, to Manchester I think it is in Manchester to New York I think is how they did it. And then Cushrow we were talking
Cushrow
re-start of operations to New York, cause they had stop,
Kerwin
they used to fly to a few routes in the US over different times of the year and they even flew to Houston I think they used to do Houston, Manchester and Manchester to I think it was Karachi at the time.
Kerwin
So, yeah, that’s right
Kerwin
No, go ahead..
Cushrow
The Diaspora of Pakistanis is pretty significant here in North America.
Kerwin
Yes. And there is actually quite a bit of Pakistani here in Houston. So I think that’s probably why they did.
Cushrow
Yeah.
Kerwin
They did the flight here to Houston. Over time, I think they’ve had some issues with they not being allowed to fly to the US. But they do have service to Toronto think probably on the triple seven i think is probably what they have.
Cushrow
They were also banned by the EU because there was something about the maintenance of their planes. And I think only very specific aircraft, I believe it was the triple sevens.
Kerwin
Yeah,
Cushrow
we’re allowed.
Kerwin
And I think that was probably around when they pulled out of out of the US. I know that when all that was happening. Now, interestingly enough on the website, which was dated the 21st of May a day before the accident, it said regular international flight operations, operations have been suspended suspended until the 31st of May. And regular domestic flight operations have also been suspended until the 29th of May. But this flight up occurred on the 22nd. So my guess is they just didn’t update the website.
Cushrow
Also, I’m not sure if the 8000 series of flight number is similar to what it is, let’s say for the US where they typically not a regularly scheduled flight number,
Kerwin
Right
Cushrow
As opposed to like a special operation, I don’t know if that was, if that’s still a valid flight number in Pakistan.
Kerwin
Yeah. And that’s just a regular flight as well. And what Cushrow is talking about is, normally when you your flight numbers are normally,they’re normally stop at a thousand unless, the airline has like a lot of flights. And then Pakistan International does not have a lot of flights. And so when you’re doing codeshares, you’d have like 8000 series would belong to a particular airline that you work with, or the 8000 series might be special operational flights or something like that. And that might be the case here. But it’s, it’s hard. It’s hard to tell unless you go back and do a little more research.
Kerwin
So there’s still speculations about what’s going on. We did see some videos surface about showing it’s a video of the airplane as its landing or a photo, and it shows something called, it’s a ram air turbine that was deployed on the airplane, and Cushrow, maybe you can explain exactly what a ram air turbine is?
Cushrow
Um, well, let me back up a little bit. Because again, on the BBC this morning, they interviewed Well, in a matter of speaking one of the survivors, and he had mentioned that they actually tried landing the first time because it crashed apparently on the second approach,
Kerwin
okay,
Cushrow
And they landed, and according to reports, the engines did scrape the runway. Now of course, we’ll have to wait and see if they can verify that based on marks on the runway and all that sort of thing.
Kerwin
Exactly,
Cushrow
And pilots claimed that they had no power. What we don’t quite know yet is if they had no power, why did they lift up, lift off again and try a second approach. So all that is still a little sketchy. But there have been pictures of this particular aircraft with some damage at the base of the engines and also with the ram air turbine, which is located between the engines in the center fuselage and it’s essentially a little propeller that drops out from the aircraft, either automatically or manually on command by the pilot, and it powers essential flight systems like the hydraulics and some instrumentation.
Cushrow
It doesn’t have anything to do with the engines and it’s generally a last ditch procedure to maintain some control of the aircraft and ATC transcripts have indicated that the aircraft did not have any power in both the engines. And of course, we don’t know if it just ran out of fuel or there was some sort of malfunction in both the engines.
Kerwin
Okay.
Cushrow
And that would indicate why this little turbine was deployed. And another thing is that it was reported that the nose wheel was not able to come down. I believe the main undercarriage two main wheels were able to set the wheels are able were deployed on landing, but the main, the nose gear was not able to be deployed, and that could have been one reason why they had to do a goaround but no one knows for a fact yet. So
Kerwin
So , yes. So basically, it’s too soon to even speculate on anything that happened. All we’ve done here is just giving you the facts as we have received them and research them and giving you as much information as we can. Obviously, this is a developing story. And obviously, we’re going to be talking about this again. But this has happened yesterday, and we at least wanted to come on, give you the facts. So you can go and, you know, at least you know what happened.
Cushrow
Sorry, they said this morning that we should have some definitive details in about a month, once the flight data recorders are analyzed, I believe, France of course is involved, because that’s where the aircraft is manufactured.
Kerwin
Mm hmm.
Cushrow
And CFM will make the engines so we’ll see.
Kerwin
All right. So, that is all we know right now and thank you for watching this episode. Please like, share and comment.
Kerwin
If this information makes sense to you and if you have any additional information, leave a comment below and let us know. This is Kerwin and
Cushrow
Cushrow
Kerwin
Signing off again on another episode of Travel This Week With Cushrow and Kerwin. Thank you guys for watching.