Elmina crash: Systems failure may not be the cause

SHAH ALAM - The failure of the aircraft’s systems function, weather factors, sudden malfunction or surrounding development infrastructure at the airport may be causes of the aircraft losing control.

However, former Malaysia Airlines (Aircraft Engineer) Training Section chief Mohd Affnan Shariffudin said technical systems failure would not always become the main factor of an aircraft losing control and crashing.

“The aircraft would usually be safe even with one engine failure. It could still land safely. This (condition) is in its certification. Otherwise, it would not be cleared to fly.

“The function failure could happen, but the chances (of it causing an accident) is small due to aircraft technology improving significantly in terms of safety.

“If it had exploded in the skies, it is a different story. Whether another failure had happened, we must look at the recording from the black box,” he said.

He said the development of infrastructure near the airport may cause the incident, which may have caused confusion for the pilot to find the runway.

Affnan said, for example, the surroundings in the crash site in Elmina City on Thursday, the open structure and position of the Guthrie Expressway in the area could have caused a lapse in the pilot’s judgment.

“An aircraft wanting to land in Runway 15 of the Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport, Subang would usually come from the north, but the plane came from the west in line with Elmina.

“There has been an issue of an aircraft landed on the road near the Subang airport in the 1960s.

“In this incident, the expressway nearby may have looked like a runway, causing the plane to fly in line with Elmina,” he explained.

He did not reject the possibility of the aircraft moving at very low speeds for landing which caused it to lose balance.

“If the aircraft was (flown) too slow in its approach for landing, it can tilt and cause it to lose control. The aircraft has a coordinated turn that must be balanced between speed and turn.

“If one of them is insufficient, the aircraft will lose altitude accompanied by a sudden drop which may be what happened based on the video circulated,” he said.