Report: Iberia A346 at Quito on Nov 9, 2007, Overran Runway

An Iberia Airbus A340-600, registration EC-JOH performing flight IB-6463 from Madrid, SP (Spain) to Quito (Ecuador) with 345 passengers and 14 crew, overran runway 35 while landing in Quito in rain and reduced visibility at 17:05L (22:05Z). The airplane received substantial damage and was subsequently written off, the passengers were evacuated. Two passengers received minor injuries.

The Direccion General de Aviacion Civil del Ecuador (DGACE) has released their final report in Spanish concluding, that the probable cause of the accident was:

The crew's decision to begin and carry out the approach to the airport of Quito despite the known runway and weather conditions and aircraft weight, and not to abort the approach when the capture of the PAPI glide path brought the airplane outside the parameters of a stabilized approach. This resulted in a hard landing damaging important parts of the aircraft making it impossible to stop the airplane on the runway.

Some contributing factors were that the crew did not have regulations and specific procedures for the airport of Quito (the briefing by the operator did not match the real conditions. The crew, although experienced in Quito and similar airports, had no experience in similar weather conditions, which would have allowed them to develop a strategy for the approach determining necessary runway length, minimum altitude to change from ILS glide slope to PAPI visual glide path, detailed briefing of the approach permitting no deviation from the briefed procedure and weather conditions (tail wind, visibility and moderate rain).

The crew had received weather data via ATIS telling them winds coming from 170 degrees at 6 knots, visibility 3000 meters and more than 10000 meters north of the station, moderate rain, fog in the vicinity, clouds 1-2 octas in 150 meters (500 feet), 5-7 octas in 780 meters (2500 feet), 8 octas at 3000 meters (10000 feet), temperature 13 degrees Centigrade, dew point 11 degrees Centigrade, QNH 1024 hPa, estimated moderate thunderstorms with precipitation at around 22:00Z, braking action was reported average.

The airplane was cleared to perform approach procedure 4 (see approach chart below). 2 minutes prior to landing the crew reported established on the localizer and was handed off to the tower frequency. The tower reported braking action medium to poor following two pilot reports that had landed earlier. The crew therefore changed their autobrakes setting from 4 to HIGH.

30 seconds prior to touch down the crew reported the runway in sight, the tower advised winds 170 at 4, runway was wet, braking action was poor and cleared the airplane to land on runway 35.

22 seconds prior to touch down the commander, pilot flying, decided to leave the glide slope indication and establish on the visual glide path defined by the PAPIs.

The airplane touched down 200 meters from the runway threshold experiencing a vertical acceleration of 3.09G. Upon touch down the spoilers deployed automatically, the tires 3 and 8 blew, wiring harnesses of both main gear struts broke leaving the engines in approach idle.

The flap lever was involuntarily moved from full to position 2. Autobrakes indicated defective (due to loss of wheel tachometer signals), the crew applied full manual braking about 3 seconds after touch down, 20 seconds later the crew disconnected the anti-skid system still applying full manual braking.

The airplane departed the runway end with a ground speed of about 90 knots, impacted the localizer antenna and stopped 232 meters past the runway end in the security zone. The passengers were evacuated using slides about 30 minutes after landing.