US-Bangla plane had no technical glitch, says report

An airplane takes off at the international airport in Kathmandu on 13 March, 2018, near the wreckage of a US-Bangla Airlines plane that crashed on 12 March. Photo: AFP
An airplane takes off at the international airport in Kathmandu on 13 March, 2018, near the wreckage of a US-Bangla Airlines plane that crashed on 12 March. Photo: AFP

Nepalese authorities have released a preliminary report on their investigations into the last month's US-Bangla plane crash in Kathmandu attributing "confusing conversation" between the pilot and the airport control tower before the accident.

"As per the voice record of ATC (Air Traffic Control), we found no appropriate communication between the pilot and the control tower for only 47 seconds before the crash," Bangladesh representative to the Nepalese investigation commission Salahuddin M Rahmatullah told a media briefing on Thursday.

Talking to the newsmen at the Civil Aviation Authority (CAAB) headquarters in Dhaka, Salahuddin also said the crashed aircraft obtained the airworthiness certificate from CAAB and the investigation commission did not find any technical glitch of the aircraft so far.

"There was no problem in the aircraft. The weather was good. The navigation system of the TIA was fine. The radio transmission between the aircraft and ATC was also fine. The only inappropriate thing that we found was the 47-second of interrupted two-way communication between the pilot and ATC," he said.

A US-Bangla aircraft crashed at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu, Nepal on 12 March killing 51 passengers, including 27 Bangladeshi nationals of the 71 on board.

Salahuddin added that the commission also found that the alignment of the aircraft was not appropriate when it was approaching at TIA.

"What went wrong ?... we can only say after decoding of the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) ," he said adding that all important equipment including the "Black Box" of the crashed aircraft was sent to Transport Safety Board (TSB) of Canada for downloading, decoding, readout and analysis including animation to make the final report.

"We got decoding slot from 23 April to 4 May," he added.

After the accident, the Nepal authorities formed a probe body named "Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission, 2018" to investigate the incident.

The commission published the report on 9 April as the ICAO's regulations mentions completing the preliminary report within one month of the accident.

"The aircraft touched down at about 1700 meters down the threshold and on the left portion of centreline of Runway 20 and travelled on ground towards Southeast, went out of the Runway, ran through the inner perimeter fence of the airport area, moved down along rough downslope and finally stopped at about 442 meters Southeast side of the runway from its initial touch down point," read the primary report. "At this point, the aircraft caught fire and was completely destroyed," it added.