WE CAN'T LAND! The Incredible Story of Air India 101

we're really you know stuck and there's no fuel New York September 11th 2018 high up in the skies Air India 101 is approaching johnf Kennedy International Airport for a second attempt to land this plane has just suffered multiple sensitive instrument failures after a 14-hour flight they are running low on fear they also lost the ILS the device that helps the pilots land the plane especially in poor weather outside the cockpit it's raining heavily with clouds all around them the pilots are Flying Blind and it's next to impossible to spot the runway with every passing minute

they are using up more fuel and they have to land now the lives of 357 people on board now depends on what the pilots do in the next few minutes with a they able to avoid another tragedy on September 11th in New York let's find out this is a story of Air India Flight 101 it's a warm Autumn night in new delhi's indraa Gandhi International Airport 342 passengers and 15 crew were preparing for their 14-hour long flight to New York the us is a popular destination for Indian students and tourists and the plane was at

maximum capacity this flight from delhi's IGI to New York's JFK is air India's Flagship rout this flight would take the passengers over the polar route flying over the rugged terrain of Pakistan Russia Finland Greenland and Canada before entering the USA the plane for today's flight was a Bo boing 7300 extended range twin jet it's fitted with two ge90 1115b engines this plane was first delivered to Air India in 2009 and it has been in operation for over 9 years the trip 7 can be flown by two pilots but because this flight was 15 hours long

and needed to cover around 12,000 km ai11 had four Pilots two served as a main crew and the other two as a relief crew the commander was Captain rustam Pia a 49-year-old with 3,500 hours on the type with him in the cockpit were Captain vikas Captain shashant Singh and Captain Ds butty it's the first time the four of them were flying together during the pre-flight briefing the engineering staff reported that the flight's auxiliary power unit the Apu was not functioning the Apu on an aircraft like the Boeing 7 ER is not typically considered critical for

the safe operation of the aircraft while the Apu provides auxiliary power for various aircraft systems when the main engines are not running it is not a primary propulsion system hence the pilots agreed that this issue was non-critical and elected to proceed with their flight to New York with the Poss ability of inclement weather in the forecast the captain opted to unload an additional 800 kilos of fuel to take them to an alternate airport if required this decision would end up being crucial the crew then asked for push back and taxic clearance and the plane then

departed Delhi at 0300 local time delayed by around 1 hour the departure itself was [Music] uneventful the first signs of pro problems occurred 40 minutes into the flight whilst over Pakistani airspace and just after reaching 30,000 ft a warning message appeared on the Pilot's screen saying single Source radio alterator a radio alterator is like a magic ruler for airplanes that tells them how high they are above the ground it does this by sending invisible waves down to the ground and timing how long it takes for them to come back this helped Pilots land safely and

fly at the right altitude the Boeing Tri 7 like many modern commercial arcraft includes three radio altimeters for redundancy and safety they do it so that if one radio altimor fails the aircraft can rely on the other two Alors to provide accurate altitude information but what this plane was telling the pilots was that two radio Alors had failed and only one was working the problem was how can you be sure that the one altimeter that is working is actually showing the correct height now this isn't an issue in Cruise flight because during Cruise a different

type of altimeter called the barometric altimeter is used the barometric altimeter uses the air pressure to determine how high they are above sea level it operates based on the principle that atmospheric pressure decreases with increasing altitude but this is less accurate than the radio altimeter radi altimor becomes very important when accurate height informations are critical like during departure and more importantly during Landing keep this in mind for now we'll come back to it soon fast forward 10 hours and the flight is now flying across the Atlantic Ocean and this is where the second issue appear

there was another 3 hours to go before it was time to land in New York the pilots got a warning that their tcast system was not working tcas the traffic collision avoidance system is like a smart traffic cop for airplanes it uses radar to see other planes in the sky and if two planes got too close it tells the pilots of each of the planes to either go up or go down to avoid a collision clear conflict it helps keeps the sky safe by preventing planes from bumping into each other the loss of the Tas

itself was again not a major concern because during Cruise it was a backup system to prevent collisions however it's a handy wingman during takeoff and Landing when you're usually flying in a crowded airspace and your workload is very high now this started to concern the crew because it's usually uncommon for unrelated instruments to stop working the Apu was not working prior to take off the radio alterator failed just after takeoff and now the tea CET also failed what they were concerned was whether there was an unknown issue with the plane that was causing all these

failures to happen but there was nothing much they could do now so they pushed on to New York it's now around 10 minutes past 600 in the morning in New York the weather was over cast with rain and clouds the Metar indicated a visibility of quarter statute mile for Runway 04 right and a vertical visibility of 200 ft ai11 entered the New York airspace and made contact with the approach controller good 101 final1 heavy good morning you're following an short final 1 0 4084 rvr 3000 Runway 4 right clear to land right clear to land

after obtaining their approach clearance for runway for right at JFK the pilots attempted to use their ILS to capture the localizer and the Glide slope to guide them towards the runway however try as they may the ILS just wasn't capturing the localizer signals their instrument Landing system had also failed the ILS is super helpful for planes when they are landing it uses special radio signals and antennas on the runway to guide the plane down safely showing the pilots where to go and how high they are it's like following invisible lines in the sky to make

sure the plane lands smoothly especially in bad weather this is also the device that enables the plane to Auto Land in this plane the ILS wasn't locking onto the signals being sent from the runway the crew then manually pointed the plane at the correct heading and then tried what's called a lnav vnav approach lnav vnav approach uses GPS similar to what you have in your cars to take the airplane close to the runway however unlike the ILS the lnav vnav is in precise and has a lateral Precision of 0.3 nautical miles hence the pilots need

to be able to visually see the runway at their decision altitude before they land if they aren't able to see the runway at their minimas they'll need to go around and try again as they were closing towards the runway the pilots extended the landing gear and immediately another warning sound started to go off in the cockpit this warning was telling the pilots that the landing gear was not fully down and that immediate action needed to be taken upon hearing this sound the pilots are trained to act instinctively to check and solve the issue and then

after going through the checklist found that the gear was indeed down and that it was a false alarm for the pilots who were already experiencing heavy workload this was a significant distraction at this point in time the plane was covering 3 to 4 m a minute with all the instrument failures and the incorrect gear warnings the pilots weren't able to stabilize the aircraft for landing and hence decided to go around and try again going around Runway righty rway heading main the aircraft climbed back to 2000 ft and the pilots then got in touch with New

York's departure controller four right maintaining 2,000 heading 1 0 101 heavy thank you a contact from right heading 180 Al 3011 the crew then informed the ATC that they required longer holding vectors to try to solve the problems that they were having and that they were not ready for a second attempt to land just yet and uh 101 could we have longer vectors we were facing some uh instrument problems as well was that the reason for the go uh a from a from because uh we lost the uh localizer and our Minima changed and uh

there were a lot of issues involved so we're trying to sort that out if we can even continue with this approach now to understand what happens next you'll need to understand what a cloud ceiling is a cloud ceiling is the height at which the lowest part of the clouds are above the ground it tells the pilots at what height above the ground can they start seeing the ground if the plane had a working ILS and the ability to Autoland the pilots can land the plane at a clown ceiling of 0 ft however since these Pilots

were doing a non-precision approach they need to visually see the runway to ensure that they're landing at the right place and for that they required a minimum ceiling of 600 ft JFK Airport had a ceiling of 200 ft their alternate airports of nuk and Stewart were also at 200 ft okay well right now the weather that I have is showing um in it's healing 200 at Kennedy rvr is uh 4,500 so that's gotten a little bit better the visibility find but problem we facing is with uh the ceiling because uh we can't continue with the

ISS uh with a ceiling of uh 200 because every time you try to lock on to uh the uh localizer uh you know the instrumentation does doesn't allow to do that okay okay so you can't you cannot do like an aut land or something no aut land is not available because both uh uh we've got two radio altimor failures so we're on one radio ultimator we've got uh tcast failures you've got all multiple uh uh instrument uh failures so what ceiling do you need you know anything above like 600 or so okay I got it

okay I understand now just fly heading 220 let me find some weather pull some weather up and let me find something okay thanks the other issue that the pilots were having was that they wanted to conserve any remaining fuel to allow them to carry out multiple go arounds if they so had to do them this meant that they had to land at an airport near the New York area and couldn't fly further out to Boston or Washington to land there and um just before I I go away uh what was your potential alternate uh the

primary alternate was the Newar and uh the secondary alternate is uh Stewart but both seem to be uh you know in the same sort of situation they were depleting their fuel and were beginning to use their reserves the additional 800 kilos that they had loaded in Delhi was now proving to be helpful a11 heavy I'm having trouble finding anything that's really that good I have Albany is 600 c overcast and Boston Logan would be uh 500 overcast um um is uh I'm trying to find Washington Dallas is is a 200 ft also we're just checking

Boston as well because we getting uh a little low on the fuel as well so we need to decide quick and uh we're burning quite a lot in the higher we can burn a little less Fuel and then uh I believe Pittsburgh is 2,500 uh 2005 uh that's uh we have to just check for the fuel as far as 102 one1 heavy clim maintain uh 6,000 CL maintain 6,000 you want1 heavy I think based on on the weather that we have in the area and based on the forecast that I'm seeing I think Bradley Bravo

kilo Bravo Delta Lima will be your your best option ah okay and uh what's the feeling there okay right now the ceiling at there is 500 overcast got a TR showing it's uh the ceiling at uh jsk is also improving a bit I could try a vnav uh approach okay and see you know it can take us down in a situation like this because we're really you know stuck and there's no fuel and I'm showing newer just had a special and they're and they're showing 400 overcast they just had a special at uh 125 Z

so about 6 minutes ago okay so it's a bit better now in uh no is that correct yes sorry the the weather came up just 400 ft overcast door the departure controller then told the pilots of a new special Metar that was released by Newar that showed that the ceiling had lifted to 400 ft the pilots decided to attempt to land at Newark with a 400 ft ceiling remember this is still lower than the 600 ft that they had initially wanted so they were still not out of the woods okay so you want to do

the VAV approach into nework is that correct uh that's right that's the only option that we have because uh uh you know this is is unpredictable because every time we uh turn towards the localizer it's uh it's just gone okay so your ILS is out of service on both both sides of the airplane right uh that's correct and then the uh you said also the radar alet are out on both sides of the airplane uh that's right we on a single radio now at this point the plane had just around 7,200 kg of fuel left

just enough to complete the trip other than both ios's both radar altimers what other things have failed on the airplane single Source radio ultimator we've got Tas failure no Auto Land uh windsh system uh Auto speed brake and the uh and uh at is unserviceable as well and in a grim reminder to the pilots of how precarious their position was the controller asked them one um so just when you get a chance give me the people on board and the fuel on board please uh we have total of 370 and fuel 7,200 kgs the pilots

were then handed off to the Newar approach controller who cleared them for the four right approach one1 heavy one mil from doing turn right 01 0 meizer clear apprach the controll of then scramble the emergency vehicles in case assistance was required once a plane landed heavy emergency [Music] person one while we wait here uh nature of emergency is a computer failure aircraft pipe is a uh boing Triple 7 whiskey model 270 sols on board and 72,000 kilos of fuel now at this time the crew had been flying for over 14 hours in a high stress

environment trying to land a massive fully loaded airplane in one of the busiest air corridors in the world without all their usual instruments and to add to that when they saw outside the cockpit all they saw was clouds and with each passing minute the pilots were hoping that the clouds would lift and that they would see the Runway below as the plane kept descending and when it passed 1,000 ft the plane was higher than what their ideal descent path required and if this wasn't immediately corrected the plane would have to go around a second time

and use more fuel which they didn't have Captain Pia corrected this by pushing the plane's nose down to get back to the ideal path but this caused the plane to speed up further and at one point the controllers saw a warning on their screen indicating that the plane was too low to the ground and then relate that to the [Music] pilots1 and at 400 ft they finally broke through the clouds and at that point they saw that they were too high and further right of where they needed to be Captain Paia corrected the the flight

by pushing the nose down and to the left to get the plane to line up with the center line and finally after 15 hours of flying the plane landed safely on Runway 4 right at Newar emergency service then got in touch with the pilots to ask them whether they required any assistance but the pilots declined 10 minutes after they landed as they were taxing to the gate the entire airport was engulfed by a thunderstorm if the crew had delayed their approach by 5 minutes or had to make a second go around they would never have

been able to land unfortunately the root cause of these numerous instrument failures remains unknown as neither an incident report nor an investigation report has been released by Air India however a prevailing hypothesis suggests that the aircraft's main computer which controls the flight tech the diagnostic systems and maintenance systems malfunctioned presenting inaccurate values to the pilots despite being a crew of four individuals who had not previously collaborated the pilots demonstrated commendable crew resource management by effectively coordinating with each other and with air traffic control ultimately ensuring a safe landing of the plane the plane was flown

back to India the next day as a ferry flight for [Music] [Music] relocation [Music]