Spanair Flight 5022

Spanair Flight 5022 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Barcelona–El Prat Airport to Gran Canaria Airport, Spain, via Madrid–Barajas Airport that crashed just after take-off from runway 36L at Madrid Airport at 14:24  CEST (12:24  UTC) on 20 August 2008. The aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-82, registration Of the 172 passengers and crew on board, 154 died and 18 survived.

It was the only fatal accident for Spanair (part of the SAS Group) in the 25-year history of the company, and the 14th fatal accident and 24th hull loss involving the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series aircraft. It was Spain's deadliest accident since the 1983 crash of Avianca Flight 011.

The accident further worsened Spanair's already negative image at the time and exacerbated its financial difficulties. Spanair subsequently ceased operations on 27 January 2012.

Flight and aircraft

The aircraft, named ''Sunbreeze'' (registration EC-HFP; constructor's number 53148), had been manufactured in late 1993 and was acquired by Spanair in July 1999.

There were 166 passengers and six crew members on board, including the 39-year-old captain, Antonio Garcia Luna, and the 31-year-old first officer, Francisco Javier Mulet.

Prior to the accident

Fifty-nine minutes before the flight's second attempted take-off, the pilots had abandoned a departure because of excessive temperatures in the ram air temperature (RAT) probe. The aircraft was taken to a parking area where maintenance workers de-activated the RAT probe's heater. The aircraft was permitted to fly with an inoperable RAT probe heater because icing was not expected during the flight. Another takeoff was then attempted, during which the accident occurred.

Accident

The accident occurred during the second attempt, at 14:24 local time, due to the pilot's failure to deploy the flaps and slats as required for takeoff. Without the use of these "high-lift" devices, the wings could not generate enough lift to keep the aircraft airborne. The MD-80 has a warning system (the take-off warning system or TOWS) that should have alerted the pilots that the aircraft was not correctly configured for take-off. However, the warning did not sound, and the pilots continued with the attempt. As the aircraft took off, it stalled and impacted the terrain right of the runway strip, disintegrating and bursting into flames.

Crash sequence

Just 3 seconds after lift off the aircraft started shaking and banking both sides. The stall warning horn activated as well as the synthetic voice. The first officer called in interrogative tone an engine failure and reduced power on both engines, specially on the right one, increasing the bank angle on the right to 32 degrees, immediatelly after this, he pushed the engines to their full power and the pitch increased to 18 degrees. The aircraft impacted the ground just right of the runway with its tail section first, then its right wingtip and its right engine. The aircraft travelled on the ground, causing a few components to detach from the aircraft. The aircraft later lost contacted with ground when it jumped over an enbankment. The landing gears and the engines deatached from the aircraft and the plane continued sliding on the ground then coliding with another small enbankment. In this impact the tail was torn off, the cockpit collapsed into the passenger area and the fuel leaked and ignited into a fireball. The aircraft engulfed in flames continued sliding on the ground until it reached De la Vega stream and collided with the riverbank. The fuselage was highly fragmented by the crash and had been damaged by the fire. The front third of the fuselage was on the stream bed, while the rear two-thirds were on the north side of the stream. The wings and the rear two-thirds of the fuselage were engulfed and destroyed by fire.

Victims

Of the 172 on board, 146 perished in the crash or immediately after in the fire, including both pilots. Of the twenty-six passengers and crew rescued alive from the crash site, six died before arriving at hospital, and two more died in hospital, bringing the total number of fatalities to 154.

Most of the deceased and 16 of the survivors were Spanish nationals. Nineteen of the deceased and two survivors were of other nationalities.

Among the victims, there were 15 victims of other nationalities including Germany, France, Mauritania, Turkey, Bulgaria, Gambia, Italy, Indonesia, and Brazil.

The crash threw some of the survivors clear of the wreckage and into a stream, lessening the severity of their burns. A 30-year-old woman with British and Spanish dual citizenship survived with a punctured lung and broken left arm but no burns, as she was thrown from row 6, still attached to her seat, into the stream.

Investigation

Summary

The accident was investigated by the Civil Aviation Accident and Incident Investigation Commission (CIAIAC). Representatives from the US National Transportation Safety Board, the aircraft manufacturer Boeing (as successor to McDonnell Douglas, the original aircraft manufacturer), and the engine manufacturer Pratt and Whitney supported the investigation.

A preliminary report on the accident was released by CIAIAC on 6 October 2008.
Spanish version
) Information extracted from the flight data recorder showed that the aircraft had taken off with flaps at 0°, and that the alarm for that abnormal takeoff configuration had not sounded. The report hinted at no other cause of the accident. Both the engines and thrust reversers were excluded as causes of the accident.

On 17 August 2009, CIAIAC released an interim report on the incident.
Spanish version


) The interim report confirmed the preliminary report's conclusion that the crash was caused by an attempt to take off with the flaps and slats retracted, which constituted an improper configuration, and noted that safeguards that should have prevented the crash failed to do so. The cockpit recordings revealed that the pilots omitted the "set and check the flap/slat lever and lights" item in the After Start checklist. In the Takeoff Imminent verification checklist the copilot had simply repeated the correct flap and slat position values without actually checking them, as shown by the physical evidence. All three safety barriers provided to avoid the takeoff in an inappropriate configuration were defeated: the configuration checklist, the confirm and verify checklist, and the Take-off Warning System (TOWS). The report also made a number of safety recommendations intended to prevent accidents like this from happening again.

CIAIAC published a further progress note in August 2010, and its final report in July 2011.

Theories

Fire or explosion

Some early eye-witness accounts suggested that the aircraft suffered an engine fire or explosion before crashing, but the Spanish airport authority AENA released a video showing that the engines neither exploded nor caught fire during take-off. Manuel Bautista, Director General of Spain's civil aviation authority, went as far as to state: "The engine is not the cause of the accident", surmising that a chain of events combining together was more likely than a single cause.

Temperature sensor

There was considerable interest in the faulty air temperature probe (the RAT sensor,The aircraft's computer uses ram air temperature, also known as total air temperature, to help calculate the aircraft's true airspeed. True airspeed is needed for high altitude navigation, but is not so important for maintaining stable flight. Ground Speed is calculated directly from GPS position change (or Inertial navigation position change on earlier models). When TAS (true airspeed) is compared with Groundspeed, however, the actual wind direction and speed at that altitude can be calculated and presented to the pilot. Indicated airspeed, a measure of the relative wind over the aircraft's surfaces, is a more important measure for ensuring stable, safe flight. The aircraft's stall speed closely relates to indicated airspeed, for example. located on the front of the aircraft near the cockpit) that initially caused the pilot to turn the aircraft back for maintenance before the second takeoff attempt. The mechanic simply deactivated the probe because the aircraft's Minimum Equipment List allowed it to be left inoperative. On 22 August investigators interviewed the mechanic, who defended his action by saying that it had nothing to do with the crash. Spanair supported the mechanic's view that deactivation of the probe was an accepted procedure. Spanair stated that the problem detected on the first takeoff attempt was overheating caused by a temperature gauge's de-icing system, rather than a malfunction of the temperature gauge itself, and that since icing was not a risk on that flight, the de-icing system had been deactivated by the mechanic with the captain's approval.

On 11 May 2010, leaked details from the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) were released by Spanish media. The recording showed that both pilots were concerned about a repair job performed earlier on the day of the crash, in which mechanics used an ice pack to cool an overheating temperature sensor and removed a fuse. The BBC
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