Crack in compression units casing most likely cause of plane crash
By Ruel Johnson
Guyana Chronicle
November 16, 2003
INVESTIGATORS probing the November 8 fatal Skyvan crash have ruled out excess weight and age as contributory factors and have indicated that a crack in the casing which houses the compression units of the Skyvan’s engines most likely caused the crash.
The picture of what actually happened to the Trans Guyana Skyvan which crash-landed into the canefields behind Ogle earlier this month became a little bit clearer after a press conference hosted by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in order to keep the public abreast on the matter.
According to Mr. Cyril Bedaysie, the chief CAA official investigating the accident, the Authority is in the process of a very thorough investigation. He said that the CAA – the regulatory body for aviation in Guyana – was looking at the incident from the time the pilots arrived at work; maintenance procedures; the checking in of passengers; the weighing of cargo; the Skyvan’s flight path; to the wreckage of ill-fated aircraft.
Mr. Alan Simmons, Senior Inspector with the United Kingdom’s Department for Transport’s Air Accidents Investigations Branch, gave a brief recreation of what the investigation team thinks happened so far.
He said that the Skyvan made a Category C Performance takeoff off from the Ogle Aerodrome. During its ascension, the aircraft’s right-side engine failed. The pilot, in a successful bid to avoid hitting a residential area, made a ninety degree diversion off his flight path to crash-land in the canefields. The plane descended in a low glide for about two hundred feet before hitting a ridge in the undulating ground (described by Simmons as “hostile” to landing) and then pitching forward another 100 feet from the point of initial impact.
Mr. Simmons, who is here along with Mr. Keith Conradie – another UK air accident specialist – said that the surviving passengers of the crashed Skyvan were indeed lucky to be alive since, in the estimation of the investigating team, the accident was only “a partially survivable” one.
He said that the impact itself, estimable from the extensive damage done to the Skyvan, was enough to prove fatal to any passenger onboard. Both casualties of the crash, Randolph Mannie and Premchand Arjune, died due to injuries suffered from the heavy machinery the aircraft was transporting at the time.
In ruling out overload as a possible cause of the accident, Simmons said that the aircraft was travelling about 200 pounds within its maximum weight capacity of 13,500 pounds.
Bedaysie also ruled out age as a factor, saying that the 1981-built aircraft had a total flying time of around 14000 hours, well under the critical 30000 hours point.
Simmons said that though the investigation is still in progress the likely fault seems to have been a crack in the casing which housed the engines’ compression unit.
According to Mr. Chabeenanan Ramphul, Director of the CAA, the engines were scheduled to have been sent yesterday to the original manufacturer, Honeywell, for failure assessment. The fuel and the cockpit voice recorder (CRV) from the Skyvan have also been sent to U.S. National Transportation and Safety Board for analysis. Mr. Ramphul said that the authority will soon be sending out a Special Inspection Bulletin, pending the findings of the investigation, to local airline operators who use Skyvans and to the GDF which has two.
On the issue of compensation to the relatives or dependants of the deceased, Simmons says that the Warsaw Convention covers such an incident, stipulating that compensation be paid to the family of victims of commercial air accidents. When contacted in relation the issue, Trans Guyana Airlines had no comment.