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This is the story of air greenland flight 3205 . Flight 3205 was a domestic flight in greenland flying from Kangerlussaq to ilulissat airport on the 29th of january 2014 . Flights on the day before had given the pilots some concern about flying into ilulissat airport as the day before they had to divert to kangerlussuaq due to bad weather at ilulissat. So before the pilots left on the 29th they were in contact with people on the ground at Ilulissat to make sure that the weather was favorable a landing. With the weather looking good and diversion airports sorted out flight 3205 left kangerlussuaq at 11:06 am UTC.
As the crew flew towards ilulissat they got weather updates from the ground, it was a cold day at -9 degrees celsius or 15 degrees fahrenheit and the wind was 20 knots gusting to 30, nothing that the dash 8 couldnt handle. The crew also talked about the approach that theyd be carrying out, theyd be attempting a visual approach to runway 07 but the approach to runway 07 here is a bit special, usually the approach angle to a runway is about 3 degrees but here its 5.1 degrees making for a much steeper approach to the runway. The crew also talked about the weather, the wind in particular. If the wind hit 31 knots then they decided that theyd abandon the approach and try again.
With that the crew started their descent and started to prep the plane for landing, they extended the flaps to 15 degrees and went over the data for the landing. At 11:33 am the crew tuned into the AFIS or the aerodrome flight information service at ilulissat, the AFIS is basically a radio channel on which you can get important information about the airport to all. It sends out things like wind conditions cloud cover runway in use temperature dew point etc. for the crew it was good news the AFIS told them that the wind was at 24 knots well below their threshold of 31 knots. But the winds could still gust all the way upto 35 knots so theyd have to be careful. Soon they were lined up to runway 07. 5 miles from the runway the the wind was at 26 knots and gusting to 35 knots at sometimes, the captain disengaged the autopilot and began to handfly the airplane down to the runway.
As the plane was 1000 feet above the ground the first officer wrapped up the landing checklist and the captain focused on keeping the plane lined up with the runway. As the plane descended it was buffeted by turbulence. But they carried on with the landing. 20 feet from the ground the engines were pulled back to idle and the plane touched down hard. As it did the left main landing gear on the dash 8 collapsed, As the plane dragged along the runway the pilots were starting to lose directional control of the plane. The pilots felt that the plane just wasn't decelerating fast enough. In his desperation the first officer called for the parking brake, he needed to stop this plane somehow. But it was of no use the plane still had way too much speed. Knowing that the plane would be going off the runway one way or another the first officer cut fuel flow to the engines in an attempt to prevent a fire. But it was the end of the roaad for flight 3205, the plane skidded right towards a drop off to the left of the runway and went overboard at a speed of 40 knots and fell 30 feet. In the cabin the crew immediately initiated an evacuation. They were able to get everyone out in just 30 seconds, thankfully All 15 people onboard survived.
To understand what had happened The investigators honed in on the weather at ilulissat at the time of the landing. According to the operators manual the pilots could land in winds up to 31 knots. But the winds at the time of landing were a bit higher than that gusting upto 35 knots. But this captain wasnt allowed to land the dash 8 in a 31 knot cross wind. He had only become a captain on the dash 8 in 2013 and until he had completed 100 hours on the type hed be considered an inexperienced commander and as per the company’s operation manual inexperienced commanders could only land in crosswinds upto 25 knots. So any way you look at this flight 3205 should not have been landing at ilulissat that day.