
El-Al plane rapidly descends prior to landing in London
Investigating report from January 2006: On its way to Heathrow Airport, El-Al plane carrying 450 passengers rapidly descending. Only after warning lights lit up did pilots regain altitude, when plane only 350 meters off ground. Investigators believe incident caused by computer malfunction, but claim statistics from black boxes erased. El-Al: It is nonevent for us
The plane ultimately landed safely, but investigation of the even in Britain didn't come to any conclusions. Until now it is still unclear what the reasons for the malfunction were, partly because it was made known to authorized British officials late by which time the relevant statistics from the black boxes had been erased.
The incident, which hasn't been reported until now, was revealed Friday night in the new newspaper The London Paper in Britain. Ynet obtained the report detailing the sequence of events as was investigated by the AAIB- Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
El-Al said to Ynet in response that this was a nonevent and that its level of danger was minimal. The company also said that the report was passed on to the company's manager, and that since the event, the plane has successfully completed might flights with no malfunction.
Though the name of the airline of the plane involved in the incident wasn't explicitly mentioned in the British report, El-Al confirmed to Ynet that it was one of their planes.
The event occurred in afternoon in clear weather with good visibility. According to the report, the plane started the automatic landing process earlier than desired because of some kind of malfunction that caused the automatic pilot to descend. In the cockpit, warning lights lit up testifying to a failure to receive landing help signals (ILS GLIDESLOPE) – radar signals sent to the plane from the ground that help the automatic pilot guide the plane at a safe and comfortable angle.
At this point the plane's crew noticed the exceptional angle of descent and the captain tried to check with the control tower whether their was a malfunction in the landing help signals transmitted from the ground, but he received no response. Meanwhile, the control tower also noticed that the plane was flying too low and confirmed that the landing signals system was intact. About 15 kilometers from the landing strip the plane was at 1,200 feet and descending at a speed of 550 meters a minute.
'A roll that burns in the oven is more dangerous'
The pilot then disconnected the automatic pilot and “pulled” the plane upwards; when the plane reached the right altitude the captain reactivated the automatic pilot system, and eventually landed the plane manually.
According to the investigation report, had the plane continued its descent at the same pace it may have crashed into the ground in less than a minute; however, according to the report the incident was low-risk as the visibility was good and the pilots would have had enough time to avoid a crash.
The El AL crew never filed a report on the incident, and details of the incident were revealed only weeks later.
The investigation found a malfunction in the plane’s computer, which indicated of a momentary failure to receive signals from the ground. Investigators said the malfunction occurred either in the plane’s equipment or in the airport’s apparatus. The report said that had the investigators been in possessing of black box data they would have been able to identify the direct cause of the malfunction.
El Al chief of operations Lior Yavor said in response, “we do not consider this an incident; it is defined by us as minimum-risk; when El Al planes fly over Tel Aviv they are also at 1,200 feet. The passengers were not in danger, they weren’t aware of anything. The plane has 10 more systems that warn the crew of altitude loss, and in any event they would have been set off at 800 feet. This is one of those things that can happen when a passenger turns an MP3 player on, or a radio or cell phone. The loss of landing help signals can occur; it is similar to a computer malfunction that can be fixed by restarting the computer. From our standpoint, a roll that burns in the oven and causes a fire is a more dangerous incident.”