Air authorities consider this to be one of the “most serious incidents recorded at Prague airport in recent decades”.
A TAP is “the investigate internally” a accident occurred on January 17th, when a Airbus A320neo of the company will have descended below the minimum safe altitude during the approach to the airport Prague, in the Czech Republic.
“TAP is internally investigating the situation and fully cooperating with the investigation by the competent authorities in the Czech Republic,” an official source at the Portuguese airline told Lusa.
According to Radio Prague International, TAP’s Airbus A320neo “it was just 30 seconds away from crashing 60 kilometers from Prague”, in an incident that aviation authorities consider ‘one of the most serious recorded at Prague airport in recent decades’.
Flight TP1240, coming from Lisbon, would have been less than 300 meters from the sun during a high-speed descent near Krivoklát, and, according to Czech radio, he “managed avoid the accident thanks to a last-minute climbing maneuver carried out by the crew“.
The incident occurred on the morning of January 17th in “very adverse” weather conditions, with dense fog and low visibilitywith radar systems detecting that the plane had descended below the minimum safe altitude of around 1,300 meters.
In turn, the aviation news website Kiosque da Aviação indicates that the flight was “in the approach phase to runway 6 at Václav Havel Airport when the aircraft descended below the minimum altitude published for the procedure”: “According to preliminary information, the plane was allowed to maintain 4,000 feet but ended up reaching about 2,600 feet above mean sea level, a value lower than the minimum safety level defined for that phase of the approach”, he details.
Air traffic controllers will have issued two alerts to the crew when they detected the undue descent, with the ground proximity warning system (TAWS) being activated in the cockpit, “leading the pilots to initiate an immediate climb to recover safe altitude”.
“After stabilizing the aircraft, the crew carried out a new approach, this time within the established parameters, culminating in a uneventful landing about 11 minutes later“, he also states, adding that there were no injuries or damage to the aircraft.
Among the possible causes of the incident, experts cited by local media mention the incorrect use of autopilot.
According to Radio Prague International, the incident was recorded as a case of CFIT (‘Controlled Flight Into Terrain’), in which the aircraft approaches the ground without the crew being aware of the danger, normally due to errors in the configuration of the flight systems.
Meanwhile, an official investigation is underway by the Air Accident Research Institute, which created a commission to determine whether the deviation resulted from operational, human or technical factors.
