Malév Flight 355
Script error: No such module "Draft topics".
Script error: No such module "AfC topic".
 A Malév Ilyushin Il-18, similar to the accident aircraft | |
| Accident | |
|---|---|
| Date | 23 November 1962 |
| Summary | Stalling due to excessive icing on the vertical stabilizer (probable) Stalling due to pilot error (alternate theory) |
| Site | near Le Bourget, France |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Ilyushin Il-18V |
| Operator | Malév Hungarian Airlines |
| Registration | HA-MOD |
| Flight origin | Ferihegy Airport, Budapest, Hungary |
| Stopover | Frankfurt Airport, Frankfurt, West Germany |
| Destination | Paris–Le Bourget Airport, Le Bourget, France |
| Occupants | 21 |
| Passengers | 13 |
| Crew | 8 |
| Fatalities | 21 (all) |
| Survivors | 0 (none) |
Malév Flight 355 was a passenger flight on a scheduled international service from Budapest, Hungary to Paris-Le Bourget, France, with a stopover at Frankfurt, West Germany. The flight was operated by an Ilyushin Il-18V turboprop aircraft. On 23 November 1962, with 13 passengers and 8 crew members - captain István Kapitány, first officer János Fenesi, navigator János Koleszár, radio man Gyula Szűcs, on-flight mechanic János Gadácsi and his apprentice, István Bancsi, and two flight attendants - aboard, after departing both Budapest and Frankfurt without issues, the flight started its descent to Le Bourget Airport by ILS protocol, due to low visibility. After successfully reporting back the pass of the BE waypoint at 550 meters high, Le Bourget ATC lost contact with the flight at 14:06 local time.
The aircraft's wreckage was found 6157 meters away from its intended landing point, Le Bourget's runway number 25. The remains of the aircraft were scattered in such a small area that it was determined that the plane entered an almost vertical flightpath (estimated between 70 and 90 degrees) before the impact, with the turboprop engines drilling themselves around 1,5 meters into the ground, engulfing in flames after hitting the surface. None of the 21 on board survived.
Cause of disaster[edit]
The position of the aircraft's remains clearly indicated that stalling had occurred. The throttle levers indicated that the crew applied maximum thrust to the engines in the last moments, meaning that they were aware of the situation, to no prevail.
Due to already existing ICAO protocols, the responsibility of the investigation fell on the French authorities, despite initial volunteering from their Hungarian and Soviet counter-organizations, who were restricted to only assisting the investigation. The plane had neither FDR or CVR installed which, along with the heavy fire damage, made the process more difficult, but the possibility of a sudden mechanical problem was ruled out quickly.
With this information, the investigators quickly turned their attention towards the weather at the time. It was then discovered that during the approach, the aircraft entered a low cloud layer that made icing a serious threat due to its overcooled air layer that exceeded 100% humidity. The conditions were perfect for clear ice to form on the wings, which is a quickly forming phenomenon that can reach thickening rates of 5-6mm/min, and if formed, it worsens the uplift of the aircraft by as much as 30-40%, well enough to induce stall on an aircraft. This was supported by a DC-3 plane, registration F-BEHC, that landed just four minutes before contact was lost with the Malév plane; the crew reported that they suffered such a severe icing during approach that the plane's vertical stabilizer and antenna was still visibly iced 15 minutes after landing.
With this information, attention has turned towards the Ilyushin plane's reaction to icing. Since neither the factory nor the aircraft's operator airlines ever reported any instruments being affected by icing, the investigators rejected the theory of the pilots choosing their speed relying on faulty data. Suspicion however arose around the plane's electric de-icing device: while it was praised internationally for its effectiveness, the device, that consumed such amounts of electricity (on the front of the wings it even reached 1300-1500A) that its usage had to be restricted to in-flight situations only, was by 1962 installed on the front of the wings, on the engines, the front windows and the Pitot tubes only, completely exposing the vertical stabilizer to icing problems. While the pilots were able to keep the severely iced plane in the air during its initial descent, the extension of the flaps after entering the ILS glide slope doomed the flight.
Ilyushin grounded all Il-18 fleets around the world, and quickly began test flights in areas of high icing risk. After the tests showed that with extended flaps and an iced vertical stabilizer, the plane quickly enters a stall and a strong nosedive, the manufacturer quietly installed its de-icing device on the stabilizers too. However, since the Soviet authorities found embarrassing that their state-of-the-art turboprop airliner had a lethal technical fault since its inauguration, they strongly insisted that the final report shall not exclude the possibility of the pilots switching the throttle to idle position for unknown reasons, and the nose-heavy aircraft, with only a dozen of passengers onboard entered a stall on its own; a theory strongly disputable regarding the crew's experience - the on-flight mechanic, János Gadácsi, had 6700 flight hours clocked in before the disaster, of which 1000 hours were spent on the Il-18.
References[edit]
- Földesi, László (23 November 2012). "HA-MOD: a párizsi Malév-katasztrófa titka" [HA-MOD: the secrets of the Paris Malév disaster] (in magyar). AIRportal.hu. Retrieved 12 July 2022.
- Márványi, Péter (23 November 2012). "Malév-katasztrófa ötven éve: párizsi kérdőjelek" [MALÉV disaster fifty years ago: question marks of Paris] (in magyar). iho.hu - Indóház Online. Retrieved 25 November 2022.
- "ASN Aircraft accident Ilyushin Il-18V HA-MOD Paris-Le Bourget". Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved 25 November 2022.
Coordinates: 48°59′22″N 2°32′23″E / 48.98944°N 2.53972°E
 | This article about an aviation accident is a stub. You can help EverybodyWiki by expanding it. |
This article "Malév Flight 355" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Malév Flight 355. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
