Sudan Airways Flight 109 disaster

Aircraft

The aircraft involved in the accident was an Airbus A310-324, c/n 548, tail number ST-ATN, that had its maiden flight on 23 August 1990 as F-WWCV. Equipped with a twin-PW4152 powerplant, it was delivered new to Singapore Airlines on 22 October 1990 and registered 9V-STU. Re-registered VT-EVF, it was delivered to Air India on 10 March 2001. The aircraft was finally registered ST-ATN, and delivered to Sudan Airways on 1 December 2007. According to Airbus, it had accumulated 52,000 flight hours and 21,000 cycles. The airframe was 17 years and 292 days old at the time of the accident.

Description

The flight originated in Amman and had its final destination in Khartoum with an intermediate stop in Damascus. The presence of a sandstorm and heavy rain prevented the aircraft to land at Khartoum and forced it to be diverted to Port Sudan. The aircraft was later allowed to fly back to its original destination. The flight landed at Khartoum Airport at 17:26 UTC, but was not able to stop within the paved area. Following the aircraft overruning the runway and coming to rest 215 metres (705 ft) beyond the end of runway 36 a fire erupted on the starboard side. The slides on the side the fire started at could not be deployed; people on board evacuated the aircraft using the port side slides.

Cause

The runway overrun was caused by a combination of a long landing flare, the wet runway, landing without autobrake selected on, and one engine thrust reverser that was deactivated. The aircraft had been dispatched with the port engine thrust reverser deactivated. This condition caused it to veer to the right when the captain activated reverse thrust in both engines in order to stop the aircraft within 2,080 metres (6,820 ft) of runway left. Reports indicated the occurrence of a big sandstorm at Khartoum earlier that day that was followed by low visibility and heavy rain and winds at the time of the accident. Contributing to the long landing flare was that the crew had been incorrectly informed that they had a 7-knot (13 km/h; 8.1 mph) headwind for landing when they actually had a 15-knot (28 km/h; 17 mph) tailwind.

Casualties

Out of 203 passengers and 11 crew members on board the aircraft, 29 passengers and one crew member lost their lives. Many of the casualties were children with disabilities and seniors returning from treatment in Amman.

Abbas al-Fadini (Member of the Parliament of Sudan) was on board the flight and survived unscathed