VietNamNet Bridge – In a report to the Prime Minister on 38 incidents happened in May 2012, the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CCAV) stressed three serious cases related to local and foreign airlines that are under investigation.



Of the three serious cases, two are related to Vietnam Airlines and Royal Brunei Airlines.

The first case was reported on May 9, 2012, when an A321 aircraft of Vietnam Airlines, coded VN503 from Guangzhou (China) to HCM City, ran off of the runway while landing.

All major tires of the aircraft were broken. Some signal lights along the runway were also broken. However, all 136 passengers and 8 members of the crew were safe. The aircraft was mended and put into operation again on May 12.

The CCAV had decoded the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) to serve the investigation.

The second incident was also related to Vietnam Airlines. It happened on May 27, 2012 for an A321 aircraft which flew from Cam Ranh to Hanoi. While the aircraft was taking a run-up on the run-way, pilots heard a strange sound from the engine 2. They decided to cancel the take-off.

When the aircraft stopped on the run-way, the flight crew was instructed to turn off the engine 2 and opened the fire extinguisher 1 of the engine 2. After waiting for a dragging vehicle for 20 minutes, pilots decided to drive the airplane out of the runway, to the parking area, after seeing all parameters being normal.

According to inspection, two rotors of the airplane were stuck. There were small pieces of metal at the exhaust pipe. Sixth-floor high-pressure compressor, second-floor high-pressure turbine, first and second-floor low-pressure turbine did not work. This plane is currently not used for investigation.

The third case was reported on May 8, with a B777 aircraft of the Royal Brunei Airline, which flew from Brunei to Dubai. This aircraft had to make an urgent landing to the Tan Son Nhat Airport, HCM City, when smoke came from the oven in the tail assembly.

The airplane landed safely. After being fixed, CCAV permitted this plane to fly to Brunei. The incident is being investigated by the Brunei Aviation Agency.

According to CCAV, no air accident happened in May but there were up to 38 incidents were reported, including 32 cases associated with air safety and security, an increase of two cases year on year and 7 cases more than April 2012.

Eighteen cases are defined to be related to technical errors, 11 were associated with objective reasons (weather, birds, etc), 2 with human-related factors and 1 with air control activities.

Dan Tri