Description

On 16 January 2010, an Airbus A300-600 being operated by Iran Air on a passenger flight from Stockholm to Teheran departed the left side of take off runway 19R at a low speed during a daylight take off in normal visibility after signs that the left engine, a GE CF6-80C2, had malfunctioned. There was some minor damage to both the aircraft and ground installations but no significant obstacle impact occurred during the excursion. An emergency evacuation of the 172 occupants was not deemed necessary and external stairs were subsequently brought to the aircraft to allow their disembarkation to board ground transport.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the SHK, the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority. Data from the Flight Data Recorder (FDR) was downloaded and used to support the Investigation. The 30 minute Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR), for which the crew had tripped the circuit breaker about 8 minutes after the engine failure, was also successfully downloaded and although found to be of intermittent quality, the recording was time-synchronised with that from the FDR.

It was found that aircraft had rolled approximately 250 metres along the runway and reached a speed of approximately 54 knots when the engine failure occurred with a subsequent maximum speed of 59 knots. A private video recording submitted to the Investigation showed that the engine failure had been followed by a puff of smoke and the appearance of three flames of varying size within less than a second.