Description

On 12 July 2000, an Airbus A310 being operated by Hapag Lloyd on a non scheduled passenger flight from Chania to Hannover declared an emergency due to fuel shortage and, after making an en route diversion to Vienna in day VMC, crash landed short of runway 34. None of the 151 occupants were injured during the impact but 26 suffered minor injuries during the subsequent evacuation. The aircraft was damaged beyond economic repair by the effects of the impact but there was no fire.

Investigation

An Investigation was carried out by the Accident Investigation Unit of the Austrian Federal Office of Transport and was able to make use of recovered Flight Data Recorder (FDR) and Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) data.

It was established that the touchdown had been made with the landing gear locked down. The first ground contact had occurred some 660 m prior to the runway 34 threshold, slightly the right of the extended centerline and thereby avoiding the runway lighting masts. The left main landing gear collapsed soon afterwards and the aircraft had then continued to skid through a series of minor aerial and lighting obstructions before finally coming to a stop close to the southernmost taxiway to the runway.

Fuel still on board after the crash did not leak away and was found to be equivalent to the design specification for ‘unusable fuel’.