The probe into what actually led to the tragic plane crash near Baramati on Wednesday which claimed the lives of Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar along with four others is underway, with black box of the ill-fated aircraft being recovered and a team of three officers from Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau probing what had happened.
However, what has caught the attention of many is the new CCTV footage of the last moments of the aircraft that has emerged, seemingly showing the aircraft’s left wing dropping suddenly just moments before impact. The aircraft, a VT-SSK Learjet 45 business jet, is seen turning to one side midair before crashing into the ground.
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What are the three theories?
According to experts, the footage points to three theories into what might have happened – an aerodynamic stall, a hard banking too close to ground, or an engine failure.
However, it must be noted that the exact cause of the crash can only be ascertained through a detailed investigation.
Asymmetric aerodynamic stall?
An aerodynamic stall means when an aircraft loses altitude when its speed or angle, or both, are in such a state that its wings stop producing lift.
The Learjet 45 aircraft’s engine is mounted on its tail instead of its wings. During an asymmetric aerodynamic stall, one of the aircraft loses lift before the other one during slow-speed flight, leading to the stall and “resulting in a rapid roll and impact with the ground”, according to the language used by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) during the probe of fatal Bombardier Challenger 605 crash during a circling approach in California in 2021. Both the aircrafts, the Learjet 45 and Challenger 605, have their engines mounted in the tail section.
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The NTSB has recorded similar fatal accidents in at least three business jets since 2014, all linked to crews exceeding the critical angle of attack during approach manoeuvring — a Phenom 100 in Maryland (2014), a Learjet 35A in New Jersey (2017), and a Challenger 605 in California (2021). In all of these cases, the aircraft abruptly entered uncontrolled rolls at low altitude, leaving too little height for recovery.
The Learjet had also attempted one approach and carried out a go-around before the fatal second attempt. Investigators will assess whether the pilots got too slow while manoeuvring visually to line up with the runway threshold.
CS Randhawa, president of the Federation of Indian Pilots president, explained how the new video pointed to the aerodynamic stall theory and said, “The aircraft is supported by four forces; lift, weight, thrust and drag. Due to low speed, it appears to me that the aircraft crossed the critical angle of attack, thus the drag increased and the lift reduced, causing a wingtip stall. The nose dropped to the left due to this situation. The stick shaker would have activated in this case which would come out in the flight data recorder decoding. Also, the CVR would reveal what transpired between the pilots on the approach.”
Engine failure?
A second possible theory that the motion of the aircraft in the new video points towards is that of engine failure.
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According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a yaw, which is “loss of power on one engine creates yaw due to asymmetrical thrust” and a roll, which is “loss of power on one engine eliminates propeller blast over the wing. This elimination affects the lift distribution over the wing, causing a roll toward the inoperative engine.”
“The yaw and roll forces must be counteracted by a combination of rudder and aileron,” it adds.
However, the possibility of a sudden engine failure is less likely than that of an aerodynamic stall, according to experts, since there was no mayday call within the 60 seconds of landing clearance and the crash. They also added that the picture of what happened would be clearer with flight data.
According to Mark D Martin of Martin Consulting, an aviation advisory firm, “The Learjet 45 is a very fast aircraft and it is not designed to fly well at low speeds, especially during landing. From what I have seen, it appears that the aircraft suffered an engine failure while coming into land. When one engine fails, the power from the other engine can pull the aircraft to one side.”
‘Late viewing of the runway’?
According to an expert, the answer to the crash might lie in the lack of amenities at the Baramati airport, which does not have navigation aids and pilots have to rely on visual estimation.
Amit Singh, a safety expert, told HT, “A visual approach, by definition, means the pilot must have the runway clearly in sight. That raises a basic question: who cleared the aircraft to land on a poor visibility condition on the runway, and on what basis? In this case, it appears that sun glare during the final moments may have affected visibility, and the crew realised too late that the aircraft was not aligned with the runway.”
A pilot, while speaking on the same theory, said on condition of anonymity, “It appears to be a late viewing of the runway and trying to get to it with a large bank angle.”
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