Passengers 0 Fatalities 0 Date 27 July 2010 Injuries (nonfatal) 2 | Crew 2 Survivors 2 (all) Number of deaths 0 Operator Lufthansa Cargo | |
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Summary Runway overshoot, spatial disorientation, ATC error, post-crash fire Site King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Destination Hong Kong International Airport Locations Riyadh, King Khalid International Airport Similar Merpati Nusantara Airlines Fl, Pamir Airways Flight 112, 2010 Air Service Berlin Do, Aviastar‑TU Flight 1906, Taban Air Flight 6437 | ||
Lufthansa Cargo Flight 8460 was an international cargo flight that on 27 July 2010 (15 Sha'aban 1431 H), crashed upon landing at King Khalid International Airport, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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Aircraft
The aircraft involved in the accident was a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 registered D-ALCQ, msn 48431, line number 534. The aircraft was delivered to Alitalia in 1993 as I-DUPB and converted to a cargo aircraft in 2004. At the time of the accident, D-ALCQ had completed 10,075 cycles and accumulated 73,200 hours flying time.
Incident
Flight 8460 was an international scheduled cargo flight from Frankfurt, Germany, to Hong Kong via Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
The flight from Frankfurt to Riyadh was uneventful, and weather conditions at Riyadh were good, with sufficient visibility.
On arrival in Riyadh the plane crash-landed and broke up on the runway. Both the captain and first officer were able to evacuate the plane using the emergency slide, but were injured in the crash landing. After the crash, a fire consumed the midsection of the aircraft before it was brought under control by the airport emergency services.
Investigation
The General Authority of Civil Aviation opened an investigation into the accident. The final report found that the cause of the accident was that the airplane touched down too hard, which caused it to bounce on the runway. The crew did not recognize the bounce and reacted in a way the made the plane bounce even harder. The third and final touchdown was so hard that the aft fuselage ruptured and the plane crashed.
Before this accident, there were 29 other bounced or severe hard landings with MD-11 aircraft that caused substantial damage. A similar accident had occurred on FedEx Express Flight 80 in the previous year, where both crew members were killed in a bounced landing.
It was known that detecting a bounced landing in a MD-11 was hard to recognize. The final report made several recommendations to improve training, procedures and flight instruments to help crews to deal with bounced landings.