SPAIN:A PRELIMINARY finding on the Spanair crash at Madrid's Barajas airport shows that the wing flaps failed to deploy on take-off, and an apparent fault in the cabin did not warn the pilots of the failure.
The pilot had earlier reported problems with the aircraft's temperature gauge, which could signify an electrical fault in the alarm systems.
The accident claimed the lives of 154 passengers and crew, with 17 injured in the accident, which occurred on August 29th as the MD-82 was taking off on a flight from Madrid to Las Palmas de Gran Canarias.
Early findings from a study of the black box flight recorder show a similarity to the crash of another MD-82 in Detroit in 1987, when the wing flaps also failed to deploy and no warning was recorded.
It was as a result of that crash that McDonald Douglas (now owned by Boeing) "advised" carriers they should check the flaps and the alarms which warn pilots of any fault in the system before take-off.
This advice was not obligatory. Presumably, to speed up turn-round times, Spanair between flights only instructs its pilots to make this check before the first flight of the day and again when the pilots change shifts.
Flight JK5022 took off from Barcelona at 8.55am, where the check was conducted, arriving in Madrid at 10.13am without incident.
But problems occurred at 1.25pm as it prepared to take off on the next leg of its journey to Las Palmas at 1.25 pm with a full load of mainly Spanish passengers, most of them islanders returning home or going to the islands on holiday.
The pilot aborted his take-off and returned to the terminal building and told engineers that the RAT probe - which controls the anti-freeze device when the plane is at high altitudes - was giving a reading of more than 100 degrees when the air temperature was only 30 degrees.
At 2.23pm, this fault had been corrected and the plane was once more declared ready for take-off.
At 2.24pm, the pilot advised the control tower that he had reached V1 speed - a speed at which the aircraft is going too fast to abort take-off. According to the black box reading, the nose of the aircraft began to rise.
But it was in the air for less than 15 seconds, never reaching more than 40ft above the ground.
It slewed first to the left, then to the right and skidded into a ditch alongside the runway, where it burst into flames. Shortly before the aircraft crashed, an automatic voice on the cabin voice recorder could be heard warning "stall, stall". Shouts could be heard from the crew, followed by a series of alarms, before there was a loud crash and then silence.
The findings state that the flaps were not deployed but "at no time did any alarm sound during the failed take-off".
It goes on to note that if the pilot had found the warning device was not working before he taxied for take-off, the accident could have been avoided.
This is only a preliminary report from the Spanish accident investigation commission. The complete findings are not expected for several months.