The Pakistani International Airlines Airbus A320 that crashed into a Karachi neighborhood last week was on its second attempt to land.
There also emerged a video, shown in this CBS story on the crash, that shows the plane in the final crash sequence, with it flying at a very high angle of attack but also descending at a fast rate before impacting structures and bursting into flames.
According to these reports, the airliner, which was arriving in Karachi from Lahore, had partially landed gear-up on the previous attempt. The pilots somehow successfully executed a go-around despite structural damage to the plane’s low-hanging engines, a claim supported by photographic evidence that has emerged since the crash.
Apparently, because the plane was damaged by the aborted, gear-up landing attempt, the crew was unable to keep it airborne long enough to make a successful landing. The plane crashed into a densely packed neighborhood, though miraculously no one on the ground was killed. Of the 99 aboard the plane, 97 were killed in the crash. Again, somehow two passengers survived the crash.
The airline had only recently restarted operations more than a month after flights were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic, and there were concerns about pilots returning to duty after the long layoff.
