Phyllium Air Flight 10

Phyllium Air Flight 10 was a flight from Ninoy Aquino International Airport to Massagaf-Main International Airport with a stopover at Kohola Airport. It was on March 20, 2010. The aircraft crashed at Massagaf, Bloxjiado.

Occupants

Aircraft

The aircraft was registered as RP-C4271. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-300 which first flew on August 8, 2007. It had been delivered to Phyllium Air the same year in November.

Crew

The flight had a total of 5 crew members, 3 of which were flight attendants. The captain was Labubloxian pilot Zendesk Niron, aged 42. He had 12,323 hours flying, and 8,000 of which were on the 737. The first officer was Bloxji pilot Scorpian Katalina, aged 34. Katalina was among the survivors. He had about 4,000 flying hours and 1,000 of which were on the 737.

Flight

Departure

The aircraft departed Ro-Manila for Kohola, and landed at Kohola shortly 3 hours later. The stopover at Kohola was for refueling, so passengers didn’t disembark the aircraft.

Approach

Flight 10 established its first contact with Massagaf Approach at 16:23PM UTC-3. The weather at Massagaf was deteoriating, and at least 30% of flights had diverted to Kukiyu Airport due to the weather. Visibility was almost zero with severe thunderstorm. The captain was ignorant, and responded by saying “Instrument Landing System exists at the airport, In Sha Allah we can do it. God will help us, approach.”. As soon as the captain began, chaos started in the cockpit. The co-pilot was abusive to the captain and was warning him and advising him. Captain Niron ignored F/O Katalina. Niron responded by: “Scorpian, we’ll divert. Let me just think about it, okay!”. At around 16:27PM UTC-3, Massagaf Approach told Flight 10 to divert to Kukiyu, as visibility was completely at zero. They instructed the flight to go into a holding pattern, if they refused to divert. At this point, the co-pilot disengaged the auto-pilot and took over control, however was taken back by the captain. Several attempts failed, and the captain made the fatal decision to continue to Massagaf. They had already been holding for thirty minutes, and they were cleared to land on Runway 08L. Weather had not improved in Massagaf yet the crew chose to continue.

Downdraft

The aircraft had its downdraft around 17:03PM UTC-3. The airspeed increased, and within 8 seconds, the aircraft fell from 14,700 feet to 8,121 feet. Captain Niron yelled: “No, not this damn shrut!”. At this point, the aircraft was diving towards the ground, and it got too late.

Crash

At 17:07PM UTC-3, the aircraft slammed onto the Santoro fields, with the wing hitting the ground first. There were around 5 survivors with minor injuries, one of which was First Officer Katalina. Katalina today is 50 years old, and is flying for Thai AirAsia.

Aftermath

The airport was closed for 28 hours and all flights diverted to Kukiyu and Umek City airports as an emergency.

Investigation

The Bloxjiado Aviation Authority and NTSB began investigating. The final report was published on December 31, 2013, and it concluded that the crash was caused by pilot error. Captain Niron had been in a hurry, as he was called to be the captain of the flight in the last minute. First Officer Katalina had taken control about three times but all were retaken by Captain Niron. The downdraft caused the aircraft to deviate from its approach path, and Massagaf-Main Airport’s Air Traffic Control had warned the flight several times about the weather in Massagaf and had suggested the flight deck numerous times to divert, all ignored by the flight deck.

Out of the 143 occupants on-board, 5 survived, and 138 died. wip, pls don’t delete