Safety Board Focuses On Long Landing And Effects Of Weather

New information from Canada's TSB indicates the Air France Airbus A340 that ran off the end of the runway in Toronto and burned last week land long and fast -- with a tailwind.

As ANN reported last week, Air France Flight 358 landed in the midst of a severe thunderstorm, rolling off the end of Runway 24L at Pearson International Airport while still going approximately 100 mph. Remarkably, none of the 309 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft was killed.

"I am pretty convinced that there was no way the aircraft was going to stop before the end with the water on the runway and the (poor) braking action," TSB lead investigator Real Levasseur told a Toronto news conference. "There was no way that aircraft was going to stop before the end (of the runway)."

Because of the water accumulated on the runway, and the fact that the A340 didn't even touch down until approximately halfway down the runway, Levasseur told reporters his team is now trying to determine the rate of deceleration once the aircraft was on the ground.

"Definitely because of the weather conditions, deceleration would have been much slower than it would be for a dry runway with maximum braking."

Levasseur seemed particularly alarmed at the failure of two emergency egress systems on board the Airbus. Although there are four cabin exits on an A340, investigators found the passengers aboard Flight 358 used only four of them. There were two reasons, he said. First, the cabin crew noticed a fire on one side of the aircraft, so they directed passengers to exit on the other side. But on one door, the emergency chute didn't inflate. On another, the chute didn't deploy at all, he said.

"If we find that they malfunctioned as a result of the accident, then I can accept that," he said. "But if we find there was a malfunction prior to the accident, then we'd want to do something about that."

FMI: www.tsb.gc.ca