Issue Discovered During A Ferry Flight With No Passengers On Board

The Portugese accident investigation agency GPIAFF has released an updated report from an incident which occurred on November 11, 2018 involving an Air Astana Embraer ERJ190.

On a ferry flight to Kazakhstan following maintenance at Alverca Air Base in Portugal, the crew of the airplane experienced a serious in-flight loss of control. There were six people but no paying passengers on board the plane.

Aerossurance.com reports that according to the GPIAFF report, the crew has so much difficulty controlling the airplane that they considered ditching it offshore. The crew was able to regain limited control of the airplane and land it safely, but it sustained sufficient damage to be classified as an accident under ICAO Annex 13.

GPIAFF determined that the aileron control cable systems had been installed incorrectly in both wings of the airplane during the maintenance check conducted in Portugal. The report notes that "By introducing the modification iaw Service Bulletin 190-57-0038 during the maintenance activities, there was no longer the cable routing and separation around rib 21, making it harder to understand the maintenance instructions, with recognized opportunities for improvement in the maintenance actions interpretation.

The message “FLT CTRL NO DISPATCH” was generated during the maintenance activities, which in turn originated additional troubleshooting activities by the maintenance service provider, supported by the aircraft manufacturer. These activities, which lasted for 11 days, did not identify the ailerons’ cables reversal, nor was this correlated to the “FLT CTRL NO DISPATCH” message."

The safety investigation "will look into the aircraft design and functioning, the crew procedures and human factors aspects raised, and will now focus on the maintenance procedures and applied aircraft technical documentation, as well as the human and organizational factors involved in the Part-145 service provider," according to GPIAFF.

(Source: Aerossurance.com. Image:In-Flight Upset to, Air Astana Embraer EJ-190 P4-KCJ [Credit: Embraer via GPIAFF])

FMI: Source report