Pilots had no idea jet was too low until seconds before Halifax crash: report
HALIFAX — As Air Canada Flight 624 made its final, ill-fated approach toward Halifax’s main airport in a raging blizzard, no one in the cockpit was checking the plane’s altitude or distance from the runway.
The pilots had no idea the aircraft, carrying 133 passengers and five crew, had strayed from its intended flight path and was flying too low.
“It was only in the last few seconds of the flight, after the pilots disengaged the autopilot to land manually, that they then realized the aircraft was too low and too far back,” the Transportation Safety Board of Canada concluded in a final investigation report released Thursday, more than two years after the crash landing.
The report cited several other factors in the 2015 crash, including problems with runway lighting and something the board called “plan continuation bias.”