Human errors and lack of information were noted during an incident which took place on 1is October 2022, on a flight from Djerba-Zarzis airport in Tunisia, operated by a Boeing 737 from the French company Transavia.
The flight caused quite a scare for the 171 passengers, with a somewhat rough landing at Nantes-Atlantique airport, but the incident caused no injuries.
The crew, although accustomed to flights, was surprised by the violence of the impact, by the unusual bounce of the aircraft and by the strange noise heard under the fuselage, as the plane rolled on the runway.
The worried passengers were far from suspecting that their aircraft had just lost two tires on its front landing gear, burst during the first violent contact with the runway. And that the co-pilot on the maneuver that day, in training, had confided to the captain that he hoped not to repeat the landing which was already well “farm” carried out the day before on the same track. It was worse.
According to an investigation report delivered at the end of December by the Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA), published on December 24, 2024, two years after this accident, the bursting of the tires then part of the rims on which rested the aircraft weighing more than 50 tonnes damaged the front landing gear and deformed its box as well as its frame. Several traces of impacts “most likely caused by wheel and tire components” were also identified on the airframe and engines of this aircraft put into service in 2007. So much damage which required significant repairs before the aircraft rejoined the Transavia fleet.
Aged 34 at the date of the incident, the co-pilot responsible for landing the plane had a total of 448 flight hours, including 63 on a Boeing 737. He was in the so-called phase of“online adaptation” of its training, which completes the apprenticeship of commercial flight pilots.
On the Djerba-Nantes flight from 1is October 2022, the thirty-year-old accompanied his instructor, a distinguished captain with more than 13,000 flight hours under his belt.
The BEA report, available online, notes that the actions of the two pilots may have contributed to the hard landing, in particular the “inappropriate actions of the co-pilot to increase trim and reduce thrust” at a critical moment, or “the lack of anticipation of commands on the part of the instructor”the latter having waited for the impact and rebound of the plane before intervening.
As BEA investigators point out, however, the co-pilot of the Djerba-Nantes flight had to land the plane on runway 21 of the airport. This is a segment known to be complex to understand. Off-axis, the track in question also presents several changes in slope, with in particular a bump that can “disturb the pilot’s visual perception”thus causing frequent hard landings.
Between January and November 2022, Nantes-Atlantique airport turned out to be the first destination generating this type of incident at Transavia, tied with Mykonos, in Greece, details the report.
I.B. (with Le Figaro).
