Gulf Air Flight 072

	This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Gulf Air Flight 072" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article contains too many or overly lengthy quotations. Please help summarize the quotations. Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote or excerpts to Wikisource. (May 2020) ( Airbus A320-212
Operator	Gulf Air
IATA flight No.	GF072
ICAO flight No.	GFA072
Call sign	Gulf Air 072
Registration	A4O-EK
Flight origin	Cairo International Airport, Cairo, Egypt
Destination	Bahrain International Airport, Muharraq, Bahrain
Occupants	143
Passengers	135
Crew	8
Fatalities	143
Survivors	0

Gulf Air Flight 072 (GF072/GFA072)

The crash of Flight 072 remains the deadliest aviation accident in Bahraini territory,[1] and was the deadliest accident involving an Airbus A320 at the time, which was later surpassed by TAM Airlines Flight 3054, which crashed on 17 July 2007 with 199 fatalities.^[5]

The final report was issued on 15 August 2002,^[6] concluded that the individual factors contributed to the accident was non adherence to a number of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and loss of spatial and situational awareness by the aircraft crew during the approach and final phases of the flight. A number of systemic factors were also contributed to the accident, including deficiency in crew resource management (CRM) training by Gulf Air and safety oversights by the Directorate General Of Civil Aviation and Meteorology of Oman.^[2]

Aircraft

Flight 072 was operated with an

The aircraft was carrying 135 passengers, two pilots, and six cabin crew members from 17 countries, mostly from Egypt and Bahrain.[4] One Egyptian who was supposed to board the flight was turned away by immigration officials in Cairo who found his passport was not stamped with the necessary Egyptian interior ministry permit for working abroad.^[14]

Crew

There were two pilots in the aircrew:^{[2]: 9–12}

• The Bahraini captain and
  Airbus A320 in 1998 and to Captain of the Airbus A320 in 2000. Shakeeb had 4,416 hours of flying experience (including 1,083 hours on the Airbus A320),^[9] of which 86 were as captain.^[c]
• The Omani first officer was 25-year-old Khalaf al-Alawi.^[15] He joined Gulf Air as a cadet pilot in 1999 and promoted to First Officer of the Airbus A320 in 2000. Al-Alawi had 608 hours of flying experience, 408 of them on the Airbus A320.^{[2]: 12 [9]}

Passengers

Among the 135 passengers were 61 men, 37 women and 37 children (including eight infants).^[2]: 26

A 144th set of remains was found, and was identified as a fetus that had been delivered during the crash, but this was not counted as a fatality in the final report.^[2]: 35

Accident

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2019)

Flight 072 departed from Cairo at 16:52 local time with 143 passengers and crew on board. The aircraft approached the landing at higher speeds than normal, initially at 313 knots (580 km/h; 360 mph) and then decreasing to 272 knots (504 km/h; 313 mph). At 19:22 Dammam approach gave the flight approval for self navigation to land on runway 02. First Officer al-Alawi then contacted Bahrain approach, informing that they would be landing on runway 02. The approach was too high and the flight crew carried out an unusual low altitude orbit in an attempt to correct the approach.^{[2]: 15–16, 87 [17]} The orbit was unsuccessful and a go-around was attempted. While carrying out a turning climb, the aircraft entered a descent at 15 degrees nose down. The ground proximity warning system (GPWS) activated, first sounding a "sink rate" alarm and then nine "whoop whoop pull up" alarms, which continued to sound until impact. The aircrew did not respond to repeated GPWS warnings^[2]: 88 and approximately one minute after starting the go-around the aircraft disappeared from radar screens.^[18] At 19:30:02, the aircraft crashed into the sea. There were no survivors.^[19]

Investigation

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The accident investigation concluded that the primary cause of the crash was pilot error (including spatial disorientation), with a secondary factor being systemic organizational and oversight issues.^[2]

The investigation showed that no single factor was responsible for the accident to GF-072. The accident was the result of a fatal combination of many contributory factors, both at the individual and systemic levels.

1. The individual factors particularly during the approach and final phases of the flight were:
   1. The captain did not adhere to a number of
      Standard Operating Procedures
      (SOPs), such as:
      1. significantly higher than standard aircraft speeds during the descent and the first approach
      2. not stabilising the approach on the correct approach path; performing an orbit, a non-standard maneuver, close to the runway at low altitude
      3. not performing the correct go-around procedure
      4. other related items
   2. In spite of a number of deviations from the standard flight parameters and profile, the first officer (PNF) did not call them out, or draw the attention of the captain to them, as required by SOPs.
   3. A perceptual study indicated that during the go-around after the orbit, it appears that the flight crew experienced spatial disorientation, which could have caused the captain to perceive (falsely) that the aircraft was 'pitching up'. He responded by making a 'nose-down' input, and as a result, the aircraft descended and flew into the shallow sea.
   4. Neither the captain nor the first officer perceived, or effectively responded to, the threat of increasing proximity to the ground, in spite of repeated hard GPWS warnings.
2. The systemic factors, identified at the time of the above accident, which could have led to the above individual factors, were:
   1. Organisational factors (Gulf Air):
      1. A lack of training in CRM contributing to the flight crew not performing as an effective team in operating the aircraft.
      2. Inadequacy in the airline's A320 training programmes, such as: adherence to SOPs, CFIT, and GPWS responses.
      3. The airline's flight data analysis system was not functioning satisfactorily, and the flight safety department had a number of deficiencies.
      4. Cases of non-compliance, and inadequate or slow responses in taking corrective actions to rectify them, on the part of the airline in some critical regulatory areas, were identified during three years preceding the accident.
   2. Safety oversight factors:

A review of about three years preceding the accident indicated that despite intensive efforts, the DGCAM as a regulatory authority could not make the operator comply with some critical regulatory requirements.

The chairperson of the accident investigation board adopted the report on 10 July 2002.^{[2]: A1–A2 [20]} The investigation showed that:

...during the go-around, as the captain was dealing with the flap over-speed situation, he applied a nose-down side-stick input, resulting in a nose-down pitch. While the aircraft was accelerating with TOGA power in total darkness, the somatogravic illusion could have caused the captain to perceive (falsely) that the aircraft was 'pitching up'. He would have responded by making a 'nose down' input. The aircraft descended and flew into the sea.^[2]

Aftermath

After the accident,

Gulf Air retired the Flight 072 (GF072) flight number and replaced it with Flight 070 (GF070) for inbound flights from Cairo to Bahrain.^[21]

See also

Notes