They Couldn’t See The Runway, But They Still Tried To Land | Henan Airlines 8387

E190 Image: Xu Zheng - https://www.airliners.net/photo/Kunpeng-Airlines/Embraer-190AR-ERJ-190-100IGW/1501024?qsp=eJwtjcEKwjAQRP9lzwqWgIfe2h

Crash Images: Chinese Aviation Authority

This is the story of henan airlines flight 8387. On the 24th of august 2010 an ERJ 190 was flying a domestic route in china between the cities of harbin and yichun. We dont talk about china too much on this channel because the chinese are incredibly secretie about accidents that happen in china and even if they do release a report itll most likely be in chinese and I dont read chinese. But for this accident Im going off of an informal translation of the report and other publicly available sources. But I hear you say youve made videos about china airlines in the past, ah you see china airlines is based in taiwan, because taiwan claims to be china and china claims to be china, its a whole can of worms that i dont wanna get into. So if there are any errors do let me know in the comments below. Getting back to the story. The thing about the airport at yichun is that the airport is situated near a valley on a flood plain and that causes some thick fog in the region at times.

On that day at 8:51 pm flight 8387 took off from harbin and the plane climbed to its cruising altitude of 20,000 feet. By 9:10 pm the pilots got a weather report from Yichun, the visibility was 9200 feet and fog was rolling in. Within a few minutes the pilots got their decision height: it was 1400 feet. When they hit 1400 feet if they didnt have the runway in sight theyd have to go around no questions asked and that night that seemed like a real possibility as they couldn't see that far out due to all the fog. On their way to runway 30 the pilots overflew the airport and got a good view of the terrain in and around the airport. The controller also could see the plane clearly before it disappeared into the fog. In the cockpit the first officer remarked that the runway was very bright. As they flew away from the airport the pilots began the turn to line up with the runway and the controller issued their landing clearance. The pilots searched for the runway through the thick fog.

As the plane started to descend towards the runway the captain disengaged the autopilot and began to fly the plane manually through the fog. They kept trying to find the runway through the fog but it was of no use. Then in the cockpit the radio altimeter started to sound, 50 , 40 , 30 , 20 , 10 and then nothing. Flight 8387 had crashed short of the runway and in the control tower the controllers could see fire in the direction that the plane was coming in from. The controllers tried to contact the plane but they received no reply whatsoever. Flight 8387 had gone down right outside yichun airport and 96 occupants; 52 people survived.


Even though rescue efforts were started immediately and more than 1000 personnel were mobilised within a short span on time it wasnt enough to save a lot of people onboard. In fact the city health department called up more than 90 doctors to provide each patient with individual care. But unfortunately that wasn't enough.

When the investigation started one of the first things that they did was look at the airline that was operating the flight, henan airlines. It turned out more than 100 pilots at shenzhen airlines the parent company of henan airlines had faked their experience. Thats not all some pilots were not too keen about implementing the standards set out by henan airlines. These pilots would have large deviations from their glide slopes, huge descent rates. In fact overruns are a common occurrence at henan airlines.