Royal Air Maroc Express Flight 439

On 9 July 2018, an ATR 72-600 operating Royal Air Maroc Express Flight 439 failed to land at Al Hoseima airport in foggy weather and poor visibility, striking the sea near the runway and going around immediately afterwards.

The accident

The ATR 72, registration CN-COH, was scheduled to operate four flights on 9 July, Casablanca - Al Hoseima - Tangier - Al Hoseima - Casablanca.

During the first flight, at an altitude of 16000 ft, an error message from the EGPWS system appeared, TERRAIN FAULT, i.e. a momentary loss of the system. The problem was attributed to the poor GPS connection in the area and indeed, five minutes later, the error cleared. The aircraft was to land on runway 17, which had an MDA (Minimum Descent Altitude) of 1030 ft. Although he had no visual contact with the runway, the captain, who was pilot flying on that leg, decided to continue, dangerously approaching the sea. The GPWS then activated, at a height of 60 ft. The captain reacted, applied power to the engines and pulled back the control column, bringing the aircraft to 108 ft, after reaching a minimum height of 45 ft. Having landed at the airport, the pilots prepared for the second leg, to Tangier, which turned out to be normal.

At the latter airport there was an exchange between the captain and the first officer, a briefing for the approach to Al Hoseima, since the actual flight would be short. The approach would be VOR/DME, again on runway 17. This would lower the MDA to 760 ft. The captain said that they would descend to 400 ft if the runway was not in sight before the MDA, up to 2 nautical miles from the VOR. Only in that case would they proceed with a "Go-around". He also accepted the request of the first officer, who argued for deactivating the GPWS, since on the first flight it had seemed not to work correctly.

When they reached the last phase of the flight, the landing, they followed what had been decided in Tangier; the tower had reported that the clouds were at a height of 600 ft, as the captain already knew. At 400 ft, however, the runway was still not in sight, and the captain decided to descend further, with a vertical speed of 1000 ft/min and a flap configuration of 30 degrees. They soon reached and passed the 300 ft threshold. The first officer noticed this, "this is not normal" he said, "I'm taking it in manual" he continued, disengaging the autopilot. They were at a critical height of 80 ft and the co-pilot had applied power to the engines, pulling the control column towards himself. However, having noticed this, the captain pushed the control column forward, in effect cancelling the first officer's action. The aircraft struck the sea twice, with vertical accelerations of 3.2g and 3.9g respectively. The captain then let go of the control column and the aircraft climbed. He informed the tower that they would divert the aircraft to Nador airport, lying in response to the control tower's request about the reasons, saying they had had a bird strike.