The Civil Aviation Authority of Macao SAR (AACM) has completed the preliminary report of the Beijing Capital Airlines incident which took place in this August at Macau International Airport. The report stated the factual information about the incident including the sequence of events, the damage to the aircraft, the weather and environment data and so on. It also set out the direction for continuing investigation.

On 28 August 2018, a Beijing Capital Airlines flight destined to Macao from Beijing encountered a hard landing at Macau International Airport when the aircraft touched down heavily on the runway. The captain of the flight conducted miss approach procedures and decided to divert to Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport, where the aircraft landed safely. There were a total of 157 passengers, 3 flight crew members and 6 cabin crew members on the plane. 5 of the passengers encountered minor injuries during evacuation at the Shenzhen airport. The aircraft type is Airbus A320-214. The incident has caused damages to the nose landing gear, the forward fuselage and the two engines of the aircraft.

As the aircraft is registered with mainland China, the investigation is therefore jointly carried out by the aeronautical authorities of both mainland China and Macao. AACM has also invited the aircraft manufacturer Airbus as well as the aeronautical authorities of France, the place of manufacturing of the aircraft to take part in the investigation.

AACM pointed out that the comprehensive investigation is still underway and that the continuing investigation will focus on the wheel debris analysis, the flight data analysis, the flight performance analysis, the crew training and qualifications, the weather and environment influences, the aircraft maintenance history, the air traffic control procedures and so on.

AACM emphasizes that the purpose of an investigation is to find out the cause of the incident so as to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

The preliminary report (English text) is published on the official website of AACM www.aacm.gov.mo. Readers can go to the website and access to “Reporting Forms” inside the “Application/Reporting” Chapter. Readers may also go directly to the following link to gain access to the report: https://www.aacm.gov.mo/apply.php?t=3&pageid=102&lg=eng