The Oil Change That Crashed A Passenger Jet | The Crash Of Smartlynx 9001

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This is the story of smartlynx 9001. On the 28th of february 2018, a smartlynx A320 was over the skies of tallin, estonia. It wasnt flying anywhere it was just a flight to train pilots for the airline.

On that day the plane had a safety pilot, 4 training pilots and a safety inspector onboard and before the flight they had a safety briefing, today each training pilot would get to fly several touch and gos and go-around before doing a full stop landing and switching seats, for a touch and go you approach the runway as you would for a normal landing and then right after touch down you apply full power and take the plane back into the air, it's great practice for pilots as they’d get some great manual flight experience.

The first flight was uneventful, they did the touch and go as normal. But after finishing the takeoff phase of the first touch and go a warning popped up on the screen. ELAC1 + ELAC2 PITCH FAULTs. The ELAC or the elevator aileron computer had an issue, the ELACs as the name suggests controls the elevators and the ailerons, the ELACs take in the sidestick inputs and then move the control surfaces as the pilot commanded. Think of it as a middle man in the chain. The pilot who was monitoring the flight didnt think much of it, read the instructions on the screen to turn the ELAC off and on again and so they did what we all do, they reset the computer to clear the error. Weve all done it, turing it off and then back on fixes a lot of problems and it cleared all caution messages so they continued with their touch and go training

The first student pilot landed his plane and brought the plane to a stop and now the second student pilot assumed control of the plane. As the student number 2 took the plane to the skies the ELAC1 pitch fault error popped up again, and like last time the system was reset as per standard operating procedure at that time. The same happened during the next touch and go. On the fifth touch and go an ELAC2 pitch fault error popped up. This happened again for the 4th students second touch and go, these pitch fault errors kept coming and the resets cleared them but they obviously kept coming back.

It was time for The third touch and go the plane touched down and it was rolling down the runway. The plane then accelerated to 130 knots to lift back into the skies. The instructor asked the student to rotate, he said “rotate rotate” but the plane wouldn't budge, it was stuck to the ground firmly. The pilot replied that was trying his best to raise the nose of the plane into the air. He had his sidestick all the way back demanding a full up elevator to lift the nose up but there was no pitch response at all.

At this point a new warning was shown on the primary flight display a red “manual pitch trim only” the pilots would have to manage the pitch trim on their own. When you trim an airplane the airplane stays in a particular state without any inputs, so let's say you trim a plane up, then the plane will nose up on its own and then stabilize at a certain airspeed. Normally the fly by wire of the A320 does this fully automatically but now the pilots had to manage that on its own and the red “MAN PITCH ONLY” instructed them to do so.