Unsolved To This Day : The Hong Kong Mystery

Описание: This is the story of CAAC flight 301. Wow This video is really a blast from the past. CAAC flight 301 was operated by CAAC, an airline that no linger exists, from the old guangzhou baiyun international airport, which no longer exists, to hong kongs kai tak airport which no longer exists using a hawker siddeley trident which as you guessed no longer exists. The world that this flight operated in does not exist anymore and maybe with the way that this flight went thats a good thing.
On the 31st of august 1988, a hawker siddely trident took on 78 passengers at guangzhou baiyun airport for the quick 30 minute hop on over to hong kong. The plane took off with no issues and a little bit past midnight the jet contacted hong kong approach control. The information that they got wasnt encouraging, they had some bad weather in the way. Flight 301 asked the controllers if they could 12 miles to the left of the track to avoid some nasty looking clouds and that request was approved. But the bad news kept coming, the crew at this point were hoping to make an IGS or instrument guidance system approach to runway 13, this is the famous right turn landing that kaitak is known for, an ILS cant be used here because ILS only work for straight in approaches, the 13 at kaitak was anything but straight in. Thats why they had to use an IGS instead of the ILS. ATC now had its work cut out for it as they now needed to accommodate flight 301 on its way into runway 31 and they had planes departing from runway 13.
Heres how all of this would work flight 301 was heading due west and the controller had a departing airport so he would get the plane to fly through the extended center line of runway 31 and then make a right hand turn to get flight 301 onto the localizer. Eventually the plane was asked to turn right to 360 or due north to intercept the localizer and from there it would be a simple landing, well a landing as simple as you can make it in weather this bad.

As the jet lined up with the runway the controllers tried to lock onto the landing jet with precision approach radar, a radar system that would give them precise readings on where the plane was on its approach to runway 31, but the rain was so heavy that it was interfering with the precision approach radar couldnt lock onto the plane, so the controllers let the pilots know that the precision approach control wouldn't be working. The plane was 12 nautical miles from the runway. But the jet was cleared to land as they should still be able to make this approach given the weather at the time. The pilots acknowledged the landing clearance.
As the plane got lower and slower things started to go wrong. The plane was no longer level and the right wing was down so low that the wing started to hit the approach lights. Right as this happened the right main landing gear slammed into the lip of the sea wall. The right main landing gear, its support structure, sections of the wing, and the inboard flaps were ripped from the plane as it slammed into the ground. The left main gear hit the ground and the plane bounced the plane tracked to the right and slid across the airport as what remained of the plane fell into Kowloon bay.
A fire duty officer who was on call that night saw the plane come in at a weird angle and he knew immediately thats something was wrong, he hit the crash alarm and within a minute emergency services were at the wreck. But despite the quick reaction of the airport emergency personnel 6 members of the crew and one passenger died.

Finding out what happened to flight 301 would be a challenge as none of the crew survived the crash and the hawker sidley was not equipped with a cockpit voice recorder. The jet had a very primitive flight data recorder and finding out what had happened from that would be a challenge in and of itself. Thus we dont know what exactly transpired in the cockpit in those final moments but the investigators would try their best to piece together what happened from the little data that they did have.