The event that took place [at the Guacimeta airport in June 2007->12431], and which fortunately ended without tragic consequences, was caused by a chain of failures "similar" to the one that caused the Barajas tragedy a year later, according to the United States Air Safety Agency (NTSB). This is reported this Wednesday by the newspaper El País, which maintains that the plane that was about to lose control in Lanzarote, an MD-83 hired by Air Comet with 140 passengers, took off without flaps and the alarm did not sound due to an electrical failure (as in Madrid). The pilots managed to take off by millimeters.
The Spanish Civil Aviation Accidents and Incidents Investigation Commission (CIAIAC) opened an investigation at the time, but more than two years later, it has not yet issued an official report, despite the fact that international regulations recommend preparing them in a maximum of one year. Nor was it based on this event to give alerts or indications to pilots and airlines to react to this type of circumstances. In fact, and unlike the American agency, the CIAIAC does not even cite the Lanzarote case as one of the precedents of the Barajas accident.
However, the United States Air Safety Agency maintains that "the CIAIAC is also investigating an incident similar to the Spanair accident. On June 5, 2007, a Boeing MD-83 with registration OE-LMM, from the company Mapjet as a charter, took off without extending the flaps at the Lanzarote airport. According to the black boxes and statements from the pilots, the takeoff was carried out without the appropriate takeoff configuration and the warning system did not sound of bad takeoff configuration".
The newspaper El País, which revealed the similarities between both cases last October, adds that "the then head of the Mapjet pilots, the American James W. Hudspeth, traveled to Madrid on January 24, 2008 and informed the CIAIAC of what had failed in his plane. The Washington agency knows what happened in the two events and has access to the official investigation, since the manufacturer of the planes (Mc Donnell Douglas, later acquired by Boeing) is an American company. The case was so interesting that the US Aviation Agency (FAA) carried out a simulation on the Canary Islands case in Long Beach (California). In 1987, a Boeing MD-82 had crashed in Detroit for the same reasons and 154 people died".
Despite the common origin of both events, according to the newspaper El País, "there were differences that probably explain why the Lanzarote one was saved. The MD-83 is more powerful than the MD-82, it was less loaded, it had the wind in its face and it was at sea level (the opposite of the Barajas one). These factors allowed the crew to take off despite the fact that they passed very close to a car dealership. Furthermore, in the Barajas one, before applying maximum power, the co-pilot cut the right engine for a second when asking if that turbine was failing, according to the CIAIAC report. The aircraft fell to that side and 154 people died".
