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This is the story of air canada flight 646. On the 16th of december 1997 an air canada CRj 100 Er was on the way from pearson international airport to fredericton international airport in new brunswick canada. The plane had 42 people on board including two infants. On this day the first officer was the one flying and he had some bad news waiting for him, the weather at fredericton wasnt the best. The visibility at landing would be 1/8th of a mile, this would mean that the runway would be hard to spot even thought the lights would be set to maximum intensity.But pilots are trained to deal with situations like these and so this shouldnt be a problem for the pilots. Especially when the pilots would be making an ILS approach to runway 15 at frericton. When the plane was getting close to fredericton the pilots handed the plane off to the autopilot. As the plane cut through the thick fog the pilots in the cockpit were trying to peer through the fog to get a glimpse of the runway. Then when the plane was just 300 feet off of the ground the captain started to see the glow of the runway through the fog. If this kept up they should break through the fog at any moment and then should just be able to land. At this point they were 100 feet above their decision height and when they hit 100 feet the captain called lights in sight and the first officer said that he was continuing with the landing. You see if the pilots do not have the runway in sight when they hit the decision height then they must go around, no questions asked. Now if youre making a CAT III approach then you can basically land blind but in this case they were not making a CAt III approach so had they not seen the lights of the runway then they would have had to go around. At 165 feet above the airport the first officer disconnected the autopilot and began hand flying the plane. As the autopilot was disconnected the plane started to drift above the glidepath, the captain was concerned and started to coach the first officer a bit to get the plane back on glide. The first officer killed power to the engines in an attempt to get the plane back on the glideslope. Keep in mind as all of this was happening the plane was only 80 feet off of the ground. It was at this point that the captain had realized that the plane was to the left of the extended centerline. The captain had no idea how far down the runway they were this landing was no longer viable and so the captain decided to call for a go around. The first officer pushed the engines to max power and selected the go around mode on the flight director. The first officer pitched the nose up at 10 degrees and acknowledged the go around. Just seconds after that happened the stick shaker went off, this meant one thing. The jet was close to a stall and the pilots did not have a whole lot of time to save the plane. They had no idea why the plane was so close to a stall, they should be climbing away and picking up speed but that was not happening. The captain called for go around flaps and a tone was played in the cockpit signifying that the stall protection system was active. But the plane was already stalling and there was nothing that the pilots could do the plane banked sharply to the right and then and the right wing started to scrape down the runway The plane rolled level and then hit the runway again this time in about 20 degrees of right bank. This time the plane came crashing down and as the plane dragged along the runway the plane lost all electrical power except for the emergency lighting. As the plane dragged along the runway the plane left the runway entirely after the intersection of both runways to the right and then plowed through the snow and went on for another 1000 feet and finally came to a stop next to a hill in the snow. Thankfully all onboard survived.
At the end of the day we have a landing that somehow went horribly wrong, and it was upto the TSB to find out what happened. As soon as the investigation got under way the weather was an immediate culprit in this accident, it was foggy it was dark and it was snowing a deadly combination that are the just right for a crash. Immediately it became clear that the 100 foot cloud ceiling and the 1/8th mile visibility at fredericton was lower than the limits permitted but this landing was allowed to go ahead because the RVR or the runway visual range was 1200 feet, the bare minimum needed to perform a landing. So by all accounts this landing was being very close to being made non viable by the weather. This meant that the crew made the right decision in continuing the landing they had the runway lights in sight and the weather was on