On August 20, 2011, First Air Flight 6560, a Boeing 737-210C operating a charter flight from Yellowknife to Resolute Bay in Canada’s Nunavut territory, was approaching its destination when a series of small errors and missed warnings turned an otherwise routine landing into a fatal controlled flight into terrain.
The aircraft, registration C-GNWN, carried 15 people — 11 passengers and four crew members. At about 11:41 a.m. local time, while approaching Runway 35 at Resolute Bay Airport in poor visibility, the aircraft struck a hill approximately 1 nautical mile, or 1.9 kilometres, east of the runway. The Boeing broke apart into three major sections and a fierce post-crash fire consumed much of the centre section. Twelve people, including both pilots and both flight attendants, died. Three passengers survived with serious injuries.
The flight had departed Yellowknife at 9:40 a.m. and was being flown under instrument flight rules. Weather reports received shortly after departure indicated deteriorating conditions at Resolute Bay, but the crew decided to continue rather than divert. The flight itself was uneventful until the approach.
During the descent, the crew made the final turn toward Runway 35 and reported being about 10 nautical miles from the airport. Because of the poor visibility, the approach was being conducted using the airport’s ILS. The system was functioning normally; investigators later confirmed that another aircraft successfully used the same ILS to land about 20 minutes after the crash.
But Flight 6560 was no longer tracking the runway correctly.
The Boeing’s autopilot had been properly configured to capture and follow the localizer, which provides lateral guidance toward the runway. During the turn onto final approach, however, an inadvertent movement of the captain’s control column caused the autopilot to disengage from its VOR/LOC tracking mode. It reverted to maintaining the aircraft’s existing heading.
The aircraft therefore continued flying roughly straight ahead instead of turning toward the runway centreline. It gradually drifted to the east of the intended approach path…..
