Episode 45 - The Pitot-Tube Loving Mud-Dauber Wasp and Birgenair Flight 301

. This is episode 45 – the Pitot-Tube Loving Mud-Dauber Wasp and Birgenair Flight 301, an episode that follows an email from one of my listeners, Dr Athayde Tonhasca. HE is a Brazilian entomologist working for Scottish Heritage in the United Kingdom.

He’s going to help me tell the story of Berginair Flight 301 which crashed in February 1996.

Wasps are fascinating creatures, many are solitary and their nest building skills are legendary. This episode is all about the dangers of these remarkable creatures and how they’ve affected global aviation. Birgenair Flight 301 was a chartered flight by Turkish-managed Birgenair partner Alas Nacionales from Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic to Frankfurt in Germany. It was on a two stop route, first in the Canadian town of Gander, followed by a second across the Atlantic in Berlin, Germany. The aircraft was a 12-year-old Boeing 757-225, registered as TC-GEN, which had been stationed at Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic for 25 days. The flight was originally scheduled to be flown with a Boeing 767, but maintenance problems on the original 767 prevented its use, so just 2 ½ hours before Flight 301 was due to take off, TC-GEN - the Boeing 757 was substituted, and a new crew was assigned. The Boeing took off at 23:42 local on 6th February 1996 for the first leg of the flight, heading north easterly out over the Atlantic. It was a black hole situation, completely dark, no clear sight of the horizon. This was going to compound the challenges facing the pilots. At 23:47 AST, the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) sounded - eight seconds later the plane plunged into the Atlantic Ocean at a speed of 220 knots. All 189 occupants were killed, and the Boeing was destroyed on impact. Search and Rescue teams were mobilised. The Dominican Republic General Directorate of Civil Aviation investigated the accident and quickly came to the conclusion that the pitot tube was behind the catastrophe. They also concluded that the probable cause of the obstruction was likely to have been mud from a small insect that built a nest inside the pitot tube during the three weeks it was on the ground in Puerto Plata. Pilots and operators knew about that risk.