This is the story of Piakistan international airlines flight 8303. On the 22nd of may 2020 almost 4 years ago at the time of recording this video, Pakistan and the world at large was emerging from the first wave of the Covid 19 pandemic. Due to the pandemic, travel and movement had been restricted on a global scale not seen in decades. But on the 22nd the worst seemed to be behind us some countries had started to open up, pakistan was one of them. Hence the flight from lahore to karachi. The A320 took off with no issues and within no time it was closing in on karachi, the pilots were in touch with karachi control and they assigned the Nawabshah 2A STAR or standard terminal arrival or star to runway 25L. Think of a STAR as an airway to get near an airport. The first officer who was flying decided to take the plane down. At 9:15 am local time the pilots wanted to get down to 10,000 feet, the controllers cleared them in and asked them to fly directly to the waypoint makli. This meant that they wouldn't have to fly the nawab shah STAR and this was shorter, heres the MAKLI and nawabshah approaches compared.
In the cockpit the pilots programmed the FMS or the flight management system for the ILS-Z approach to runway 25L. At 9:23 am the controllers came on and said “Pakistan 8303 contact Approach 125.5” but there was no reply. Target tried again no reply they tried again no reply. After three attempts the controllers tried to get a plane nearby to relay a message to the A320 but still nothing. Then out of options the controllers called flight 8303 on the guard frequency. The guard frequency for those of you that dont know is a frequency that is monitored by all pilots and controllers its there for emergencies, but 8303 still hadnt repoded after 2 calls then after the third call they came on and said ““Strength 2 sir confirm changeover to 126.5” contact was reestablished with flight 8303. Once the jet had been handed over to Karachi approach, karachi approach cleared themm all the way down to 3000 feet. By this point the jet was at MAKLI, the way point that we were talking about but there was just one small problem, they were way higher than they needed to be. You see by the time they hit makli the jet needed to be stabliszed at 3000 feet. Flight 8303 was all the way up at 9000 feet. The controllers chimed in and asked ““Pakistan 8303 confirm track mile comfortable for descent?” which basically translates to “you sure you guys can make this” the pilots just reply with affir. In the cockpit theres confusion the captain said “what has happened” take out the hold”, referring to the holding pattern on that they should have done to lose altitude. The first officer just replies with ““Hold taken out, should we report this happening?” and the captain just says “No, this could be due to Hold tell Karachi Approach that established on localizer”. The captain wanted to go ahead with the landing. In a normal landing youre supposed to come in towards the runway at a shallow 3 degree angle. Flight 8303 was no where near that they were almost at 6 degrees. Now this meant that theyd have to intercept the glideslope from above. While this isnt uncommon its much harder than intercepting it from below. To get down fast the pilots extended the speed brakes, increasing drag on the plane. Karachi tower was watching all of this unfold and called up karachi approach on the hotline to let them know that 8303 was way too high. The approach controller just said that hed let them orbit for a bit to lose altitude. But despite the speed brakes being out, the plane was still too high when they were 10nm from the runway. They were supposed to be at 3000 feet but instead they were at 7239 feet. But the pilots were committed to this landing as they dropped the gear at this point and dropped the nose in an attempt to get down in time. The plane was now 7.4 degrees nose down. Karachi approach at this point out of concern said ““Sir, orbit is available if you want”, the response was ““Negative sir, we are comfortable we can make it Insha-Allah”