TAP Flight 425: the night a Boeing 727 ran off Madeira's runway

Shortly before ten o'clock on the night of Saturday 19 November 1977, a TAP Boeing 727 was trying to land on Madeira in a storm. Flight TP425 had come from Brussels, with a stop in Lisbon. Twice the crew had tried to land at Santa Catarina airport, near Santa Cruz, and twice they had lost sight of the runway in the rain and pulled away.2 sources2 sources

The captain, João Lontrão, knew he had one more try before he would have to divert to Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands. When the tower suggested he hold for a while until the shower passed, the reply from the cockpit was that there was fuel for only one more approach.3 sources3 sources

On the third approach, to runway 24, the wheels met the tarmac far beyond the normal touchdown point, on a short, wet runway in heavy rain. At 9.48 pm the aircraft ran off the end and dropped onto an old stone bridge 28 metres below. It broke apart. The tail section stayed on the bridge; the rest of the fuselage fell another 14 metres onto the rocky beach and burned.2 sources2 sources

Of the 164 people on board, 33 lived. It remains the worst accident in the history of the Portuguese airline TAP. In the years that followed, Madeira's runway was lengthened twice.3 sources3 sources

Madeira's airport was built on the island's east side, mostly in the municipality of Santa Cruz, with part of the runway later reaching into neighbouring Machico. Earthworks for the site began on 5 June 1961 at a road junction in the parish of Santa Cruz, and the demolition of a house was the first symbolic act.2 sources2 sources

The Funchal studio Perestrellos Photographos recorded the first day of work, in photographs attributed to Raul Martins Perestrello, and the Diário de Notícias printed one the next morning. The negative is now in the Museu de Fotografia da Madeira.1 source1 source

The airport opened on 8 July 1964 with a single runway 1,600 metres long and 45 metres wide. It was cut into a hillside and ended almost at the coast at both ends, with no overrun area and nothing to catch an aircraft that failed to stop.2 sources2 sources

For aircraft landing on runway 24, heading south-west, the usable length was 1,540 metres, because the threshold was set 60 metres in from the end. Beyond the far end, the ground dropped to a road, an old stone bridge and a rocky beach.2 sources2 sources

The aircraft, registered CS-TBR, was a Boeing 727-282 Advanced, a jet with three Pratt & Whitney engines, built for TAP in 1975. It carried the name Sacadura Cabral, after the Portuguese aviator of the 1922 flight across the South Atlantic, who had himself died in a flying accident at sea.3 sources3 sources

The flight crew were the captain, his co-pilot Miguel Guimarães Leal and a flight engineer, with five cabin crew. That day they had already flown Lisbon to Brussels and back. TP425 left Lisbon for Funchal at 7.55 pm, with a forecast of isolated thunderstorms on the way and passing showers at the island.2 sources2 sources

Shortly after 9 pm, as the jet came down towards Madeira, the tower reported showers over the airport and visibility down to three kilometres. The first approach, aimed at runway 06, was abandoned when the crew lost sight of the ground. The second, to runway 24, ended the same way at 9.36 pm.2 sources2 sources

At 9.47 pm the tower reported calm wind on runway 24 and cleared the jet to land. It was raining hard: the inquiry later estimated 55.5 millimetres an hour between 9.46 and 9.51 pm.1 source1 source

The flight data recorder showed what happened next. The 727 crossed the threshold at the correct height but at 154 knots, 24 knots above its reference landing speed, known as Vref. TAP's own procedure for Funchal called for Vref plus 10 knots, with up to Vref plus 20 allowed for wind and gusts.1 source1 source

The pilot closed the throttles and the flaps were raised from 40 to 25 degrees, and the jet floated. Its main wheels touched down 628 metres past the threshold, 323 metres beyond the normal touchdown point, at 148 knots. That left 912 metres of wet runway.2 sources2 sources

Almost at once a large movement of the rudder to the left sent the aircraft skidding along the right side of the runway. The spoilers, panels that rise from the wings to kill lift, did not deploy automatically and came out 2.5 seconds late, by hand. About 15 seconds after touchdown the jet left the end of the runway at 78.5 knots, with reverse thrust building.1 source1 source

Landing on standing water can cause aquaplaning, in which a film of water lifts the tyres off the surface. A wheel in that state gives no effective braking and no steering, and the braking grip falls to less than a fifth of that on a dry runway.1 source1 source

Aviation safety specialists list excessive touchdown speed, a touchdown beyond the normal touchdown zone and a runway contaminated by water among the classic causes of a landing overrun. TP425 had the first two, as the recorder showed. The inquiry judged the third possible.2 sources2 sources

The airport's firefighters had been watching the landing. They drove to the end of runway 24, found the burning wreckage far below, and had to go back to the apron to reach the access road. The wind blew their foam back, and the fire was not out for about three hours.1 source1 source

A woman living about 700 metres away first took the noise for thunder, then saw the fire from her roof terrace. Fire engines came from Funchal and the surrounding towns, and the police closed the road to everything but emergency vehicles. Rain and fog made it hard to recover the dead and the wreckage through the night.2 sources2 sources

Most of the survivors were thrown clear when the fuselage broke apart at the bridge, some of them into the sea. A few in the last row of seats stayed in the tail on the bridge, which did not burn, and were lifted out by rescuers. Every survivor was hurt.1 source1 source

The first count, printed in the Funchal paper on 20 November, was 123 dead and 39 injured in hospital. The final count was 131 dead and 33 survivors: 31 passengers and two crew members, all of whom had been in the rear of the aircraft.2 sources2 sources

At the airport, people waiting for the flight had no news, and staff struggled to tell families what had happened. One of the first survivors to reach the terminal was a Belgian passenger who came by taxi and asked that his family be told he was alive. He remembered the first impact, and then waking on the pebbles with seawater around him.1 source1 source

Another survivor, Emanuel Torres, was sitting near the back. He saved a two-year-old child, and forty years later he told his story to the Funchal newspaper Diário de Notícias.1 source1 source

Nine people were never found, among them the captain and the co-pilot. Among the dead were João Melo, his wife Lurdes and their small daughter Mafalda. Forty years later the couple's goddaughter, who was ten in 1977, recalled being told that Mafalda, who loved flying, had clung to her grandmother the day before the trip and had not wanted to go.2 sources2 sources

The tail was the only part of the aircraft not destroyed. By the next morning it had been painted white to cover the airline's markings. The insurers paid for a replacement 727, which joined the fleet in a plain white livery.2 sources2 sources

The President of the Republic, General António Ramalho Eanes, sent a message of deep regret, and a commission of inquiry travelled quickly to the island.1 source1 source

The Minister of Transport and Communications appointed a commission of inquiry on 21 November 1977, and its report was issued by the Direcção-Geral da Aeronáutica Civil, Portugal's civil aviation authority at the time. The US National Transportation Safety Board transcribed the cockpit voice recorder, and Boeing, NASA, the NTSB and TAP each analysed the flight data. Accident investigation in Portugal now belongs to a separate body, the GPIAAF.2 sources2 sources

The final report did not settle on one cause. It described a chain of conditions that together left the aircraft too little runway.1 source1 source

The report listed five probable factors: very unfavourable weather at the moment of landing; the possible existence of conditions for aquaplaning; a landing speed of Vref plus 19 knots; a long landing, caused by a long flare as the aircraft levelled off; and an abrupt correction of direction after touchdown.1 source1 source

The wording was careful. The report did not say the aircraft had aquaplaned, only that conditions for it may have existed. Its evidence was indirect: the wheels had not spun up normally, there were no clear braking marks on the runway, and the jet slowed very little all the way along it. Its tyres showed no sign of skidding on locked wheels.1 source1 source

It found other contributions to the long landing. Raising the flaps before touchdown, the extra speed and the runway's downhill slope of 1% may have stretched the flare. The green lights that mark the touchdown point were switched off, because the wiring did not allow them to run at the same time as the approach slope lights, and their absence may also have played a part.1 source1 source

Not everyone accepted the aquaplaning finding. Some survivors and witnesses rejected it and said the aircraft had braked before it went over the edge. TAP's own internal report, according to Notícias ao Minuto, pointed to the poor condition of the runway, including how it drained water.1 source1 source

The official report did record those problems among its findings: deformations in the surface that stopped water draining sideways in places, rubber deposits, and reduced grip along the centre of the runway. It did not name them among the factors in its probable cause.1 source1 source

Its three recommendations were about better radio aids for approach and landing at Funchal, making every airline respect the airport's landing minima, and better weather observation around the airfield. None of them called for a longer runway.1 source1 source

After the accident, TAP stopped flying the longer 727-200 to Madeira and used only the 727-100, about five metres shorter and with roughly 60 fewer seats. The wreckage stayed on the beach for a long time, and the old bridge where the tail came to rest later disappeared under the runway extension.2 sources2 sources

A month later Madeira's airport saw a second disaster. On 18 December 1977, at about 8.14 pm, a Caravelle jet of the Swiss charter airline SATA, flying from Geneva, came down in the sea on its approach to Funchal. Fishermen who put out at once and the Navy pulled survivors from the water; 21 people reached land alive. Observador gives the death toll as 36.1 source1 source

Early reports blamed the weather again, but the official report on the Caravelle rejected that. It found that the aircraft had been put down on the sea unintentionally during the approach. Its flight below the normal descent path may have come from poor coordination between the pilots and a visual illusion as they looked for the runway lights.1 source1 source

The first extension added 200 metres, swallowing the ground around the old bridge at the end where TP425 had gone over. The 1,800-metre runway came into service on 1 February 1986. Larger aircraft, such as the Boeing 747, needed far more.4 sources4 sources

The second extension, opened on 15 September 2000, took the runway to 2,781 metres. A section 1,020 metres long and 180 metres wide stands on a concrete deck held up by 180 pillars, whose foundations go down as far as 70 metres.2 sources2 sources

The project cost 520 million euros and raised the airport's capacity to 3.5 million visitors a year. The longer runway was built to take aircraft as large as the Boeing 747. The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering gave it an Outstanding Structure Award, and Guinness World Records lists it as the longest bridge-supported runway in the world.1 source1 source

The crash came three and a half years after the revolution of 25 April 1974 ended the dictatorship. When Observador listed six great tragedies of Portugal's democracy in 2017, after the Pedrógão Grande wildfire, the two Madeira air crashes of 1977 came first.1 source1 source

The other four on that list were the Alcafache rail crash of 1985, the crash of a SATA Air Açores plane on São Jorge in the Azores in 1999, the collapse of the Entre-os-Rios bridge in 2001 and the Madeira floods of 2010.1 source1 source

The runway that passengers land on today, on its rows of concrete pillars, is nearly 1,200 metres longer than the one TP425 tried to stop on. Press accounts link both extensions to the crash, although the second came 23 years later and was built for wide-bodied jets.4 sources4 sources

On 29 March 2017 the airport began to use the name of the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo for commercial purposes, while the formal change of designation went through the paperwork needed for international recognition.1 source1 source

For the families, the memory is more personal. In 2015 the children of some of the crew members who died placed a memorial sculpture, made from old aircraft parts, on the seafront promenade at Santa Cruz, close to the end of the runway.1 source1 source