Emergency Qantas landing?

[vitaminp]

An instantaneous fall at 48,000 fpm equates to 480 kts vertically. :shock:

Not going to happen :!:

I thought it sounded a bit fast!

 

[Flashback]

Re: New Qantas Saftey Poll

AAP
7 October 2008
MORE than 60 per cent of Australians believe the safety standards of Qantas have slipped, according to a poll released on the same day as another incident involving the national carrier.
Thirty-six people were hurt, 20 seriously, when a Singapore to Perth international Qantas flight suddenly lost altitude over Western Australia today throwing passengers from their seats.
UMR Omnibus, one of Australia's leading research and polling companies, said it surveyed 1000 people two weeks ago on people's attitudes towards the national carrier.
The results, published on the UMR website, show 63 per cent of Australians believe the airline's safety standards have become worse over the last few years.
This compared with a figure of 52 per cent when a similar poll was conducted in early August.
Women, older Australians, low-income earners and Queenslanders were particularly concerned about Qantas's safety, the study found.
But two in three Australians still believed Qantas was a safe airline to fly with.
The August poll was carried out after two incidents involving Qantas in the previous month.
An exploding oxygen bottle punched a huge hole in the side of a Qantas Boeing 747-400, forcing an emergency landing in the Philippines, while a Qantas Boeing 737-800 returned to Adelaide after a landing gear door failed to retract.
The September poll followed an incident in August involving a Manila-bound Boeing 767, which was turned back to Sydney after developing a hydraulic fluid leak.
UMR managing director John Udding, who was waiting at Perth airport at the time of the incident, had his Qantas flight cancelled because of the Airbus incident.
A UMR spokesman said Mr Udding would have liked to comment but was unavailable as he had been forced to take a late flight to Melbourne rather than his booked Sydney destination.

Aww, no mention of my turn-around flight

 

[meloz]

The runway at Learmonth is concrete. Sorry, just being a smartarse

Actually the runway ends are concrete the other 8,500 feet is ashphalt.

Meloz

 

[Sprucegoose]

It appears that 767-300 VH-ZXC is heading to Learmonth as QF6122 (one of the aircraft that will rescue stranded pax)

YPLM = Learmonth (ICAO code)

Subsequently, QF566 PER-SYD has a delayed departure of 23:15 (scheduled 15:15) due to the -ZXC flying to Learmonth.

Jetstream image from earlier today

My thoughts are with everyone involved :-|

Where can we get copy of latest jetstream from?

 

[Skoogle]

News reports this morning are talking of a system failure, rather than turbulence.

 

[Mal]

THe news articles this morning have all the important information:

"I thought I was going to die".
"terror plunge"
"feared for his life"

And the important thing I'm seeing in all news articles:

People wearing seat-belts were ok.

There is a lesson in that for all of us!

 

[holdenvxman]

Just watching sunrise, an aviation expert on there stating maybe more then just turbulence

Do roof panels move easily in these situations?

 

[Platy]

One report quotes a passenger thus:

"...He said his son had called him when the plane landed to tell him that the lights went out in the plane before passengers heard a loud bang and the aircraft suddenly dropped..."

Raises questions if correctly quoted. Of course the passenger's perceptions may be tainted by the shock of the event experienced.

 

[albatross710]

THe news articles this morning have all the important information:

One commercial Brisbane radio station described "an emergency landing 1,000 kms north of Perth" - they didn't mention that it was on a runway.

I made an assumption that the actual site of the incident would have been more over the Indian Ocean and that Learmonth was the nearest suitable airfield for the forced landing.

Learmonth is a military runway but I recall that the base is non-active. It is on standby for rapid deployments. In our squadron, we went there, used all the facilities, but the base has minimal staff and a large fuel farm. When we were there (a long time ago) there was a fuel tanker driver who doubled as the gardener and storeman. Gate security was a padlock. I think we spent most of our time driving to the bar at the US Navy station, fishing and a small amount of time on aircraft maintenance.

Aerial pic : Google Maps

Alby

 

[oz_mark]

Just watching sunrise, an aviation expert on there stating maybe more then just turbulence

Do roof panels move easily in these situations?

My suspcion is that it was turbulence, but was severe enough to cause some other problem on the aircraft. I suspect this because of the landing after a Mayday, rather than a diversion to deal with injured passengers. i.e. there was something else wrong (or the pilot suspected something else was wong)

 

[Harpoon]

Gotta love how the media jumps all over the maintenance program as the cause already.

You could have a hijacking and they would probably blame poor maintenance...

 

[munitalP]

"Fifteen passengers and crew, who were predominantly at the rear of the aircraft, had suffered serious injuries, including broken bones and severe lacerations, during the drop in altitude." <here>

OK, lets speculate - at the rear, waiting for toilets or in toilets, aircrew with drinks trolleys out - the bang heard by some PAX being the drinks trolley smashing into something... maybe....

Systems failure? Weather radar perhaps failed allowing the aircraft to fly into a vertical air stream pushing the aircraft downwards until the aircraft clears the vertical air stream? I always thought that these aircraft had a N-1 or N-2 redundancy on aircraft systems... hmmmm

I've got lots of flights to Karatha before year end, must keep my seatbelt on....

 

[serfty]

... i.e. there was something else wrong (or the pilot suspected something else was wong)

My thoughts are that the Pilot was very concerned with getting on ground medical assistance for the injured ASAP.

In the short term it may not have been completely clear what the actual extent of the injuries were, so worst case scenario procedure was followed.

 

[oz_mark]

My thoughts are that the Pilot was very concerned with getting on ground medical assistance for the injured ASAP.

Understand the concern, but would that require a Mayday to be called?

 

[munitalP]

My thoughts are that the Pilot was very concerned with getting on ground medical assistance for the injured ASAP.

Especially so with his cabin crew injured as well

 

[NM]

My thoughts are that the Pilot was very concerned with getting on ground medical assistance for the injured ASAP.

And its been reported that some of the injuries were crew, so the ability to provide the required assistance in the air may have been reduced. I would expect an immediate diversion would be standard operating procedure under a situation where so many passengers and crew have been injured.

 

[oz_mark]

I made an assumption that the actual site of the incident would have been more over the Indian Ocean and that Learmonth was the nearest suitable airfield for the forced landing.

International flights that need somewhere to go when Perth is fogged in used to go there quite a bit. I assume they still do.

 

[Platy]

Gotta love how the media jumps all over the maintenance program as the cause already.

You could have a hijacking and they would probably blame poor maintenance...

We must be reading different media, Harpoon! I have personally just read the online articles on the SMH and news.com.au websites and neither attempt to blame maintenance...

 

[NM]

Do roof panels move easily in these situations?

They do when slammed by passenger and crew bodies and other "floating" objects in the cabin.

Just imagine what happens to something like a laptop computer sitting on a tray table under these circumstances. All of a sudden there is a hole in the ceiling panel and then a large bruise on the head of an adjacent passenger.

 

[shearsense]

My first thought was this could explain the presence of a 747 this morning at ADL, instead of the usual A330 to Singapore. But even though the online schedule states a B747 is doing that particular run, I don't recall Jumbos ever doing it before and all other subsequent ADL-SIN flights are still listed as A330s. Possibly QF are an A330 short at the moment while they check it for damage?