2 Aircraft "Below safe Altitude" approaching OOL

[docjames]

Interesting snippet online today:

Passenger planes dropped too low over Gold Coast: ATSB

Air safety authorities are investigating why two passenger planes dropped below safe altitudes over the Gold Coast.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau says the incidents are "serious" and the subject of a full investigation.
Registration records show one of the planes was an AirAsia X plane, enroute from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

The 330-seat Airbus dropped "below the radar lowest safe altitude" over the Gold Coast at 7.30am on May 4, the ATSB said.
At the the time, the plane was flying on instruments due to poor visibility.
The ATSB said it was also investigating a similar incident involving the same aircraft type on May 3.
No-one was injured in either incident.

 

[anat0l]

Media beat-up?

Either that or I would think some of the blame must lie outside the flight deck.

 

[markis10]

A LCC with CRM issues, novel concept

 

[NM]

Media beat-up?

Either that or I would think some of the blame must lie outside the flight deck.

ATSB seem to think its a serious issue.

 

[docjames]

Weird that they list an incident the prior day, but no details other than "same aircraft type" - does that mean same operator subset (ie A330-343E), or same family only(A330).

There are two carriers to my knowedge operating 330s to OOL.

I dont think it's a media beatup when it's been listed by the atsb and the report was purelty factual.

Here's the atsb page:

AO-2010-027

 

[samh004]

On the radio this morning they claimed both were AirAsiaX a/c, but it was just a blurb. I was interested to find out exactly where they’d gone too low, but I was also interested in sleep too. I know I’ve occasionally looked up at a/c flying over my house that have seemed to me to be very low.

I looked up what happened on WebTrak and all I can see is an A330 with 2 missed approaches that later heads North, presumably to BNE? In fact it does later land in BNE.

 

[markis10]

Sam,

They went to low near Kingscliff, if you look at the approach around 7.36 it does look odd!

 

[docjames]

Sam,

They went to low near Kingscliff, if you look at the approach around 7.36 it does look odd!

It was a solid 250-300m lower (450-500m vs 750-800m) than the JQ aircraft that passed over Kingscliff whilst it was having it's missed approaches. Interestingly the JQ aircraft seemed to land, then the AAX a/c required a divert to BNE.

Cant quite find the issue from the day before (I found a JQ 320 that landed shortly before the AAX flight @ ~730am) - landings were from the North and if anything, the JQ flight was lower around Miami (just).

 

[drron]

There was a previous incident with Air asia diverting to BNE when DJ and JQ were able to land.That one caused a few hours delay for pax in BNE as they had no staff there.Has that been addressed.

 

[anat0l]

There was a previous incident with Air asia diverting to BNE when DJ and JQ were able to land.That one caused a few hours delay for pax in BNE as they had no staff there.Has that been addressed.

My guess is on 'no'; why would you have staff there to deal with it? My guess is that they would have had to either handle issues remotely (e.g. arranging buses to get back to OOL from BNE), or they had to rush skeleton staff up to BNE to handle these processes.

What does an airline normally do when it is forced to land in an airport where it has absolutely no support? (Can't be a completely remote scenario)

 

[markis10]

My guess is on 'no'; why would you have staff there to deal with it? My guess is that they would have had to either handle issues remotely (e.g. arranging buses to get back to OOL from BNE), or they had to rush skeleton staff up to BNE to handle these processes.

What does an airline normally do when it is forced to land in an airport where it has absolutely no support? (Can't be a completely remote scenario)

They use JQ staff, as per the recent sharing agreement between the two airlines I suspect, it was an operational agreement.

 

[drron]

My guess is on 'no'; why would you have staff there to deal with it? My guess is that they would have had to either handle issues remotely (e.g. arranging buses to get back to OOL from BNE), or they had to rush skeleton staff up to BNE to handle these processes.

What does an airline normally do when it is forced to land in an airport where it has absolutely no support? (Can't be a completely remote scenario)

Problem is the Pax have to go through Customs and Immigration.Air asia would have to pay for a gate at the International terminal I guess.That definitely not part of the LCC business plan.

 

[markis10]

Problem is the Pax have to go through Customs and Immigration.Air asia would have to pay for a gate at the International terminal I guess.That definitely not part of the LCC business plan.

No big deal, they pay a passenger handling charge which is cheaper at OOL rather than at BNE, bit cheaper than burning kero going around in circles.


International per passenger both inbound & outbound - Gold Coast
Terminal usage charge $3.95
Aeronautical passenger charge $5.50
Security screening $1.60
General security levy $0.40
Baggage infrastructure charge $0.75
LAGS (Liquid Aerosols and Gasses) $1.15
CUTE (departing only) $0.27


Brisbane charge $22.12 per passenger or 2x OOL

 

[markis10]

It's been some time but the ATSB have finally done their investigation, with AirAsiaX agreeing to review their training:

http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...10/aair/ao-2010-027.aspx#.TzRcVDRDvTA.twitter

While those operational non-compliances occurred prior to the final approach fix for the instrument approaches and not below 1,200 ft above aerodrome height, they were indicators of a minor safety issue regarding the operator's training of its flight crews.
In response to this incident, the aircraft operator made a number of changes to flight crew procedures when conducting instrument approaches. The operator also modified the recurrent simulator training program to include more complex non‑precision instrument approaches.