Qantas passenger Phill Restall, from Chippenham in the UK, describes how he was woken by a loud bang on flight QF30 to Melbourne which was forced to make an emergency landing after leaving Hong Kong. I was asleep in the business section of the plane. All of a sudden there was a loud bang which woke me up with a jolt. There was a mist coming through the cabin and the oxygen masks discharged.
The cabin crew shouted to everyone to put them on, then they sat down. We wearing them for about 15 minutes until we descended. We went down very rapidly to equalise out the pressure. I guessed it was going down a bit faster than usual. From the little knowledge I have of these things I thought that was what the pilot was doing. No-one panicked, there was no screaming. It wasn’t your typical television movie. Everyone listened to the cabin staff. It was never out of control. Hats off to all of the Qantas staff. That appeared to be the end of the story. The pilot came on and said one of the door’s had “popped”.
Most of us thought “unhinged” rather than not there. He then said we were going to land in Manila to see what damage had occurred. Everyone was fairly calm partly because we didn’t realise the extent.
I was by a window and could see two engines and both were spinning and that was good news as far as I was concerned. Once we had landed and started to disembark it was obvious something major had happened. The hole was wedged up by the luggage. It dawned on a lot of people that this was a major incident. There were 350 people up there who were very lucky. Seeing the hole caused a lot of emotion. People were physically shaking. I think many people realised how close they were to their own mortality.
I don’t often say this but congratulations to the pilot and crew for keeping their cool on this one. I assume the people that lost their luggage won’t be complaining.
Here is a more indepth article: http://tinyurl.com/Shoty-maintenance
I should hope you don’t have cause to say it often.
As usual, this news item reporting raises more questions than it answers.
It hardly matters where maintenance is done==its the airworthiness inspections that count.
Corrosion is either within limits or its not.
Typical to spin a story everywhere except to relevant information.
QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services) has no “U” in it.
[Thanks, fixed. – ed.]
At the risk of sounding negative, I can’t see why one would want to congratulate the crew of a plane who arrived at it’s destination with a big hole in the plane. The plane isn’t supposed to get a hole in it.
To recap:
Arriving with no hole in plane = good.
Arriving with a hole in plane = lessgood
Hmmn, seems to me these planes shouldn’t do that if they’re properly maintained and monitored. Could it be that airlines are reducing maintanence, to hedge higher fuel prices? Maybe it’d be a good idea to wait to fly till the fuel crisis is over (yeah, right) or till the ticket prices are obscenely high (very soon, I expect).
Just trying to save cash on AC.
Looks like they should have removed some metal and replaced it. I’d say the door and most of the frame are missing. I wonder if somebody is about to “retire”.
Qantas has one of the most modern and well maintained air fleets in the world. They don’t lease aircraft from third world airlines and paint their logos on them, like a few I could mention.
Corrosion has been known to cause similar “incidents”:
http://www.kn.com.au/photos/uncategorized/aloha.jpg
[Duplicate comment – Ed.]
#9-I’m sure that fact is very reasurring to those who were on this plane!
Just to be factually accurate, that’s not a cargo door. And #11, it is reassuring to know that Qantas is one of the safest airlines on the planet and one of the only long-lived major carriers to have never suffered a crash. Human beings (and the things they make) are never going to be 100% perfect and it’s disingenuous for people to be so astonished when that is proved by poorly researched news stories. I’m sure you’ve done the best you can at something and still it didn’t turn out the way you hoped. That’s true of most aspects of living a life. The litigious, someone-has-to-pay attitude for everything that happens in our mercurial lives is rather sad. Sometimes shit happens.
# 13 – Harrison
If it’s you, I agree. If it’s me, I don’t think so.
Actually, there is no cargo door where the hole is located. An uncropped version of the photo leading the article shows the forward main cargo door several meters forward of the breach, and safely closed.
There is no door there, leastwise not for humans. There may be small access hatches but they usually latch so that they will not blow open in flight.
Agree with the corrosion hypothesis as a possible issue.
oh boy, the usual uninformed press chatter going on.
Unlike most other industries, aviation has a rigid and well established accident investigation process.
The Australian investigators will work with the local folks and the Honkong investigators – where the plane last took off. Also, Boeing will send their accident investigation crew. Together, they’ll take the thing apart and find any tiny bit of evidence and, no doubt, will find out what has happened.
The media wrote about the 20000ft plunge that the plane took after the rupture as if it had been the main incident or at least a loss of control following the hull breach. It’s a pity that people who know nothing about standard operating procedures are allowed to write about it. The emergency dive is what you do if you have an explosive cabin decompression. The time of useful conciousness at 30000ft is somewhere in the range of 90 seconds iirc if no additional oxygen is provided. After that time, you just slip away, unable to do anything about your situation. That’s why the cockpit crew donns their masks and the oxygen masks for the cabin drop.
The supply doesn’t last long, though, therefore, you have to get to an altitude where there’s actually enough oxygen for humans to survive. 12000ft is considered the maximm altitude for continuous flight without oxygen. Add a safety margin and you have your “plunge” from 30000 to 10000 ft.
If you look at the picture, you’ll see that the actual rupture isn’t all that big. Don’t mistake everything not painted white as the hull breach, in fact, the large missing part is the wing fairing which is, iirc, made of fibre glass and definitively has no structural but only aerodynamic function. the bit where the bags are sticking out is the actual rupture.
I won’t speculate what happens, there’s too many possibilities being tossed around already.
pj
“I assume the people that lost their luggage won’t be complaining.” Give me a break. The vultures…errr… lawyers are probably circling already. Especially with the report of known corrosion.
“I don’t often say this but congratulations to the pilot and crew for keeping their cool on this one.” Maybe you should be congratulating Boeing for crafting an aircraft that did not start to disintegrate with that sort of damage. It’s 17 years old, probably has tens of thousands of take offs and landings and maybe half a million miles on the airframe. Amazing engineering.
“…Qantas is one of the safest airlines on the planet and one of the only long-lived major carriers to have never suffered a crash…”
That is reasurring, I admit. You’re an excellent PR person. I hope they’re paying you.
The sound they heard were peoples collective assholes biting holes through their BVDs.
I agree with pj#16, modern jet aircraft are an amazing piece of engineering. When you next fly…think about this…
A modern 747 400 weighs in at about 330 metric tones about the same as modern 3 bedroom home fitted out, goes from 0 to 800kph in speed, goes from sea level to 7 miles(35000ft+) in the air and travel from Sydney to Los Angeles without refueling, carrying up to 15 busloads of people. It has millions of parts and systems all working to allow flight to happen.
Modern aircraft do this, not once, but tens of thousands of times over 10 to 15 years.
At this stage no one person knows exactly what went wrong…the investigation is still continuing, but what did rightly happened was:
1/. The airframe maintained integrity after decompression.
2/. The in- cabin safety emergency systems functioned.
3/. The flight crew and cabin crew followed their training.
5/. All survived.