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SYDNEY—A
Qantas Airways Ltd. aircraft forced to make an emergency
landing on Tuesday experienced “computer problems”
moments before it plunged midflight, injuring more than
30 passengers, investigators said.
Passengers and crew onboard flight QF72 from Singapore
to Perth were slammed into the cabin ceiling when the
A330-300 aircraft abruptly lost altitude. Fourteen
people sustained serious injuries, including concussion
and broken bones, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau
said on Wednesday.
Moments
before the plane dropped, cockpit data indicated some
“irregularity with the aircraft’s elevator control
system,” Julian Walsh, the bureau’s director of aviation
safety investigation, told reporters in Canberra on
Wednesday. The aircraft climbed 300 feet and while the
crew was responding it “abruptly pitched nose-down.”
Qantas
said the incident remained under investigation and that
it was assisting the bureau with the probe. Australia’s
largest airline has experienced other safety scares in
recent months and in September the government ordered
the airline to improve the maintenance of its planes.
The
pilot on Tuesday issued a mayday call and diverted the
plane to Learmonth airport, a remote airstrip near
Exmouth, about 1,300 kilometers north of Perth. The crew
advised authorities they had “experienced flight control
computer problems,” the bureau said in a statement.
Television footage showed some of the 303 passengers on
board being taken off the plane on stretchers, some
wearing neck braces. The Royal Flying Doctor Service
evacuated 14 of those injured to Perth, although none of
the injuries were life threatening, Qantas said.
Perth
Airport said in a statement on Tuesday the flight
experienced “severe clear air turbulence.”
“There
were people just flying everywhere,” the Australian
Broadcasting Corp. (ABC) cited passenger Doreen Bishop
from Oxford, England, as saying. “It just went thousands
of feet down, I don’t know how many.”
Passenger Mark Bell described how a child sitting next
to him was thrown from his seat. “We watched him hit the
ceiling and sit there for about three seconds, until his
dad dragged him back into his seat,” the ABC cited Bell
as saying.
The
incident mainly affected passengers and crew at the rear
of the aircraft and there were no reports of damage to
the plane, Ian Sangston, a team manager for the ATSB in
Canberra, said in a phone interview on Tuesday.
The
carrier hasn’t had a fatal plane accident in its 87-year
history. Its safety record was made famous in the movie
“Rain Man” in which Dustin Hoffman’s character insisted
on flying with the airline.
In a
survey published late Tuesday, 63 percent of Australians
polled said they thought the airline’s safety standards
``have become worse over the last few years,” a rise of
11 percent since August. Two in three Australians
surveyed said they believe Qantas is a safe airline to
fly on.
The
online survey of 1,000 adults was conducted September
19-24 by UMR Omnibus and had a margin of error of plus
or minus 3.1 percentage points.
On July
25, a Qantas aircraft made an emergency landing in
Manila after an oxygen tank exploded, puncturing the
plane’s fuselage at 29,000 feet.
On
August 2, a Qantas flight was forced to return to
Sydney, where the airline is based, soon after takeoff
due to a fluid leak in a wing. A Qantas flight en route
to Melbourne returned to Adelaide Airport after the
doors covering a wheel bay didn’t close following
takeoff, the Herald Sun newspaper reported on July 28.
The
aircraft involved in yesterday’s incident remains in
Learmonth and its flight data and cockpit voice
recorders, systems and maintenance history will be
examined, the bureau said.
A
“flight control specialist” from aircraft manufacturer
Airbus is traveling to Australia to help with the
investigation, the ATSB said.
The
bureau said it was “too soon to draw any conclusions as
to the specific cause of this accident,” while adding it
showed the importance of keeping seatbelts fastened at
all times during a flight. (Bloomberg) |
