Emirates A340 tailstrike at Melbourne

[Darren Wheeler]

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/as ... 956541.stm

That's one plane out of service for a while.

Luckily no injuries reported.

quote:Originally posted by Darren Wheeler
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/as ... 956541.stm

That's one plane out of service for a while.

Luckily no injuries reported.


Like the VS one that got stuck in Hong Kong for ages ... the longer 777s and 340s seem to be more prone to this ...

[Scrooge]

Actually this one looks a lot worse than the VS one.
This looks like a pretty serious tail strike, lots of damage done to the panels.
The pressure bulk head has to be replaced I would think, the question on that is does Airbus have one in stock ? It was an A345, not the most common of aircraft.

Also the aircraft sustained damage to it's landing gear due to a 'heavy' over weight landing.

It was taking off from runway 16 which is 12000ft in length, it managed to get airborne after leaving the end of the runway, but not before taking out a number of lights and a localizer antenna.

Was that a V Australia 777 in the background?

Not to be too blunt, but this sounds like a serious disaster was narrowly averted - something to do with the talk off calculations being wrong / cargo shifting / over weight or other, but running out of runway, hitting light gear on talk off etc is not a good story and a disaster could have happened.

Apols for earlier mis-post!

quote:Originally posted by Jeffers555
Was that a V Australia 777 in the background?


Yep, certainly looks like one [8D]

There seems to be a lot of incidents happening this year. This could of been a lot worse.

[Bazz]

Interesting piece here by Ben Sandilands.

Scary stuff.
I have taken EK407 from MEL-DXB and from recollection it was a very long take off roll and long climb out. Crew weren't released for ages. I guess with a full pax, cargo and then the fuel there is a fair bit of weight.

I was up n Brisbane last weekend and can say the incident wasn't that well covered in the media here - I first heard about on VF. Which is strange because if QF have any sort of minor incident its front page news.

Will be on EK407 again in a couple of weeks but only the first leg from AKL to MEL.

Interesting twist here

quote:Originally posted by RobL
Interesting twist here


Saw that too Rob, there is speculation and rumour that the cockpit crew entered the wrong information into the plane's computers to calculate the take off roll, or were provided the wrong information and didn't check it - by under-entering the airplane's weight the engines were not able to deliver a normal take off.

Apparently there were four cockpit crew on this flight as an extra two were either flying home or providing training / appraisal. Also speculated that the crew had been pushed out not resigned, pending the ongoing investigation and potentially criminal charges ... time will tell as the AAIB release their findings. So as said, all is rumour.

Another snippet in the local media today see here.

[Scrooge]

quote:Originally posted by RobL
Another snippet in the local media today see here.


The take off under reduced power has nothing to do with this in the context of being a dangerous operation. However if the wrong figures are programmed into the flight systems then all hell can break lose.

This is where the lack of sleep comes in.

I know that the rosters are now being gone over by the Australians along with the amount of rest given, however as the crew on here will agree, while getting sleep at say 11pm - 7am in a hotel is easy, trying to sleep from 11am - 7pm can be hard at the best of times due to the normal hotel operations.

quote:Originally posted by Scrooge

I know that the rosters are now being gone over by the Australians along with the amount of rest given, however as the crew on here will agree, while getting sleep at say 11pm - 7am in a hotel is easy, trying to sleep from 11am - 7pm can be hard at the best of times due to the normal hotel operations.



Yep - people slamming their room doors, cleaners knocking on doors even though the 'Do Not Disturb' sign is up, hotel maintenance work all make sleeping during the day much more difficult.

The Australian TSB released their preliminary report today see media article here.

Interesting interview with one of the pilots.

quote:Originally posted by Tinkerbelle
Interesting interview with one of the pilots.


Very interesting!

Update see here

ATSB interim report here.