Posted on 07/28/2008 9:30:06 AM PDT by Perdogg
QANTAS'S reputation as the world's safest airline took another blow last night with a passenger jet forced to make an emergency landing after an undercarriage door failed to close.
The Boeing 767-338 flying from Melbourne to Adelaide was forced to turn around 20 minutes after it took off at 5.40pm and make an emergency landing at 6.15pm.
The incident came only three days after a Qantas Boeing 747-400 was forced to make an emergency landing in Manila after a gaping hole was found its fuselage.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
What the heck is going on? Are they hiring third world mechanics like U.S. airlines do? I always thought very highly of Quantas.
It's curious, no doubts.
There was a union despute going on, and lots of jobs were cut...could it be sabotage?
http://business.theage.com.au/business/qantas-slashes-1500-jobs-20080718-3h71.html
I don’t understand why they aborted. A landing gear door shouldn’t be a big deal. It may add a little drag to the airspeed that may cause the flight to use a little more gas and take a few minutes longer to get to its destination.
I’m all for safety, but this sounds like a little bit of an overreaction by the crew.
“There was a union despute going on, and lots of jobs were cut...could it be sabotage?”
Well now, that do put a different light on the subject don’t it?
“I don’t understand why they aborted. A landing gear door shouldn’t be a big deal. It may add a little drag to the airspeed that may cause the flight to use a little more gas and take a few minutes longer to get to its destination.”
How about when they get to cruising speed it rips the door right off and it flies back and damages the rudder or elevators. Nah, nothing to worry about.
“I hate Qantas.”
Well, the company SOP is a possibility, but the drag would be minimal since the doors run fore and aft. Wind noise, I'll concede, there would be some additional wind noise, but not enough to (IMO) cause panic in the cabin.
Having been in this situation, it really isn't as bad as you think. The stresses on the door are minimal since they run fore and aft versus perpendicular to the aircraft's direction of travel. In addition, the doors are quite strong and are designed to be able to withstand the drag forces at cruising speeds. The likelihood is that the passengers would never know that the door was open for the entire flight. A.A.Cunningham probably hit it correctly when he suggested it was company SOP.
Maybe the oxygen bottle from the first plane flew off and hit the landing gear door from the second plane and damaged it while both were criss-crossing over Borneo.
As somebody who was on the flight in question, I can assure you there was a reasonable amount of noise, and also some vibration (although this was minor enough that it might have been normal - and the noise just made me unusually aware of it). No, there wasn't panic in the cabin, but there was enough noise that we knew something wasn't right, and we were quite relieved when told we were turning around.
Thanks for the input, natural. I’m glad everything turned out alright and you (presumably) got home without further incident.
um, because the majority of their flight paths are over the pacific ocean....
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