Emirates near-miss vanished on radar at Melbourne

The Australian ^ | 12th September 2009 | Cameron Stewart

[naturalman1975]

AN Airbus A340-500 carrying 275 people vanished from sight and was invisible on airport radar screens immediately after a botched take-off at Melbourne airport, in which it came within seconds of disaster.

For a few terrifying moments, those on duty in the airport's control tower had no way of knowing the fate of Emirates Airlines flight 407 after it limped into the air and flew low over houses in the densely populated suburb of Keilor on March 20.

The Emirates plane, bound for Dubai, struggled to take off and then gain altitude after one of its pilots wrongly calculated the weight of the aircraft by 100tonnes.

The tail of the plane hit the runway five times before the captain ordered full thrust at the last minute to lift the Airbus over the airport perimeter fence, knocking out a strobe light and an antenna on the way.

A preliminary report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureaufound pilot error was to blame for the accident, which has been described as the closest Australia has come to a major airline disaster.

[devane617]

I bet someone got a spanking.

[Bahbah]

Whoa, Nellie!

[naturalman1975]

The plane was making a reduced-power take-off, which means it was not taking off at full thrust, a common practice among airlines to save fuel, wear and tear and to reduce noise.

At 49 seconds past 10.30pm the Emirates plane began its roll to the south down the illuminated 3657m runway. In the tower, air traffic controllers became alarmed by the plane's slow speed as it neared the take-off point, but cockpit recordings suggest the pilots did not notice anything wrong.

Yet the crew's actions in the next 11 seconds would save the lives of all those on board.

As the plane roared towards the end of the runway the first officer moved his sidestick to rotate, or lift, the plane's front wheel.

When it did not respond, the captain yelled "rotate" again, and the first officer pulled it at a steeper angle.

Three seconds later the front wheel lifted, but the rest of the plane remained glued to the tarmac. At the same time there was a thump as the plane's tail hit the runway, sending showers of sparks into the night.

For six terrifying seconds the Airbus hung suspended, half up, half down, as it gobbled up what remained of the runway. "I knew we couldn't stop," the captain said later. "At that point I knew we just had to go. I thought I was going to die, it was that close."

The tail of the Airbus hit the tarmac twice more and had reached the end of the sealed runway when the captain took over the controls and threw the engines into full thrust using a rapid acceleration procedure known as TOGA (take-off go-around). For another four seconds the plane still refused to fly. It had now run out of sealed runway and was roaring across the grass leading to the airport perimeter fence, hitting its tail twice more on the grass.

At the last possible moment, the whole plane left the ground, clipping a strobe light and flattening a navigation antenna, before clearing the 2.4m airport perimeter fence and thundering low over the roofs of suburban houses.

[RichInOC]

A hundred tons?

Math FAIL.

When you and your partners get back to the office at the end of your work day and your supervisors hand you letters of resignation...that’s never good.

[Mmogamer]

Didn’t another emirates crew crash a plane just testing it out? Ran it through a wall or something.

[libh8er]

The tail of the plane hit the runway five times before the captain ordered full thrust at the last minute

I thought take off runs are done at full thrust. Or am I wrong ?

[ColdWater]

I thought take off runs are done at full thrust. Or am I wrong ?

It's in the article.

[_Jim]

I thought take off runs are done at full thrust. Or am I wrong ?

I remember this; the discussion on pprune.org website said they budget thrust for weight and other environmental conditions.

[This_far]

They were very lucky with the weight but there's no excuse for...

The tail of the plane hit the runway five times before the captain ordered full thrust at the last minute

The crew must be new to the craft to not have seat of the pants feel for roll out and transition.

[Big Giant Head]

No as mentioned in the article, a aircraft will if able, use a reduced thrust takeoff to save the engines, noise, and wear and tear. If his calculations had been accurate at 100 tons less, it would have been an appropriate power setting.

[MrPiper]

I don’t think the pilot calculates the weight, It should be a done by a loadmaster. Different job.

[shield]

Wonder what nationality that pilot is...if it’s the nationality I think it is...that’s one of those NO SURPRISE...

[Quix]

Is that evidence that the . . . uhhh . . .

camel, goat, little boy

uhhh . . . jockeys

. . . uhhhh . . . need more . . . training . . . in modern technology?

/s

[OldSpice]

 

The earlier incident was of Etihaad. This one is Emirates. Both are different. The latter, in fact, is quite highly rated.

 

As for the pilots' nationalities:

 

 

The devil is in the data

 

 

Cameron Stewart, Associate editor | September 12, 2009

 

At Melbourne airport, a 42-year-old Danish pilot was sitting in the cockpit of his Emirates Airbus with his Canadian co-pilot running through their preflight checklist in preparation for their 14 1/2-hour flight to Dubai.

The captain had been flying for 22 years, including almost five years with Emirates and was familiar with Melbourne airport, having flown there at least four times in the previous six months.

He was also familiar with the Airbus, having clocked up 1372 hours on it. But he was tired. He had flown 98.9 hours in the past month, more than Qantas pilots are allowed to fly and barely short of Emirate's monthly limit of 100 hours. The pilot would later claim to have had only 3 1/2 hours sleep in the previous 24 hours because he was "out of whack" despite spending the previous 24 hours resting in Melbourne.

His Canadian first officer was less experienced, having spent 425 hours on the A340-500, but he would be responsible for take-off.

In the cockpit with them were two other Emirates pilots, who would take the second half of the long-haul flight. Behind them the wide-bodied jet was beginning to fill up with passengers. It was the usual assortment of holiday-makers, businesspeople and those for whom Dubai was a transit to other parts of the globe.

One of these was Roman Korobitson, who was travelling with his wife Irena and their two-year-old son to a family reunion in Russia.

 

Excerpted. Read more at:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,26056145-23349,00.html

 

[shield]

Oh my...well today is 911 and I remember oh so well as we all do those flights attacking America...so I could not resist.

[OldSpice]

Nah... what you said, applied to the earlier Etihaad incident that someone mentioned above.

Have a go at it, it's quite a read:


THE TALE OF THE ARAB FLIGHT CREW

http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/3207/85/

 

 

The brand spanking new Airbus 340-600, the largest passenger airplane ever built, sat in its hangar in Toulouse, France without a single hour of airtime.  Enter the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies (ADAT) to conduct pre-delivery tests on the ground, such as engine runups, prior to delivery to Etihad Airways in Abu Dhabi.  The date was November 15, 2007.

The ADAT crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with a virtually empty aircraft.  Not having read the run-up manuals, they had no clue just how light an empty A340-600 really is.

The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc.) Then one of the ADAT crew decided to pull the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm.

This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.

The computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The ADAT crew had no idea that this is a safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on.

Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, so the $80 million brand-new aircraft crashed into a blast barrier, totaling it.

The extent of injuries to the crew is unknown, for there has been a news blackout in the major media in France and elsewhere.  Coverage of the story was deemed insulting to Moslem Arabs.  Finally, the photos are starting to leak out.




 

I've heard of a Snopes article making some corrections to the data above, however.

[The Duke]

I remember this; the discussion on pprune.org website said they budget thrust for weight and other environmental conditions.

Why does that old addage of "penny wise and pound foolish" come to mind?