ATSB air accident investigators could know as soon as this afternoon what sort of incident they are dealing with after an Emirates A345 with more than 230 people on board was severely damaged on taking off from Melbourne Airport on Friday night.
Was it badly flown? Did one or more cargo containers break loose during the take off roll? Did an engine fail? Were the pilots blind sided by incorrect load data? Was it superbly flown, as many believe, in dealing with an unexpected crisis at a moment when the jet was moving too fast to safely stop?
Whatever the reasons and sequence of events, one thing is indisputable. This was the most serious incident ever to happen without loss of life in airline operations in Australia.
And it is fortunate it didn’t happen flying out of Sydney instead, because of the 50% chance that a well loaded jet making a 14 hour flight would have departed toward the rising ground of inner western suburbs, or hit the container storage yards just outside the airport.
When flight EK 407 belted off the end of the runway it used at Tullamarine doing close to 280 kmh it took out an instrument landing system antenna at a point about 150 centimetres above the ground, with the underside of its tail.
The ground beyond sloped downwards. With its nose pointed high and its engines blasting tracks in the grass , it missed a brick building by as little as 50 cms.
The ATSB has recovered the various flight data and cockpit voice recorders from the jet and is believed to be interviewing the flight crew. Assuming the data recorders are in perfect condition, a really good overview of the events including during the subsequent emergency landing at Melbourne should be readily available to the investigators.
The jet is known to have experienced as least one but possibly three or more tail strikes during its takeoff roll. The jet has been severely damaged, broken down to the underlying ribs or stringers in one area, in a part of the structure where the critical rear pressure bulkhead may also have been damaged.
Anecdotal clues so far include a reference by one of the pilots to the possibility that cargo had shifted. This would have played havoc with control of the jet, or did a sudden upward pitch in the jet initiate a roll back by a container making things much worse? One passenger is quoted as saying he saw an engine fail. But that alone would not have prevented the flight taking off well before hitting the antenna.
Like the overwhelming proportion of jet aircraft departures made today, the Emirates jet is believed to have been making a reduced thrust takeoff. These are almost universally used by airlines to save fuel and reduce airport noise. They are certified as safe even in the event of an engine failure because the procedure is set to ensure that even then, the aircraft will become airborne and clear any obstacles near the end of the runway.
There have been numerous incidents similar to the EK 407 accident involving different types of passenger and freighter aircraft. A severe tail strike incident by a Singapore Airlines 747 several years ago in Auckland was caused by the pilots not being given the correct weight and load information.
Emirates was severely criticised by the South African equivalent of the ATSB after another superficially similar incident at Johannesburg on 9 April 2004, when two inexperienced A340-300 pilots smashed their jet through the landing lights at the end of the main runway and managed a safe return.
However until the ATSB reveals more nothing is really clear.
Unless of course, someone in the container loading detail at Melbourne Airport has run away to join the French Foreign Legion.
7 Comments
I thinked it stalled.
Reduced thrust takeoffs do not reduce fuel burn; in fact they increase it a little by taking longer to reach altitude. They are used to reduce thermal engine wear.
Stalled? If it stalled we would be counting bodies.
well written Ben. Better than most reports on the mainstream media. Odd how they’ve not covered it as they would have if it was QANTAS, yet it was a very close call and could have ended up with many fatalities. I would put my bets on miscalculated Vr or wrong weight calculations not being double checked – await the ATSB report – it will be very sobering reading !
Ben, I see you’re getting a bit of flack on pprune about your choice of headline – I think it’s spot on personally, although the TAA 727 vs CP DC-8 Super collision at Sydney gives it a close run.
I did think about that incident, and two others at Sydney as well, but the real test of a non fatal airliner accident is a jet that slams into something.
The Malaysia Airlines double pod strike at Melbourne only had 170 or 180 passengers on board. Only! Emirates had 225 passengers, four pilots, and I guessing here, at least six cabin crew.
There was no damaged to either airliner involved in a late 80s or early 90s incident at Sydney where a Cathay Pacific 747 that was in the process of taking off had an empty 747 towed across the runway ahead it it. The CX jet was rotated early, sort of hopped over the other jet, which I think was a Qantas 747, settled toward or even onto the runway beyond, and then continued its somewhat spectacular takeoff to Hong Kong.
If memory is correct, a few years later, I think in the early 90s, there was a triple near miss involving a Thai DC-10, an Ansett A320 and a Qantas 747. The Thai jet had been landing from the south and been told to hold short of the intersection of the (then) two runways. The Ansett A320 had priority in landing from the NE on the east-west runway, and the Qantas 747 was holding near the intersection with a full load. When the Ansett pilots realised the Thai jet wasn’t going to stop where instructed they began a go around. They missed the protruding nose of the Thai jet by about 20 feet. Had they hit it given the proximity of the Qantas jet, there was a serious risk of a disaster that would have engulfed three jets and around 700 passengers. In a story in The Bulletin a Qantas source was quoted as saying that the pilots had advised the cabin crew to prepare for a full evacuation as they feared a collision could occur.
But there was no contact between the jets. Although a serious incident, I think the limits were pushed a lot harder by EK 407 than any other non fatal incident in Australia so far.
Thanks for the tip off about Pprune. It can be entertaining at times. I had a look today at the main thread on the Emirates incident and that seemed to contain some knowledgeable speculation in the last few pages as to what could have caused the incident. The other stuff is just sand pit nonsense, which you is inevitable on all open forums.
Well Ben, As we all Know! There was no movement of uld’s in the cargo holds! Nor has anyone who loaded the aircraft run away to join the French Foreign Legion! Yes, when you make calculation for a reduced thrust take off you want to make sure the crew, input the right take off weight figures . You would not want to be 100,000 kg out or i guess you could find your aircraft dragging it balls along the ground while it is trying to rotate after its covered more than 3657 metres of runway.You should know better than anyone that if this accident had anything to do with ramp staff it would of been front page news within hours because that would of been a very easy target. Your quip about someone running away to join the foreign may be tongue in cheek but its totally uncalled for.