The turn back to Auckland of a Qantas 737-400 that had just departed for Brisbane on Saturday because it developed a cabin pressure problem wasn’t worth any of the space it was given in news media.
If it hadn’t turned back that would have been a story. Maybe even a story featuring ‘land ho’ being reported from the life rafts as they came within sight of say Byron Bay, in the least likely of a number of remotely possible scenarios.
The pilots simply reacted in the normal way to what has remains a persistent issue in airliners since pressurisation became widely used from the late 1940s. It doesn’t always work.
Or it waits until the flight is somewhere really awkward, such as being at high altitude over Afghanistan, and then ceases to work.
When this happens the flight descends to at least 13,000 feet and if possible, somewhat lower, while the pilots decide where to land. Everyone gets to use, or share, an oxygen mask, unless you are in a very small turbo prop where emergency oxygen units at seats are not a compulsory requirement and rarely fitted even as a customer option, in which case you can go blue in the face until a suitable altitude is reached, but this takes a much shorter time in a typical commuter flight than it does in a jet somewhere above 30,000 feet.
(I’ve flown unpressurised to 16,000 feet around Mt Blanc in helicopters and small turbo-props without noticing any oxygen issues, yet seen people variously collapse or show distinct facial discoloration at around 13,000 feet at the top of high alpine cable car stations and on one occasion, after a landing at the south pole during a spell of low barometric pressure.)
Cabin depressurisations are included in calculating flight plans for most longer range airline operations, because once a jet has to continue its journey at reduced altitude it also experiences higher fuel burn, and this in turn can limit the options it may have for diverting to another airport if the nearest one, or its destination, at the end of an over ocean route gets closed by bad weather.
The Qantas crew noticed that cabin pressurisation wasn’t working fully only minutes after departure when the flight to Brisbane had climbed to 25,000 feet. While passengers wouldn’t have noticed anything at that stage turning back was the only option.
Pressing on with the risk that the system might completely fail, at say, at 36,000 feet with two hours remaining to Brisbane would have been unprofessional.
3 Comments
They are not “QANTAS” crew, they are “Jetconnect” crew operating under contract to QANTAS!
Mulder,
True. This is an important point in relation to Qantas creating contracted subsidiary entities to lower the costs of honouring work place arrangements current for Qantas staff.
However the public are not sold a Jetconnect brand. They are sold the flight as a Qantas flight, in a jet painted in Qantas livery, and in consumer law, Qantas is the responsible for everything and in every detail for anything they sell as a Qantas product.
Yes, I agree it may well be a means of Qantas attempting to undermine Australian workplace agreements.
However, surely the ticket is an annotated “operated on behalf of Qantas by Jetconnect”?
If not, how can the customer be sure that they are getting the product they paid for?