The Jetstar engine fire at Newcastle Airport last night wasn’t an emergency evacuation using slides. Just a bolt for the front and rear stairs after a ground engineer told the pilots he had seen a three second flash of flame from one of the A320’s engines after it came to a standstill at the terminal gate.
There were 173 passengers on the flight from Brisbane making it a nearly full jet. Cabin attendants ordered immediate deplaning without carry on luggage which was later retrieved for the passengers. No slides or emergency overwing exits were used.
The Jetstar procedure was exactly what any airline obeying the rules would follow in such circumstances. Better to be safe than sorry. Everyone treats the appearance of flames as an emergency, and in this case, the airline thinks that for an unknown reason, some unburned fuel vapour had collected inside the cowling of the engine and ignited just as it was being powered down.
The engine was replaced and an investigation is underway.
Two Northwest A320 pilots who flew 240 kilometres past their destination of Minneapolis on October 21 ignoring calls from air traffic control and sparking fears of a hijacking are looking for new careers after the Federal Aviation Authority revoked their pilot licenses.
The pilots are reported by US media as having admitted to becoming engrossed in using their personal computers to check out new company rosters, and failing to respond to various attempts to get their attention as the jet continued past the airport. The rosters don’t matter any more.
The Boeing 787 wing fix design and validation process has been completed according to Flightblogger. Now it has to be manufactured and fitted to the stress test frame and the number one jet in the flight testing and certification fleet before the promised first flight before the end of the year can take place.
Waiting, waiting……
5 Comments
Ben they overflew by 240ks, which is about Sydney to Canberra (say 20 minutes at cruise) Which seems kinda understandable (not excuseable) but don’t ATC say they were out of touch for about an hour which is really hard to fathom?
So true. There is an awful lot of explaining to do.
It’s been reported that they heard but didn’t respond to ATC transmissions during a discussion about Northwest’s new crew rostering system. Apparently the first officer had the new system on his laptop and was demonstrating it to the captain. These two are/were very experienced pilots – a bit of a worry.
Pprune has a copy of the letter from the FAA cancelling their licences, and giving detailed reasons why. It makes interesting reading.
It sounds a pretty predictable response to me.
I betcha the Delta management, Northwest’s new masters, are thanking the gods that it was a Northwest (?) crew and painted aircraft, especially the damage that could have been done to Delta’s new and clean image in Australia. The spin-doctors have done a masterful job as in all that I’ve read about the incident, the airline “Delta” was barely mentioned.