boxst

Now, it may be on of those urban myths, but I was always told that Qantas was one of the safest airlines with less accidents than any other airline.

It appears that they have ridden that probability curve a little too long, with the second incident in 3 days ...

Jet Crisis As Door Opens Mid-Air - Yahoo! News UK

Steve

SWRTWannabe

Trouble is, that's the way the media works. Someone will only have to fart on a Qantas airliner now and the headlines will be announcing chaos on a flight as passengers were screaming for their lives as a noxious gas overcame them.

Shark Man

Don't worry.....


It's been a while since I last flew with Qantas.



However, if you fly Monarch; beware! I fart like a trooper at 30,000ft

Dieseldog

I thought it wasn't possible for a door to open in flight as they initially open inwards a little, and with a pressurised cabin (say 7 or 8 psi), not even a kickboxing Snetter would have the strength...

awaits explanation. Probably from Leslie...

Flatcapdriver

It was the nosegear door.

Dieseldog

lol - thanks FCD. I Should click on the links in future

douglasb

QANTAS = Queens And Nancies Trained As Stewards.

Petem95

I'd be interested to know the average age of their fleet..

Klaatu

These incidents appear to be very frequent, I wonder if it has anything to do with the airline outsourcing, or off-shoring rather, it's maintenace?

KiwiGTI

No. The 3 major incidents I recall are the runway incident at Bangkok, which was weather/pilot etc, the 747 power failure (Bangkok again), which was liquids from the galley seeping through and this latest one with the oxygen tank. All these planes have been maintained entirely within Australia by Australian workers. Think there was a blowout at LAX too, 747 again.

As for any other incident, like having to land because of an undercarriage door fault, I think you'll find that they are pretty normal for all airlines and the only reason it got reported was because of the media attention.

Incidentally, I don't think Qantas have ever proclaimed that they are the safest airline, I'm not sure any airline would want to tempt fate.

Leslie

It was an undercarriage door which was still indicating open. It does not say whether the door was in the open or closed position. The most likely explanation is that it was closed but the microswitch which indicates that was out of adjustment and was not giving the correct indication. It is usually a pretty fine adjustment to get it to work correctly. There was probably no way of telling where the door was from inside the aircraft. If the door was in the open position there would probably be a speed restriction in case of damage being caused.

The captain would have little choice but to land and get the door checked. This happened often enough on military aircraft and was often resolved by a flypast the tower and a visual inspection. Certainly nothing to get in a panic about, the important bit is that the wheels should lock back down for landing.

I find it strange that passengers were saying that there was chaos on board the aircraft. I wonder if that was a bit of exaggeration!

Les

Shark Man

People are strange creatures: All it takes is for one over emotional/hormonal /menopausal women to start screaming for no real reason and then suddenly they are all at it - like a chain reaction.

KiwiGTI

It's been proven time and time again that people involved in incidents are notoriously unreliable. One article I read had a plane that landed because of a problem, the whole thing captured on video and yet passengers who were interviewed afterwards had made all sorts of statements like the engines were on fire etc when they plainly weren't.