AirNZ Plane Incidents

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#471816 21-May-2011 06:07

networkn: If you think I am going to spend hours collating information for a complete stranger to convince them they shouldn't fly on an airline, you are sadly mistaken. If you wish to fly them and believe they are just as safe, all the power to you. I have satisfied myself that they are not as safe to fly as other airlines and nothing you say is going to convince me any more than obviously anything I could say would convince you away from your own opinion on the matter.

OK I have done some of it for you.

On 7 October 2008, a Qantas Airbus A330-300, Flight 72, with 303 passengers and 10 crew members on board, was on a scheduled international flight from Singapore to Perth. While in cruise, the aircraft reportedly experienced some type of sudden and unexpected altitude change. The crew issued a mayday call before diverting the aircraft to the airport at Learmonth, near the town of Exmouth, about 1100 kilometers or 680 miles north of its intended destination of Perth. About 110 passengers and nine crew members were injured, with over a dozen severe injuries. Reportedly, several occupants were slammed into the ceiling during the event. Most of the injuries were to passengers and crew in the rear of the aircraft, and at least one person was carried off the plane in a stretcher. About 13 of the most seriously injured were flown to Perth by four aircraft from the Royal Flying Doctor Service. One flight attendant was hospitalized with suspected head and spinal injuries. Other serious injuries included fractures, lacerations, and a concussion.

25 July 2008: A Qantas airlines 747-400, Flight 30, with 346 passengers and 19 crew members on board, had an explosive decompression event over the South China Sea about 200 miles from Manila. The crew descended about 20,000 feet and successfully diverted to Manila. None of the passengers or crew were injured. A portion of the fuselage just forward of the wing root was found missing after the aircraft landed.

23 April 2000: A Qantas airlines 747-300, with 303 passengers on board, had a landing gear strut collapse while taxiing for takeoff from Rome. One of the engines was damaged, but there were no injuries among the passengers and crew. This is the second serious incident involving Qantas in less than a year. Last September, a landing overrun involving a Qantas 747 at Bangkok's airport resulted in about $100 million in damage to the aircraft. A Qantas 747 was also involved in a minor landing incident in Perth the same month.

23 September 1999: A Qantas airlines 747-400, Flight 1, with 407 passengers and crew on board, came to rest on a golf course after sliding off a runway at Bangkok's airport. While there was substantial damage to the aircraft, no one on board the aircraft was seriously injured. The aircraft has since been repaired and put back into service.

24 August 1960: A Qantas Lockheed Constellation, with 38 passengers and 12 crew members on board, ran off the runway after a rejected takeoff, came to rest in a gulley, and caught fire. The aircraft was on a scheduled international flight from Maritius to Sydney, Australia. No one was killed, but the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.

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alasta

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#471839 21-May-2011 09:09

wmoore:
networkn: If you think I am going to spend hours collating information for a complete stranger to convince them they shouldn't fly on an airline, you are sadly mistaken. If you wish to fly them and believe they are just as safe, all the power to you. I have satisfied myself that they are not as safe to fly as other airlines and nothing you say is going to convince me any more than obviously anything I could say would convince you away from your own opinion on the matter.

OK I have done some of it for you.

Of the items on your list from the last 20 years (I'll discard the Constellation incident due to its age), the Bangkok overrun is the only one that I would consider to be an extremely serious incident which was preventable on the part of the airline or crew. The Learmonth incident was an ADIRU fault which I understand has happened before on A330s and also drew some attention from Air France 447 investigators so whilst there would have been a big fat "please explain" on Airbus's doorstep I don't consider that Qantas could have foreseen this incident. The 747 decompression was the result of unstable oxygen cylinders rather than an actual aircraft issue (though arguably it may have been the indirect result of inadequate cargo procedures).

I think the original poster's concerns are more related to the frequency of minor in flight incidents which may not necessarily have have mandated agency investigations, such as engine failures and non-explosive decompressions. Such incidents should be rare - with modern turbofan engines, for example, the number of in flight engine shut downs that a pilot would experience during the course of his entire career averages less than one - but the rarity of such events is countered by the number of flights that Qantas conducts.

So, without a detailed schedule of minor incidents relative to other factors such as cycles and flight hours I don't think we're any closer to proving or disproving the hypothesis that Qantas is less safe than other western carriers. What we do know is that they have IOSA certification which makes them significantly safer than third world airlines, and arguably safer than many of the activities that we all undertake every day.

networkn

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#471846 21-May-2011 09:57

alasta is correct, and to be fair, it's not even my original point. The topic is something mostly unrelated to this current line.

Interestingly, I don't really consider some of the incidents excluded from the list as minor, they certainly wouldn't feel minor if you were on a plane where an engine shutdown, or had to turn back due to radar failure. Minor issues on a plane to me, are things like the aircon malfunctioning, or the entertainment system not working, or the heaters for the food not operating properly. If a plane can't complete it's flight for any reason I personally consider that a problem, and there are a reasonable number of those in the last 2 years for Qantas.

As for someones comments about the engineers comments not being valid, I am damn damn DAMN sure, I'd take an airline maintenance engineers comments seriously. I'd take them a lot more seriously than any exec or management level person.

Having said that, I would acknowledge I am a worse flyer than many though I would have done a lot more travel ling than the average Kiwi or Australian I would suspect. I was on a flight to Wellington a year ago and I was 99% sure they would have aborted the flight. I had white knuckles, something I have not suffered from in recent years, and couldn't believe we were still on approach as the plane was all over the place. I looked over and the two guys next to me were asleep! I relaxed a lot after that.

corksta

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#471877 21-May-2011 11:29

networkn, I'm not going to try and change your mind about flying Qantas, I want to add my 2c and try and put some of their issues into context and how the media relate to it. I personally would still fly Qantas, when planes are designed and built there are multiple points of redundancy built in, so there are backups of backups and so on, and is partly why it's the safest method of travelling.

I believe your perception of Qantas being an unsafe airline is based on the unrelenting media coverage and to some degree your fear of flying, albeit on a minor level.

Essentially, things that happen to aircraft are categorised as 'incidents' or 'accidents'. Qantas has had a few incidents recently but obviously no accidents. Incidents happen to airlines every single day all around the world. How many aircraft shut down an engine yesterday for whatever reason? How many aborted a takeoff? How many performed a go-around? How many declared an emergency? How many called pan-pan? Who knows, because every incident isn't reported and like I said are not uncommon.

If you are on a plane that has an emergency landing, and 19 passengers say there were ok, and 1 passenger thought they were going to die and it was the flight from hell, whose comments are going to form part of the headline of the incident? The media like to create a sense of fear and terror where none exists, as well as make it seem like things are always related. How many times have you read the phrase "is the latest in a string of incidents" when reading about Qantas' issues? It suggests they're all related when each one is a separate incident.

Qantas are close to us so you're more likely to read about their issues than you are about an airline from Africa or somewhere else far away from us. When the media latch on to an issue they don't let go, and report every incident, exactly like they are doing with Qantas which fuels the perception of them being unsafe. If every incident of major airlines around the world was reported in the same manner that Qantas' issues have you'd probably never fly again.

I've been interested in aviation since I was a kid and my wife is a flight attendant so I get to fly a lot and have a pretty good understanding of how it works, and to be honest a lot of their stuff is pretty low-level stuff (despite what the media would have you think) except the A380 incident which actually isn't anything to do with Qantas as it was an engine issue and a possible design fault - engines are supposed to be designed so that if there is a failure it is contained, and in this case that didn't happen.

But you need to remember that planes are safe! A 747 that has to shut down one engine is really a non-event, they can fly on one of their four engines if need be if weight is not an issue, and pilots train for all sorts of scenarios in a simulator.

John2010

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#471878 21-May-2011 11:31

So where are all the Air NZ ones, you are not trying to tell us there aren't any

.

Also to help networkn out the Qantas jet fleet is nearly 3 times the size of Air NZ's but I am absolutely sure that you will find that Air NZ has lost far more jets than Qantas (none for Qantas and 2 for Air NZ, in fact 3 for Air NZ if the recent loss in France is counted as for that the Air NZ flight deck crew were held partly to blame).

Now if you are going to include turbo props (such as the Qantas Constellation mentioned) then you will find Air NZ becomes dismal in comparison because turbo props have a higher incident/accident rate than jets and while Air NZ still operates a considerable fleet of them with many incidents, Qantas has not operated them for many years.

Now networkn I would have thought that given you firm stand on your claim that you would have had all the data already collected and analysed in order for you to have reached the repeated claims that you have made. As it seems you have not done so

I suppose one has to dismiss your claims as having no sound basis and that your stance is just posturing or based on a let loose imagination

alasta

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#471882 21-May-2011 11:51

networkn: Interestingly, I don't really consider some of the incidents excluded from the list as minor, they certainly wouldn't feel minor if you were on a plane where an engine shutdown, or had to turn back due to radar failure.

I can understand how this sort of thing would be distressing for many passengers and potentially very inconvenient, but as Corksta points out there are redundancies and procedures in place to deal with this sort of thing. Air disasters don't happen as a result of a single contained engine failure unless you have a chain of unlikely mishaps such as the British Midland crew who had a separated fan blade and bagged the wrong engine back in the late 80s.

As for someones comments about the engineers comments not being valid, I am damn damn DAMN sure, I'd take an airline maintenance engineers comments seriously. I'd take them a lot more seriously than any exec or management level person.

Agreed.

I was on a flight to Wellington a year ago and I was 99% sure they would have aborted the flight. I had white knuckles, something I have not suffered from in recent years, and couldn't believe we were still on approach as the plane was all over the place. I looked over and the two guys next to me were asleep! I relaxed a lot after that.

When you've flown into Wellington as many times as I have you eventually come to realise that safe landings are often preceded by quite frightening turbulence, but severe risks to aircraft such as windshear or visibility minima may be imperceptible to passengers. Not knowing or understanding what's happening on the flight deck tends to rattle nerves, but you need to have faith in your crew and I concede that's probably a good reason to fly on an airline that you personally feel comfortable with even though I may disagree with your choice in that regard.

alasta

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#471883 21-May-2011 11:59

John2010: Also to help networkn out the Qantas jet fleet is nearly 3 times the size of Air NZ's but I am absolutely sure that you will find that Air NZ has lost far more jets than Qantas (none for Qantas and 2 for Air NZ, in fact 3 for Air NZ if the recent loss in France is counted as for that the Air NZ flight deck crew were held partly to blame).

You could argue that Air NZ has only suffered one jet hull loss on revenue service. The DC8 and A320 hull losses were training and test flights respectively. Statistics can be skewed however you like really.

Now if you are going to include turbo props (such as the Qantas Constellation mentioned)

As a point of clarification the Constellation actually has piston engines.

then you will find Air NZ becomes dismal in comparison because turbo props have a higher incident/accident rate than jets and while Air NZ still operates a considerable fleet of them with many incidents,

The Air NZ subsidiaries that operate turboprops have had a few landing gear failures and an engine failure a couple of years ago, but the only hull loss was the Friendship that they dropped into the Manukau harbour in the late 70s so they have a pretty good record with these aircraft.

Qantas has not operated them for many years.

I'm pretty sure that I have seen Dash 8s in Qantas livery when I've been in Australia over the last year.

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#471901 21-May-2011 14:27

And while you are correcting John2010, the flightdeck crew (ie pilot and copilot) on the Perpignon (?) A320 were German and part of the German airline that was just about to hand the plane back, the observer was the only Air New Zealand pilot. Including that accident in what is affect a meaningless list stretching back decades is specious to say the least (like blaming Avis for you crashing a rental car).
If you have concerns about airlines in this part of the world you obviously haven't experienced flying in Africa, South America or Eastern Europe.

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thebender

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#471925 21-May-2011 15:25

John2010: ....Air NZ has lost far more jets than Qantas (none for Qantas and 2 for Air NZ, in fact 3 for Air NZ if the recent loss in France is counted as for that the Air NZ flight deck crew were held partly to blame).....

Call me lazy and forgetful, but while I recall Erebus, and the crash in France - I'm lost with the third incident.

What was that one ?

alasta

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#471972 21-May-2011 18:18

thebender:
John2010: ....Air NZ has lost far more jets than Qantas (none for Qantas and 2 for Air NZ, in fact 3 for Air NZ if the recent loss in France is counted as for that the Air NZ flight deck crew were held partly to blame).....

Call me lazy and forgetful, but while I recall Erebus, and the crash in France - I'm lost with the third incident.

What was that one ?

DC8 lost in 1966 with two fatalities.

See here.

PenultimateHop

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#472051 22-May-2011 01:41

Amazingly I haven't been maimed or killed on my four Qantas flights this week. I expect not to be killed or maimed on my next two either.

There is significant media hype over anything related to Qantas. While they're not my preferred airline by far, they're certainly not dangerous. I've flown just over one million miles in the past four years and had mechanical issues on all airlines I've flown at some point or another - of them all United Airlines is probably the worst.

IF the rumors are true about the Qantas fuel uplift situation then that alters things significantly, but I hope those are isolated cases with again overblown media hype - which happens to Air NZ if you read the articles that started this thread and those from the early 2000s.

old3eyes

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#472080 22-May-2011 09:40

thebender:
John2010: ....Air NZ has lost far more jets than Qantas (none for Qantas and 2 for Air NZ, in fact 3 for Air NZ if the recent loss in France is counted as for that the Air NZ flight deck crew were held partly to blame).....

Call me lazy and forgetful, but while I recall Erebus, and the crash in France - I'm lost with the third incident.

What was that one ?

Will if you consider that Air NZ took over National Airways then there was the DC3 that crashed into the Kaimia range on 3 July 1963 killing all on board ..

Regards,

Old3eyes

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#472298 22-May-2011 13:12

How far back do you want to go?

http://history1900s.about.com/od/1900s/a/firstcrash.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus

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networkn

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#477008 2-Jun-2011 11:59

http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/5090082/Rats-ground-Qantas-jet

mrbluesky

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#477016 2-Jun-2011 12:08

When my number's up, it won't matter if I am in an Air NZ plane or walking across Lambdon Quay. At least I am not flying Air Somalia or Air Ghana.

I am looking forward to flying on Air NZ's 777 to Los Angeles in December though!

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