Qantas Passengers Recount Ordeal as Plane Plunged (Update2)
By Ed Johnson and Robin Stringer
Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Jim Ford was sleeping, his seatbelt unbuckled, as Qantas flight QF72 cruised at 37,000 feet over Western Australia. He awoke to screams as the jet nose-dived, slamming passengers and crew into the cabin ceiling.
``I thought I was at death's door. It was gruesome, terrible, the worst experience of my life,'' Ford told television reporters when he finally arrived in Perth from Singapore on Oct. 7, shaken by the ordeal of his pilot issuing a mayday call and making an emergency landing at a remote air field.
``One minute the plane was in a straight line, the next it was diving down. It must have been about 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) in three seconds,'' he said. While Ford was unhurt, forty-four of the flight's 313 passengers and crew needed hospital treatment for spinal injuries, broken bones, concussion or lacerations.
It's the latest scare for Australia's largest airline, whose safety record was made famous in the movie ``Rain Man'' in which Dustin Hoffman's character insisted on flying Qantas because it hasn't had a fatal jet accident. Investigators are probing what caused the Airbus A330-300 to abruptly lose altitude two days ago, and yesterday pointed to problems with a computer system that controls the plane's pitch.
Yip How Wong, 69, who was traveling to Perth for a family holiday, said the first three-and-a-half hours of the five-hour flight were smooth.
``All of a sudden, boom, I found myself up in the ceiling,'' he told the West Australian newspaper from his bed at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth.
Dripping With Blood
Passengers around him were dripping with blood, said Yip, whose wife is in the hospital being treated for neck injuries. Yip suffered a dislocated thumb, grazes and bruises, according to the report, while his daughter-in-law, son and four-year-old grandson were unscathed, the newspaper said.
Qantas Chief Executive Officer Geoff Dixon said in a statement yesterday the airline is assisting the Australian Transport Safety Bureau with its investigation. The plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders have been removed for assessment, he said.
The airline said today it will reimburse passengers the cost of their flight and offer them vouchers for the equivalent of a peak season Australia-to-London return journey in the class in which they were traveling on QF72.
Cockpit Data
Moments before the plane dropped, cockpit data indicated some ``irregularity with the aircraft's elevator control system,'' Julian Walsh, the bureau's director of aviation safety investigation, told reporters in Canberra yesterday. The aircraft climbed 300 feet and while the crew was responding it ``abruptly pitched nose-down.''
It is too early to determine whether possible passenger use of laptop computers interfered with the plane's system, George Nadal of the ATSB said in a telephone interview today. The bureau aims to ``identify and analyze all the factors that may have contributed'' to the incident, he said.
Tim Ellett, 22, from Perth, told the Australian newspaper how a woman seated next to him crashed into the cabin ceiling when the jet dropped and suffered possible spinal injuries.
``She was in immense pain, she was in shock,'' the newspaper cited him as saying. ``She was saying `I think my back's broken, I think my leg's broken, can you put my leg back into place.'''
`Going Over a Waterfall'
Mike Moir told the Australian the sudden loss of altitude ``felt like going over a waterfall.''
``It was pandemonium,'' Moir was cited as saying. ``It lasted 10 to 12 seconds. The plane then leveled out and there was another minor drop a few seconds later.''
``There were people just flying everywhere,'' the Australian Broadcasting Corp. cited passenger Doreen Bishop from Oxford, England, as saying. ``It just went thousands of feet down, I don't know how many.''
Passenger Mark Bell described how a child sitting next to him was thrown from his seat. ``We watched him hit the ceiling and sit there for about three seconds, until his dad dragged him back into his seat,'' the ABC cited Bell as saying.
Qantas, known for its Kangaroo logo, has experienced other safety scares in recent months.
On July 25, a Qantas aircraft made an emergency landing in Manila after an oxygen tank exploded, puncturing the plane's fuselage at 29,000 feet (8,800 meters).
On Aug. 2, a Qantas flight was forced to return to Sydney, where the airline is based, soon after takeoff due to a fluid leak in a wing. A Qantas flight en route to Melbourne returned to Adelaide Airport after the doors covering a wheel bay didn't close following takeoff.
In a survey published earlier this week, 63 percent of Australians polled said they thought the airline's safety standards ``have become worse over the last few years,'' a rise of 11 percent since August. Two in three Australians surveyed said they believe Qantas is a safe airline to fly on.
The online survey of 1,000 adults was conducted Sept. 19-24 by UMR Omnibus and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at [email protected]; Robin Stringer in New York at [email protected].
Last Updated: October 9, 2008 03:19 EDT
By Ed Johnson and Robin Stringer
Oct. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Jim Ford was sleeping, his seatbelt unbuckled, as Qantas flight QF72 cruised at 37,000 feet over Western Australia. He awoke to screams as the jet nose-dived, slamming passengers and crew into the cabin ceiling.
``I thought I was at death's door. It was gruesome, terrible, the worst experience of my life,'' Ford told television reporters when he finally arrived in Perth from Singapore on Oct. 7, shaken by the ordeal of his pilot issuing a mayday call and making an emergency landing at a remote air field.
``One minute the plane was in a straight line, the next it was diving down. It must have been about 5,000 feet (1,500 meters) in three seconds,'' he said. While Ford was unhurt, forty-four of the flight's 313 passengers and crew needed hospital treatment for spinal injuries, broken bones, concussion or lacerations.
It's the latest scare for Australia's largest airline, whose safety record was made famous in the movie ``Rain Man'' in which Dustin Hoffman's character insisted on flying Qantas because it hasn't had a fatal jet accident. Investigators are probing what caused the Airbus A330-300 to abruptly lose altitude two days ago, and yesterday pointed to problems with a computer system that controls the plane's pitch.
Yip How Wong, 69, who was traveling to Perth for a family holiday, said the first three-and-a-half hours of the five-hour flight were smooth.
``All of a sudden, boom, I found myself up in the ceiling,'' he told the West Australian newspaper from his bed at the Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth.
Dripping With Blood
Passengers around him were dripping with blood, said Yip, whose wife is in the hospital being treated for neck injuries. Yip suffered a dislocated thumb, grazes and bruises, according to the report, while his daughter-in-law, son and four-year-old grandson were unscathed, the newspaper said.
Qantas Chief Executive Officer Geoff Dixon said in a statement yesterday the airline is assisting the Australian Transport Safety Bureau with its investigation. The plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders have been removed for assessment, he said.
The airline said today it will reimburse passengers the cost of their flight and offer them vouchers for the equivalent of a peak season Australia-to-London return journey in the class in which they were traveling on QF72.
Cockpit Data
Moments before the plane dropped, cockpit data indicated some ``irregularity with the aircraft's elevator control system,'' Julian Walsh, the bureau's director of aviation safety investigation, told reporters in Canberra yesterday. The aircraft climbed 300 feet and while the crew was responding it ``abruptly pitched nose-down.''
It is too early to determine whether possible passenger use of laptop computers interfered with the plane's system, George Nadal of the ATSB said in a telephone interview today. The bureau aims to ``identify and analyze all the factors that may have contributed'' to the incident, he said.
Tim Ellett, 22, from Perth, told the Australian newspaper how a woman seated next to him crashed into the cabin ceiling when the jet dropped and suffered possible spinal injuries.
``She was in immense pain, she was in shock,'' the newspaper cited him as saying. ``She was saying `I think my back's broken, I think my leg's broken, can you put my leg back into place.'''
`Going Over a Waterfall'
Mike Moir told the Australian the sudden loss of altitude ``felt like going over a waterfall.''
``It was pandemonium,'' Moir was cited as saying. ``It lasted 10 to 12 seconds. The plane then leveled out and there was another minor drop a few seconds later.''
``There were people just flying everywhere,'' the Australian Broadcasting Corp. cited passenger Doreen Bishop from Oxford, England, as saying. ``It just went thousands of feet down, I don't know how many.''
Passenger Mark Bell described how a child sitting next to him was thrown from his seat. ``We watched him hit the ceiling and sit there for about three seconds, until his dad dragged him back into his seat,'' the ABC cited Bell as saying.
Qantas, known for its Kangaroo logo, has experienced other safety scares in recent months.
On July 25, a Qantas aircraft made an emergency landing in Manila after an oxygen tank exploded, puncturing the plane's fuselage at 29,000 feet (8,800 meters).
On Aug. 2, a Qantas flight was forced to return to Sydney, where the airline is based, soon after takeoff due to a fluid leak in a wing. A Qantas flight en route to Melbourne returned to Adelaide Airport after the doors covering a wheel bay didn't close following takeoff.
In a survey published earlier this week, 63 percent of Australians polled said they thought the airline's safety standards ``have become worse over the last few years,'' a rise of 11 percent since August. Two in three Australians surveyed said they believe Qantas is a safe airline to fly on.
The online survey of 1,000 adults was conducted Sept. 19-24 by UMR Omnibus and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ed Johnson in Sydney at [email protected]; Robin Stringer in New York at [email protected].
Last Updated: October 9, 2008 03:19 EDT
