Relax - Pilot error almost led to 'worst civil air disaster in Australia's history'

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Pilot error almost led to 'worst civil air disaster in Australia's history'

The New Paper | Wed, Sep 16 2009

For a few minutes, it vanished from radar screens as it remained too low in the air to appear.

Pilot error almost led to 'worst civil air disaster in Australia's history'

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A PLANE narrowly missed crashing into houses as it struggled to take off after a pilot miscalculated its weight.

The Emirates Airbus A340-500 only just cleared a perimeter fence as it took off from a Melbourne airport for Dubai.

It then struggled to gain altitude after a pilot miscalculated its weight by 100 tonnes, according to The Australian newspaper.

The plane, carrying 275 passengers, lumbered down the runway, too slow to take off, but too fast to stop, sparks flying as its tail hit the ground five times before the pilot was able to lift it over the perimeter fence.

Even then, it struggled to gain altitude as it knocked out a strobe light and an antenna on the way.

And for a few minutes, it vanished from radar screens as it remained too low in the air to appear.

These are some of the things revealed for the first time by Mr Rob Mason, president of Civil Air, the Australian air controllers' union, even before the full report on the March incident is out next month.

He told The Australian: 'The aircraft was lost to sight against the lights of the industrial estate to the south. It was not high enough to be seen.'

As the plane was halfway down the runway, he said: 'My (flight controllers) told me the aircraft was not accelerating normally. Then they saw sparks coming from the back of the aircraft as its tail struck the ground as it tried to become airborne.'

Mr Ben Sandilands, an aviation expert, said: 'This would have been the worst civil air disaster in Australia's history by a very large margin. There would have been no survivors from the plane and there would have been deaths on the ground also.

Speaking after the incident, the pilot said of the take-off: 'I knew we couldn't stop. At that point, I knew we just had to go. I thought I was going to die. It was that close.'

A preliminary report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found that pilot error was to blame.

It came about after a pilot, setting the parameters for take-off, incorrectly entered the aircraft's weight as 262 tonnes when in reality it was 362 tonnes.

This means that the pre-set take-off speed could not possibly lift the plane off the ground.

The only reason the plane was able to take off was that, at the last minute, the pilot took the controls and threw the engines into full thrust even as the plane, which had by now run out of sealed runway, raced along the grass leading to the perimeter fence.

Inside the cabin, most passengers were unaware of how close they had come to death, although some claimed to have felt several bumps and seen sparks.

In the cockpit, the crew realised the tail had been badly damaged during take-off, and they returned for an emergency landing at Melbourne.

On their return to Dubai, the pilots said Emirates officials handed them prepared letters of resignation.

The captain and first officer have since resigned.

Emirates says it has put additional safeguards in place to ensure such a mistake could never happen again, including extra computer checks.

This article was first published in The New Paper.

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