Second Qantas jet makes emergency landing

A QANTAS jet was forced to make an emergency landing at Adelaide airport yesterday after a door opened during a flight to Melbourne.

The Herald Sun newspaper quoted unnamed passengers as saying a door opened causing “chaos” in the cabin of the Boeing 737-800, which left Adelaide at 6.08pm (08.08 GMT) and returned safely 37 minutes later.

However, airline sources said only the door covering the wheel bay was not closed properly after take-off, the Herald Sun said.

A Qantas spokesperson refused to comment beyond confirming an incident had occurred on the flight, the newspaper reported, and calls to the airline later were not immediately returned.

The incident came three days after a Qantas Boeing 747-400 en route to Melbourne from Hong Kong was forced to make an emergency landing in Manila after a hole was ripped in its fuselage.

The Australian airline has moved to inspect oxygen cylinders on its entire fleet as investigators focused on a missing tank as the suspected cause of the mid-air blast that tore a hole in the jumbo jet carrying more than 350 people.

Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority said Qantas was ordered to inspect every oxygen bottle aboard its fleet of 30 Boeing 747s.

Civil authority spokesman Peter Gibson confirmed an oxygen cylinder was missing from the Boeing 747-400 f that made an emergency landing in Manila after a section of its metal skin was ripped away at 29,000 feet over the South China Sea.

“If it turns out that is the cause of the accident, the cause of the hole in the side of the aircraft, obviously that will be a key part of the investigation, working out why a bottle would suddenly give way,” Mr Gibson told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio.

“As far as we can determine this has never happened before on a passenger aircraft,” he said, adding the possibility was “very unusual and obviously understanding why that happened will be absolutely critical to making sure it can’t occur again”.

He said a possible cause of the blast could include metal fatigue in the cylinder, a failure of the regulator valve, something hitting it and puncturing it, or the cylinder becoming too hot.

A senior investigator from the Australian Transport and Safety Bureau, Neville Blyth, said the incident was treated as a safety investigation. “At this stage, there is no evidence that this is a security-related event.”

Boeing spokeswoman Liz Verdier said the design of the Qantas jet included dozens of oxygen tanks located throughout the lower part of the aircraft, including below the passenger compartment where the hole formed. Verdier said it was too soon to say what caused the explosion or whether canisters may have contributed to the blast.