Qantas pilots credited with saving the day in accident report

PILOTS of a crippled Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo struggled with more than a dozen system errors after an engine blew apart and landed the plane in Singapore with barely any runway to spare, an Australian investigation showed.

In fact, the plane may have been so badly damaged that the five pilots, with a combined 72,000 hours of flying experience, may have saved the day.

“The aircraft would not have arrived safely in Singapore without the focused and effective action of the flight crew,” Martin Dolan, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s chief commissioner, said yesterday.

As the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine blew apart over Batam Island, Indonesia on November 4, minutes after take-off, fragments ripped though parts of the wing, puncturing fuel, hydraulic and electronic systems and leaving the plane with limited flight controls, the ATSB said in a report.

But the magnitude of the damage became clear only when the co-pilot walked through the cabin and a passenger, another pilot, showed him a picture from a camera on the plane’s tail and fed into the onboard entertainment system.

The picture showed the Airbus was leaving a trail of fluid behind — most likely fuel and perhaps hydraulic fluid — from a puncture through the wing.

At about 2,100 metres, the crew heard two loud, almost simultaneous bangs. The plane yawed slightly before levelling off again.

The pilots watched as emergency warning messages filled a computer screen: There was an “overheat” warning in the No 2 engine, followed by a “fire” warning.

The wing slats were inoperative and the plane’s auto- thrust and auto-land weren’t working.

There were warnings about the brakes and landing gear, the engine’s anti-ice mechanism, the plane’s centre of gravity.

The crew shut down the engine and discharged one of its two fire extinguishers.

More warnings followed: The plane’s satellite communications system had failed. And the plane’s No 1 and No 4 engines had reverted to a degraded mode, restricting the flow of information.

The autopilot disconnected several times leaving the captain little choice but to fly the aircraft manually for the rest of the approach.

It came to a stop less than 150 metres from the end of the runway.

Picture: Technicians remove the engine from the Qantas A380 which made an emergency landing in Singapore recently. Authorities have now reported on the incident and credited the pilots with averting a catastrophe. Picture: AP Photo