Qantas, the world at your feet!!

[Garpal Gumnut]

Perhaps this should be the new ad jingle for Qantas.

Footage (sic) of the passengers during and after their ordeal makes one realise how ancient many of our aircraft are.

Having been on a dodgy aged 747 recently and a brand new Airbus I would prefer the latter any day.

gg

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: Qantas, the world at your feet !!

Having been on a dodgy aged 747 recently and a brand new Airbus I would prefer the latter any day.

lol - I had a case a few months back
"Ladies and gentlemen - we have a problem - there is a crack in the fuselage - we have put through a phonecall to Seattle, and they are telling us where to drill the hole to "stop the rot"....

1 hour later " ok. hole drilled all good"...
2 hours later we take off ... no probs

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

The guy on the mobile says


"" I did not say there is " a few hucking foals in the fuselage" , I said there is " a huge fu................

gg

 

[2020hindsight]

The guy on the mobile says
"" I did not say there is " a few hucking foals in the fuselage"

Further forward would hav taken out the emergency- oxygen
further back would have taken out the fuel tanks

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Further forward would hav taken out the emergency- oxygen
further back would have taken out the fuel tanks

Its one of the reasons I've never bought QAN.

One panel and your investment has gone into the ocean with over 300 unfortunate souls.


gg

 

[Boggo]

Having been on a dodgy aged 747 recently and a brand new Airbus I would prefer the latter any day.

gg

Airbus, the Hyundai of the skies !

 

[wildkactus]

Its's a bit scary to think about, but if this can happen on a so called well maintained aircraft what are the other rust buckets flying like then.

Hope this was one of the old aircraft geoff wants to replace!

 

[Aussiejeff]

This article tends to the new theory that oxygen cylinders stored at the exact location of the damage had exploded!

And there also appears to be a serious issue regarding malfunctioning of the onboard oxygen mask system .... not a good outcome for Mr Dixon? :fan:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24084553-5005961,00.html


AJ

 

[Awesomandy]

Hope this was one of the old aircraft geoff wants to replace!

I certainly hope so, but Qantas currently has about 12x 747-400s that are older than this one, let alone the 4x 747-300s that they still use - the oldest already 23 years old.

there also appears to be a serious issue regarding malfunctioning of the onboard oxygen mask system

If that's really the case, we might see quite a few 747s grounded.

 

[2020hindsight]

This article tends to the new theory that oxygen cylinders stored at the exact location of the damage had exploded!

And there also appears to be a serious issue regarding malfunctioning of the onboard oxygen mask system .... not a good outcome for Mr Dixon? :fan:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24084553-5005961,00.html

fascinating article there AJ ...:-

In some parts of the cabin, the masks didn't drop down at all, he said. "A guy just went into a panic and smashed the whole panel off the ceiling to get to the mask.

"The kids were screaming and flailing. Their cheeks and lips were turning blue from lack of oxygen.''

Another passenger, Paula Madejon, said she had to share her mask with two other people, and, in the row behind her, nobody had a mask.

I was thinking ..."Why didn't they say something like "We are dropping to a safe (breathing) elevation - oxygen masks may assist are a stop gap measure for a minute or so"

Then I figured - the cabin crew wouldn't know how fast they were planning to drop ...

and the pilots were probably busy soiling their underpants trying to work out what was going on

 

[Boggo]

Put beancounters in charge of maintenance ($$$$) and IF becomes WHEN.

Its's a bit scary to think about, but if this can happen on a so called well maintained aircraft what are the other rust buckets flying like then.

Richard Baker
July 21, 2008
TheAge

AUDITS of overseas facilities used to service Australia's passenger jets are being kept secret by the nation's aviation safety regulator over fears their release could cause adverse publicity for foreign-owned maintenance companies.
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority faces accusations of acting against the public interest by refusing to release 1000 pages from its audits of maintenance facilities in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and New Zealand during 2006 and 2007.
The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association has sought the audits under the Freedom of Information Act. Its request was prompted by last year's leak of a scathing 2006 Qantas audit of work performed on one of its jets by the Singapore Airlines Engineering Company in Singapore.
"The general quality trend appears to be heading in a negative direction with numerous quality deficiencies considered to be of a serious nature," the Qantas audit concluded.
Last month, a Qantas 737 returned from overseas maintenance with 60 defects.
CASA has repeatedly refused to release its overseas audit reports under freedom of information, claiming doing so could harm the maintenance companies due to "adverse publicity" and also reduce the effectiveness of future audits by inhibiting "frankness and candour".
The aircraft engineers' association responded by saying the Australian public has a right to know the results of CASA's inspections of overseas facilities, and adverse publicity would only occur if substandard maintenance practices had been identified.
The association has applied to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to direct CASA to release the documents.
The fight over CASA's secret audits comes amid reports of a big increase in the number of Australian passenger jets being outsourced for maintenance by overseas contractors.
A recent Senate inquiry into CASA's administration was told by the engineers' association that the number of Qantas aircraft outsourced for maintenance in overseas facilities had increased from 2% in 2002 to 20% this year.
The airline and the association are locked in a bitter industrial dispute over outsourcing and pay.
An association spokesman told The Age CASA's refusal to disclose the overseas audits make it difficult for engineers to certify the safety of aircraft because they were not given all relevant information about its maintenance history and the people responsible for the work.
CASA deputy chief executive Michael Quinn told the Senate inquiry earlier this month that all overseas maintenance facilities providing services to Australian carriers were audited annually.
The report from the Senate inquiry into CASA's administration is due by the end of next month.
Engineers say it is difficult to certify safety of aircraft without the relevant information.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

QAN share price will take a hammering tomorrow. I must have a look at the chart.
Its bad about those oxygen masks.

gg

 

[nioka]

When Qantas advertise "the world at your feet" it is reasonable to expect there to be something like a plane between your feet and the earth!!!!! It could have been worse I guess but I'm glad I wasn't there. I used to have Qantas shares but got out of them with the fuel price problems. Maybe they could be a good buy next week.

 

[Stan 101]

If it really was an O2 canister going off, we are all very lucky that plane didn't end up as a flying fireball. Compressed O2 is highly flammable.

If the O2 banks were taken out, it might go some way to explaining why some of the O2 masks weren't operable..


cheers,

 

[J.B.Nimble]

I'm just reassured that these incredibly flimsy machines can sustain that sort of damage and get down ok. In my eyes this ranks right up there with Aloha Airlines (top of fuselage peeled away with loss of 1 hostie), UA811 (cargo door and 9 passengers from business class sailed out in to the breeze), and the Concorde flight where they lost the biggest part of the rudder and got down without anyone noticing!

I saw the Discovery Channel doco where an Aloha Airlines pasenger said she saw cracking in the panel by the door but thought she would be a bit silly if she mentioned it...!!!! Howzat? I do my own checking from the windows on the airbridge these days. I haven't bailed out at the last minute yet but I have come close on a couple of occasions...

 

[DB008]

I usually fly Perth to Sydney - red eye and almost always it's a 747. This time however, l decided to go Perth - Melbourne - Sydney. It was an Airbus and IMO was 100% better than the aging 747 that usually flies. Melbourne - Sydney was an aging Boeing and was crap too.
I think that Qantas has to upgrade the fleet big time. Oh well, at least it ain't as bad as Air Garuda.

BOGGO - Airbus, the Hyundai of the skies !

I disagree with you on that.

 

[Naked shorts]

and the pilots were probably busy soiling their underpants trying to work out what was going on

Dam straight. The co-pilot would have been in control of the plane, with autopilot on. The captain would have been out back with one of the flight attendants.

 

[2020hindsight]

Dam straight. The co-pilot would have been in control of the plane, with autopilot on. The captain would have been out back with one of the flight attendants.

Could have been worse I guess. Air NZ would have had most of the crew busy, locked up in various toilets with the "engaged" signs on - initiating patrons to the mile-high club

 

[lusk]

I usually fly Perth to Sydney - red eye and almost always it's a 747. This time however, l decided to go Perth - Melbourne - Sydney. It was an Airbus and IMO was 100% better than the aging 747 that usually flies. Melbourne - Sydney was an aging Boeing and was crap too.
I think that Qantas has to upgrade the fleet big time. Oh well, at least it ain't as bad as Air Garuda.




I disagree with you on that.

Those having a go at the 747 seem to overlook its flying record, its possibly the best passenger jet ever built to date if you consider how many incidents to how many millions of people it has transported around the world. I would take the old proven rust bucket any day over an Airbus.

 

[2020hindsight]

lol, The DC3 was pretty good too

(PS lusk, I hear you btw - bludy airbus's wag their tail like a flaming dog half the time - imo).