Australian Transport Safety Bureau spokesman Ian Brokenshire said its officers were headed to Melbourne.
"We have started the investigation and we will be sending a team of four to Melbourne later this afternoon to start the investigation tomorrow," he said.
"We will be looking at the flight data records, getting data off that, interviewing the crew, interviewing the company representatives, inspecting the runway and aircraft."
That will be an neat trick since all four of the crew were reportedly on the next flight out of the country - less than two hours later and now in Dubai.
The ground staff claim they dead-headed on the next direct service to Dubai which left "immediately".
Maybe I'm wrong but I would've thought they'd hang around for a de-brief with the ATSB. Getting them out in such a hurry was most certainly NOT out of fear the pilots might have been arrested or otherwise interfered with.
While I don't think for a second these fellows have anything untoward to answer for, I can't help but feel somewhat disturbed by the unseemly haste in which the crew were removed from the scene of a pretty significant incident. Obviously before the ATSB were probably even woken up.
Emirates pulls off yet another sleazy safety-related move. It'll be interesting to see how EK expansion into Australia might just be put under the microscope as a result of this action - not the event but the rapid extraction of the crew before they could be interviewed.
I bet the police were pissed off they never got their hands on them at "the crime scene." I suppose that's a good thing, at least.
It's always so inconvenient when these things happen away from Dubai...