Qantas flight turns back to Sydney
Paul Tatnell and Glenda Kwek
November 15, 2010 - 2:47PM
A Qantas plane en route to Argentina has been forced to return to Sydney after an electrical problem led to smoke in the cockpit, the fifth in-flight or pre-flight incident since an engine failure on a Singapore-bound A380 flight 11 days ago.
QF17, which took off from Sydney Airport at 11.11am today with 199 passengers on board, turned back about an hour into the flight to Buenos Aires, a Qantas spokeswoman said.
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A friend of one of the passengers said the pilot announced there was smoke coming from the instrument panel.
A Qantas spokesman confirmed an electrical problem had caused the smoke.
The Boeing 747-400, with three flight and 18 cabin crew, touched down safely at Sydney Airport at 1.22pm after priority clearance to land was given by air traffic control, a Qantas spokesman said.
"Engineers are inspecting the aircraft to determine the cause of the issue. Passengers have disembarked into the terminal building," the spokesman said.
"Reports that the aircraft lost pressure in the main cabin are incorrect. Oxygen supply to the cabin was unaffected."
The spokesman said the incident was reported to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and the Air Transport Safety Bureau.
"Qantas regrets the inconvenience to passengers and will seek to make contingency arrangements for those affected."
A replacement flight would leave Sydney at 5pm, the spokesman said.
On Saturday, a missing screw delayed a Qantas flight from Sydney to Melbourne by an hour, while a QantasLink flight to Sydney from Coffs Harbour was delayed by five hours after a warning light indicated a problem with the engines as it came in to land.
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Any body else heard about sinapore airlines as well this morning had a problem? also rumors a ml-syd flight had a warning light and returned back to ml