Did this from the Herald Sun get posted?
FEARS of fuel gushing from ruptured tanks gripped the pilots of the crippled Qantas A380jumbo.
In the first account by a member of the flight crew, senior Qantas check-captain David Evans reveals the most dangerous period during the three-hour drama was during the 50 minutes it took to offload the 469 passengers and crew, reported the Herald Sun.
Even a fire chief at the airport was reluctant to approach the jet because of fears of it exploding from high pressure fuel leaks from the left wing.
Highly flammable kerosene was escaping from a ruptured tank and was pouring on to the brakes, which reached 900C during the landing, Capt Evans said.
Capt Evans had been in the second observer’s seat on the flight deck, running checks on the pilot in command, Capt Richard de Crespigny.
Capt Evans told a British website that when, at 2100m, the No. 2 engine exploded, more than 45 error messages appeared, taking almost two hours to deal with.
“The next thing we were dealing with was the fuel. We had some obvious leaks, some severe, out of the Engine 2 feed tank … there was a fairly significant fuel trail behind the aircraft,” Capt Evans said.
The fuel became imbalanced, the anti-skid brakes were unserviceable, electrical systems failed, and air leaks affected the jet’s hydraulics.
“We lost one of the landing gear computers and once we’d extended the undercarriage using the alternate system we had no indication (at that stage) it was down,” he says.
“We didn’t have the ability to dump fuel, the fuel dumping system had failed and we were about 50 tonnes over our maximum landing weight.
“We had also lost the use of our leading-edge slats, which, consequently with the overweight condition made our approach speed quite fast - 35knots more than normal.
“From then on, it became an exercise in preserving the passengers as best we could.
“We’d lost our satellite phone so the trusty mobile phones came out and we called the company in Sydney to relay back to the company in Singapore, to dispatch some stairs and buses to the aircraft.
“We were 4000m down the end of the runway and it was nearly an hour before we got the first set of stairs to the aircraft and another hour by the time the last passenger departed the aircraft. So it was nearly two hours on the ground with major fuel leaks and engines running.
“I think that’s probably the most serious part of the whole exercise, when you think back.”
He said that with 433 passengers to unload, some elderly and others in wheelchairs, injuries would have happened had emergency slides been used.
“We were lucky enough to get everybody off very calmly and very methodically through one set of stairs,” he said.