Jetstar pilots ‘feared they would die’
March 18, 2011 – 4:28 pm, by
Ben Sandilands
The pilots of a Jetstar wide bodied A330-200 flight leaving Darwin late last October thought they were going to die when the jet was caught in a severe storm down draft according to testimony from the Richard Woodward, Vice President of the Australian and International Pilots Association to the Senate inquiry into pilot training and airline safety this afternoon.
Details of the incident caught the chief commissioner of the ATSB, Martin Dolan, by surprise as he sat in the committee room waiting to appear with CASA before the inquiry .
The ATSB has previously decided not to investigate the incident after it had been reported to it, but Dolan conceded after hearing Woodward that the safety investigator had made that decision without interviewing either pilot.
Woodward said the incident which occurred in severe weather could have resulted in a hull loss and raised some very relevant issues about the quality of storm weather information available to pilots at the airport where traffic is under RAAF control.
According to AIPA the pilots held their flight at the end of the runway for ten minutes trying all channels to try and get better information about the extent and severity of the supercell over the airport.
Once airborne they hit the down draft close to the ground and were unable to gain altitude for some period. “I spoke to both of them and they told me they thought they were going to die”, Woodward said.
“Did the (military) controllers have access to the necessary data? I suspect the answer is ‘No’,” Woodward said.
Asked about the incident by the inquiry, Dolan said “I intend to ask for more information to verify the information on which we acted in not pursuing an inquiry.”
He said “We did not receive information that there was not a positive rate of climb.”
Asked if the ATSB had interviewed the pilots, Dolan replied ‘No.’
In fact there was a positive rate of climb, but it was severely degraded.
Plane Talking has learned that immediately after taking off at a rate of climb of 2000 feet per minute the climb rate fell to only 200 feet per minute when the jet was down to 180 feet above the ground in an incident last all of 12 seconds.
The incident was raised by AIPA over its concerns that pilots are not heard when they need to be heard in relation to serious safety issues