One Hundred and Forty Cheat Death in Air Drama
by Josh Inu, staff aviation writer.
The feeling of relief at a near death experience filled the terminal at Darwin's Airport last night. The Qantas 757 Airbus had one of its engines explode on takeoff from the tropical airport. After shutting down the engines, the aircraft returned for a hard landing after alerting emergency services, including the Darwin Hospital. Frightened survivors, visibly shaken after the emergency landing spoke of their ordeal.
Mother, Beth McCubbin, 43 of Parramatta said, "I thought I was going to die. I saw a huge explosion and the propeller was broken. It was burning and everyone was screaming." Her twin 5 year old daughters clutched their teddy bears tightly with tears in in their blue eyes.
The accident is the latest of a long series of troubles to plague the belaugured airline. It comes weeks after an unscheduled landing after a red warning light flashed in the cockpit.
A Qantas spokeswoman was unavailable for comment. The Darwin Airport Authority confirmed that an airliner had made an emergency landing.
Brian, 45 a mechanic from the Darwin suburb of Humpty-Doo had a more sinister theory. Hunting for feral pigs with his crossbow on the perimiter fence, he saw a giant crocodile chase a flock of birds into the air. "yeah, they just flew up and entered the engine and it went bang."
The civil aviation services authority is investigating.