Bad Week for QF?

[Dog One]

737 Bird strike at Broome

737 Bird strike enroute Darwin - Bali!

767 Grounded at Darwin due undercarriage problem

[TIMMEEEE]

Gee Dog One, an aircraft having a bird strike or two.
How bloody unusual!

Sounds a whole load better than having your timetable reduced by over 50% due to a virus (SQ/CX), or sickness by F/A's causing reduced crew and the airline not being able to sell up to several hundred seats in a day (DJ) or your largest domestic type being grounded at Easter and Christmas by CASA and shortly thereafter going out of business (AN).

Bird strikes are an operational hazzard Dog One and no one is immune.
Same with aircraft breaking down, its going to happen and does so when you least expect it.

Gee I wonder if trains,buses and automobiles ever have mechanical problems or ever hit animals/pedestrians!

[Blastoid]

What about lightning strikes? :E

[Sperm Bank]

No big deal Dr Phil. Dog one simply posted some stats. Timmee went and got all emotional about it. Dog one did not pass judgement or make any derogatory comment.

A QF 737 lost an engine in CNS a few weeks ago just after t/o after taking out some bats.. I am interested to know at what stage of t/o and how many bats actually went through the engine. Not interetsted in blame, one upman ship or any other child like slant. Just like to know what happened and how the lads dealt with it (besides that it was obviously sucessful).

Some guys I spoke to who checked out the damage said the engine was nothing short of a mess.

[Suffering Sucataash]

Dog One,

Did you miss them rumour that a certain extreemly high profile boss got the secretary in the family way, MJ is not happy.

No confirmation, but this would make for a bad week!

[apacau]

I think it was only one bat. In fact both the Darwin and Cairns "bird"strikes a couple of weeks ago, which both caused well in excess of $2m (each) in repair bills alone, were caused by bat-like creatures. One was a flying fox, the other a fruitbat.

[Dog One]

At the risk of raising both Timmee's and Dr Phil's blood pressure, a colleague has faxed me a copy of the report on the Bali strike as written by the NT News.

This is no rumour - a croc was not involved. How-ever the following is a quote from the News article (Fri 3rd Oct).

"ENGINE HIT IN FLIGHT

A Qantas plane is undergoing emergency repairs to one of its engines after it hit a bird less than an hour into a flight from Darwin to Bali yesterday (Thurs 2nd Oct)

The Qantas 737-400 with 57 customers on board, took off from Darwin shortly after midnight yesterday.

Within its first hour a bird flew into one of the engines - causing damage to the blades.

The plane continued to denpasar without incident. Yesterday it was still undergoing repairs there, new blades are being flown to Denpasar."

I await your learned comments!

[Poto]

A Bid strike "within the first hour". What sort of bird gets around at flight levels?

[jakethemuss]

Succatash,
Suggest you check your source as your version of the story is far from true and defamatory.

[Z Force]

Was the bird pressurised?

[invertedlandings]

Drop-down oxygen, perhaps??
Apparently, it was Command Training (of course)- a/c continued to Bali, three fan blades were apparently fairly damaged.
QF 767 did an RTO at CNS yesterday- it later continued onto SYD.

[bush mechanics]

Bird strikes at altitude!!!I remember the news footage of a Panam 74 that hit a snow goose at flight level 330.Radome was rather,Um pucked

[Dog One]

gottom 2 dollar

Was the goose operating VFR in E airspace, or was it on a IFR plan?

[Continental-520]

I think Eagles get pretty high. I've heard of a BAW 744 hitting one at FL370 over the WA coast. Dunno how much truth there is to that though.

Aside from that, I was in the Karratha MBZ one time at 8500' and saw an eagle above me, at least 1500' - 2000' or so. He hadn't broadcasted his intentions prior to entry, though, so lucky I wasn't 1500' - 2000' higher. (!)



520.

[jetstar21]

POTO

Just as a matter of interest, some migatory birds do in fact fly in the flight level band to make the best of winds etc:

Most Air Forces are very much aware of the possible conflicts with birds at high altitudes and in fact generally know when to expect such possible encounters.

[hoodooguru]

Can we get through one week without some incident or other disaster at Qantas? It would appear not. Where there's smoke there will soon be fire.

[Wirraway]

The Associated Press

See the Kiwis do it as well, seems the birds are in revolt with
you guys taking over their airspace.

Forced landing after bird hits plane
From correspondents in Wellington, New Zealand
October 9, 2003

AN Air New Zealand airplane with 83 passengers and seven crew on board made an emergency landing today after hitting a bird, officials said. Nobody was injured.

The Auckland-bound Boeing 737-300 was leaving the city of Dunedin on South Island "when it appears to have taken a magpie in one engine", said airline spokesman Mike Tod.

The pilot closed down the engine and circled Dunedin before landing without incident shortly after 11am local time, he said.

Airline engineers will assess the damage to the jet engine later today and make repairs, the spokesman said.

==========================================

[Poto]

Jetstar21 Thanks for the correction.
Almost nailed a bunch of Gallahs the other day on T/O all of whom were on there way to Bali for some recently uncrowded waves.:p :ok:

[Three Bars]

Hoodooguru,

What an informed and well balanced post! If two birdstikes in a week constitute a "disaster" then you must be a very nervous flyer.

[hoodooguru]

Three Bars. Birds don't make me nervous but evacuating a 400 at a gate while people are already making an orderly departure and grounding other 400's because they were bought on the cheap and are cracked and never having got a proper ETOPS approval are certainly points for concern don't you think. Shall I go on?

[Keg]

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Four engined aircraft and ETOPS. BWAHAHAHAHAHA. :E

Nice wind up hoodoo. What's the 'T' in ETOPS stand for again? :ouch:

[bush mechanics]

Hey Dogie.I dont know whay class airspace the goose was in but all reports said that the goose was SQUAKING MODE C at the time of the collision,Or was that MODE FARKED!!!!!!!

[hoodooguru]

KEG who said anything about ETOPS for 400's? You jumped to a startling opinion there. Check your facts and read the postings more carefully before you try to be the big man in the aeroclub bar next time.

[Keg]

Oops, must be MY mistake hoodoo. When I read sentances such as:


...other 400's because they were bought on the cheap and are cracked and never having got a proper ETOPS approval...

I naturally tend to assume that because the sentence was constructed in this way that you were referring to the 744s and ETOPS approval.

My humble apologies for taking it the wrong way. Next time I'll learn to not bother reading what you post because you can't articulate your thoughts well enough to make your points clear.

[Waste Gate]

Birds don't make me nervous but evacuating a 400 at a gate while people are already making an orderly departure

And what would you have done Hoodoo? Let's see . . early morning arrival, dark and wet outside, issues of fatigue, ground engineer plugs in and says "you have a fire". I'm guessing you'd have let the pax burn.

Yet another monday morning quarterback on pprune . .:hmm:

WG.

[ftrplt]

Not only that WG, said Engineer then runs off to get fire extinguisher hence unable to provide any further info to the crew who just happen to be asking for more information.

[hoodooguru]

Keg for some reason you're stuck on 4 engine ETOPS? You're on your own there. Sorry.
Waste Gate, there was no fire and if you need to have it explained why you evacuate an aeroplane as a last resort particularly when it's at the gate and 80 people have already got off then i hope you never work with my company. There's lots of data available on evacuations and I strongly suggest you have a read of some of it.

[flashy]

Perhaps we should wait till the final report comes out before we start pointing fingers.
I also have to agree with keg, I read your original post the same way. Could you expand on your ETOPS comment.

[TIMMEEEE]

Hoodoo , must admit that 747-400 ETOPS was also the first thing I thought about when reading your posting also.
Keg's point about the "T" is valid.

To be an arm-chair aero-club hero and pass comment on things such as an evacuation (even at an aerobridge) without having read the final safety report is both foolhardy and unprofessional.
Doing so without all the facts can also make you look stupid to use the vernacular.

Just remember the Saudia L1011 that landed after an emergency and taxied back to gate without evacuating many years ago.
I believe most if not all pax suffocated before the jet reached the terminal.

Food for thought.

Nobody is perfect Hoodoo least of all myself but how about getting ALL of the facts before passing judgement on others.

[hoodooguru]

TIMMEE: The accident you refer to is a completely different situation and as such would require others to read about it individually. However that is a great example of why not to delay an evacuation and if people read this particular report they will see what I mean. The QF at the gate one is a cock up pure and simple and we all know this will be another "safety enhancing incident" I think the FO might disagree however.
The reference to ETOPS is purely that proper approval for this type of operation has never been held by the company. This has come from high up within. Don't take my word for it. Check it yourself. (NO 4 engine ETOPS mentioned KEG sorry if I misled you) And TIMMEE although I haven't been in an aeroclub for over 20 years I find no reason why you should be so critical of people who do? Calm down and put the ruler away.

[Waste Gate]

Waste Gate, there was no fire and if you need to have it explained why you evacuate an aeroplane as a last resort particularly when it's at the gate and 80 people have already got off then i hope you never work with my company.

Hoodoo,

I think your company might be impressed that I wouldn't necessarily not evacuate an aircraft because it was at the gate; sometimes decisions need to be made using what you don't know as well as what you do know. I'm sure all on pprune would agree that there was a communications "issue", and I'm sure that it will come out in the wash, but I'm amused that you see this as a sign of problems at Qantas. Consider what happens to your available exits once cargo doors start opening and ramp equipment moves in. I hope you're professional enough to have pondered that during your travels . .

As for ETOPS, we've been doing them for 17yrs - 180mins since 1990. Would you mind enlightening us all on your inside knowledge? :hmm: :hmm:

WG.

[Taildragger67]

Apacau - doesn't flying fox = fruit bat?

Hoodoo - several of us had to read your -400 reference more than once... the evac-at-gate comment does appear to be a reference to the recent well-known and report-awaited incident, but the ETOPS bit got me wondering if you were referring to a 734 or 764...

One can imagine that following the general grumbles after the Bangkok Golf Cart wasn't cleared out PDQ that maybe there's some erring on the side of caution. Especially if a groundie says there's a fire & the bit of metal in between eyes & ground make it hard to verify for one's self.

[Sperm Bank]

Hoodo unless you reviewed or were part of the assessment team who investigated the incident, I don't think you are qualified at this stage to pass intelligent comment on what happened. One mans mistake is sometimes another mans success story.

I don't know whether the lads made the right decision or not and it is none of my business. To have an opinion is one thing, to apportion blame or cast aspersions of incompetence is another.

Could it be handled differently? possibly; was anyone killed? NO. = successful.

No I don't fly for QF mate, in fact the opposition. However I am very reticent to cast a broad net over things I know little or nothing about.

Wait for the results of the investigation, and then if you still need to go to town on these guys, well go for it.