Air NZ engine failure Final Report

[Raider1]

Don't know why the ATSB final reports take so long to come out. This one was released on Fri re the December 2002 incident.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/aviation/occurs/occurs_detail.cfm?ID=530

It would seem from the report and subsequent media coverage, the calling of brace brace brace at only 500ft caused some chaos in the cabin.

Quote:

25 September 2004
By DAVID MCLOUGHLIN

"Brace! Brace! Brace!"
This was the first that terrified passengers in a packed cabin of a stricken Air New Zealand plane knew of a high-speed emergency landing.


The Boeing 767-200 pilots had failed to tell crew they were making the emergency landing during the incident at Brisbane airport on December 8, 2002, and passengers were given wrong information seconds before landing.

An Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation report, issued yesterday, says the captain suddenly called "Brace! Brace! Brace!" over the public address system as the twin-engined jet was less then 200 metres off the ground.

One engine on Flight NZ132 had been wrecked by an explosion soon after takeoff.

"Emergency! Grab your ankles!" some cabin crew shouted to the 190 startled passengers, who had been told to expect a normal landing despite the engine failure.

"Heads down! Stay down!" other crew yelled. Still other attendants, caught unaware by the captain's announcement, said nothing, despite airline operating instructions to tell passengers loudly to brace in an emergency.

This is the picture of confusion painted in the bureau's final report into the emergency landing.

The Auckland-bound plane had just taken off when a fatigue crack in the left-hand engine caused a turbine disc to fly apart, throwing debris through the engine housing, damaging the engine pylon and the edge of the wing.

The captain declared a full emergency and returned to the airport, landing safely on one engine 30 minutes later.

The report confirms the bureau's interim finding in January last year that the engine failure was caused by metal fatigue, for which the airline was blameless because the plane had been maintained meticulously.

What is new is the bureau's account of apparent chaos in the passenger cabin just before landing, which backs comments by passengers on the day of the incident, but which is rejected by the airline.

[deadhead]

Um, McLoughlin has it wrong again (yawn).

Air New Zealand in fact has accepted the recommendations made in the ATSB report and is introducing changes, including a readback of salient points by the ISD to the Captain following the latter delivering an event briefing to the former, and that unless extreme circumstances exist, that this briefing will now be conducted with the ISD on the flight deck, rather than by interphone.

The ISD didn't hear the final stages of the briefing which included a "brace x3" call at 500ft, and that due to the disruption to the leading edge the landing would not be 'normal' consequently the ISD didn't brief the cabin crew that that would be happening, except that the FA3 was listening in to the conversation on the interphone and told his mate, so they were the only ones to call "heads down, stay down," the words for the PREPARED emergency landing. All the rest called the UNPREPARED emergency landing words, which are "emergency - grab your ankles."

Despite appearances, there was no chaos, everyone did as they were told, and all the crew responded as they were trained, except for two who did not make call outs at all, and I'm not sure as to the reason for that.

Now read the Weekend Dominion front page for some REAL wind-up reporting. McLoughlin's got nothing on those characters:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: