Qantas Drama...

[68ft can of beer]

Qantas 'regrets' injuries caused in plane evacuation
A Qantas executive says the airline regrets that nine people were injured during an emergency evacuation of one of its planes in Japan early this morning.

However the airline says it is not embarrassed by the incident.

An A330 Airbus bound for Perth with 191 passengers and crew on board had to make an emergency landing in Osaka after a sensor indicated smoke in the cargo hold.

Nine people were hurt during the evacuation and a Japanese man remains in hospital with what is believed to be a fractured hip.

Qantas head of engineering, David Cox, says it is not yet clear whether there was a fire or the sensor was faulty, but it was essential to get people off the plane as quickly as possible.

"Obviously we regret that those injuries have occurred but it is not unusual during an evacuation for there to be some minor injuries," he said.

"Obviously a fracture is at the top end of the injuries you'd expect but it is an evacuation so you go down that slide very quickly."

Mr Cox, says he is confident cabin crew followed the evacuation procedures to the letter.

"The aircraft systems, evacuation systems are designed to get people off, within 90 seconds and that means they're going to go down those slides very, very quickly and there is the risk of minor injuries," he said.

"That's got to be balanced against the more serious consequence of not being able to evacuate as quickly as you can."

[balus]

From a non-aviation professional, it sounds like it went well - they all got out!

[Ramrise]

Exactly Balus, they all got out.

But now starts the period where people sit around in chairs drinking coffee with the sole purpose of second guessing the crew. It happens everytime. Maybe they shouldn't have evacuated, we don't know, but they did!! And they are all alive.

I still remember the Saudi L-1011 rolling down the runway with people unable to get out and dying as a result of it.

If all the crew had was an indication of a possible problem in the cargo hold I don't envy them. You have to make a decision based on very little information. I would have done the same thing, better safe than sorry.

Regards,

Ramrise

[egbt]

With a potential fire on board I would hope that it's a no-brainer to evacuate, irrespective of the potential cost to the airline.

When I was helping to make detections system (at Graviner, many years ago) the false alarm rate (without physical damage to the kit) was incredibly low.

[Airbubba]

Glad they landed at 1 am, during the day this would close KIX for several hours and generate mass diversions. The recent AF mishap at YYZ demonstrated what a lifesaver a good evacuation can be. Watching the plane burn on CNN I was sure there would be numerous casualties...

Here are some sobering musings on inflight fire:

http://www.airborne.org/flying/forum3.htm

[Dani]

I agree that an evacuation is always the safest bet, and I congratulate to the Qantas crew involved (why is it titled as a "drama"?).

Nonetheless I'm not sure if I would evacuate in any case. It's mostly a good move to ask for information from people outside the flight deck, i.e. CAs and tower. If there is a real fire, then there are obvious signs of it. If the fire is so small that you cannot see anything, then there is most probably enough time for the fire brigade to have a look inside the cargo bay.

I also have to disagree with egbt's statements: a) these sensors are not fire detections (like they are e.g. in the engine nacelles), but smoke detection systems. b) yes, they are relatively reliable, most of all in a controlled environment like the developement room - in the outside world it happens from time to time that you receive false warnings. If I evacuated everytime I had a smoke warning, I would have performed quite a lot of them... I'm talking here mostly about detection systems in smaller airliners, not those in Airbus and Boeings.

Now start shooting...

[Bearcat]

I'll run with the Dani post.....using all available resources comes to mind......but theres never a right or a wrong in these situations. the capt on the day deemed it prudent and necessary. S/He felt it the best option.

[TurningFinal]

Hi...here goes my first post...

According to ABC News Online, Japanese transport investigators are questioning the pilots. Perhaps I'm reading between the lines a bit too much, but a statement in the ABC article lead me to wonder if the Japanese authorities are questioning the crew's decision to evacuate:

"Japan often takes a strong line on aviation incidents and in the past pilots have faced prosecution for professional misconduct if someone is injured on board their plane."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1442737.htm

I remember following a major train accident in Japan recently, some media reported that a very strong focus on punctuality sometimes leads to punishment of train crews by their supervisors when the trains arrive even a minute late. The operator of the train apparently exceeded the posted speed limit on the section of track where the crash ocurred, possibly trying to make up for lost time and maintain punctuality.

The investigation now underway by Japanese authorities might be based on some sort of warped equation balancing the cost of rolling the trucks, shutting down the runway, and dealing with the media against the actions of the crew.

[Bendy]

If the fire is so small that you cannot see anything, then there is most probably enough time for the fire brigade to have a look inside the cargo bay.

Dani

Open the door and have a look??? With 200 punters sitting there waiting for their backsides to catch fire I would have thought the very last thing you would want to do was to give the fire some oxygen. Short answer is no, you don't open the door until you have the punters off.

Not sure how accurate the news report I heard was, but they specifically mentioned that the tower advised of smoke on touchdown. That would have done it for me I'm afraid. "All out, all change please"

Cheers

Bendy

[El lute]

Ramrise,
I, too, still remember the Saudi L-1011. But if memory serves, they did stop, nobody got out and it was later found that because the doors needed to move inward before moving up and people in panic were pressing against them, they (the doors) couldn't move. I stand to be corrcted, though.

[Human Factor]

The decision to evacuate has to be taken on the basis that some people will be injured if they go down the slides. Ultimately it's a risk assessment. In this case, I would venture that it was a greater risk keeping the pax on board a potentially burning aeroplane.

No brainer really.

[Rananim]

The crew were absolutely correct.Never roll the dice and assume a faulty warning.Not with smoke or fire.Take the handful of minor injuries that are inevitable with an evacuation of a large passenger jet and know that you did the right thing.This typfies just why Qantas are held in such esteem by the entire industry.

[Carnage Matey!]

Apart from 'that' incident which we're not allowed to talk about. It wasn't a crash, honest.

Open the door to see if the cargo hold is on fire? I'll watch that one from the safety of the terminal thank you.

[Non Normal]

Could someone justify (or explain) how Japan remains a Chicago Convention signatory, while they clearly disagrees with the principles of Annex 13 (I know about the deviations, but they seem to have even the fundamentals of accident investigation "wrong" from the Western point of view)?

[travel thickness]

The aircraft was crewed by shorthaul crew ex Perth.
There was no Japanese language speaker on board.
The pax could not be briefed and had no idea what was happening.
This would have a most terrifying situation for them.

[lomapaseo]

Could someone justify (or explain) how Japan remains a Chicago Convention signatory, while they clearly disagrees with the principles of Annex 13 (I know about the deviations, but they seem to have even the fundamentals of accident investigation "wrong" from the Western point of view)?

No need for the reader to justify or explain.

You made the allegations without citing support for them. So perhaps it is you that need to justify your specific complaint.

The investigation is a separate entity from a justice system. Just about the same all over the world. You may be critical of their justice system, but I doubt they care.

However if you meant to be critical of their investigation then you seem to have left out supporting reasons.

[xodus]

hey guys good call for me for the evac...


any body actually had one?
all information gathered nonone behind us at hold, tower need binoculars to see one of 4 runways, emergency services 2 mins drive away. are we on fire ????????
lets go talk about it later.
no question do the same again.

turns out leaky apu dropping oil on exhaust... hey but we al have that.

[egbt]

Dani

a) these sensors are not fire detections (like they are e.g. in the engine nacelles), but smoke detection systems. b) yes, they are relatively reliable,

In pedant mode, the engine nacelle detectors are (or at least were when I was in the industry) actually heat detectors, either firewire (coaxial steel with a glass dielectric), bi-metallic or other sensors.

in the outside world it happens from time to time

Exactly why I qualified my statement regarding physical damage. but how frequently is that going to create an in flight false alarm?

I think the biggest damage issue we used to have was on military aircraft with fitters knocking / leaning on the firewire on maintenance intensive equipment

I'm talking here mostly about detection systems in smaller airliners, not those in Airbus and Boeings.

I was talking about airbus, Boeing, Military etc but I would have hoped the systems would be similar

On a less defensive basis

I agree smoke detectors of various types are generally less reliable, but we had very few reports of false alarms (but I am going back to the early 80's when fewer devices were fitted)

I'd be interested to know what the general reliability is now.

[lomapaseo]

I agree smoke detectors of various types are generally less reliable, but we had very few reports of false alarms (but I am going back to the early 80's when fewer devices were fitted)

I'd be interested to know what the general reliability is now.

I seem to recall that the FAA mad a presentation at the ISASI meeting in Wash DC some two years ago that showed the data of >90% false alarms with 50/50 response by the pilot to evacuate.

Indeeed a very scary statistic, to those of us as pax that consider any evacuation as scary as death itself.

[glekichi]

Not that I agree with the practice, but the police do get involved here in NZ too. Its nothing specific to Japan.
A friend was quizzed by police last week over an incident in which nobody was even injured.
What do they do elsewhere? Just decide who is responsible and then settle it all in private lawsuits...? :yuk:

[I should add that I am in no way questioning the decision of the Qantas crew]

[knackeredII]

The A330 has a cargo fire extinguishing system. There hasn't been any mention of whether this was used or not. Considering it is an enclosed space, its use may or may influence an evacuation decision. Airbus cargo detection systems can be sensitive. I've had one go off on the ground with the door wide open as a ground vehicle drove past the door.

[BlueEagle]

The doors on the TriStar rocket up into the a/c skin when the emergency system is activated, they are on a big spring! In the case of the Saudia TriStar I believe the problem was compounded by the aircraft not being fully de-pressurised, so the doors couldn't open.
There are numerous theories, including a dyslexic FE unable to read the check-list, the captain didn't want to stop because a Royal Flight was waiting to depart, etc. etc.

[Taildragger67]

Righto, my 2 bob worth. Just an opinion, not adding any new info.

News reports say the tower advised the crew that they saw smoke.

In my limited experience, where's there's smoke, there's frequently fire. If smoke (possibly indicatig a fire) is visible emanating from a (largely sealed) aircraft, which has just diverted due to a smoke (or heat) warning, it's probably a fair thing to assume that the source of the smoke/heat has somehow beached the integrity of the hull. Such things have a habit of spreading, well, like wildfire.

Good on 'em. Hark back to the 2003 QF 744 arrival in Sydney where the skipper evacuated the a/c after a groundie reported an undercarriage fire. Again, good call. Pity about the wearer of the high heels...

Personally, I'd want out of such smoke incidents asap and would be asking questions if I wasn't shown the door pdq. Sorry for the injuries, but it's better to be hobbling for a while than toast.

[Buster Hyman]

If there was an inquiry or anything, I'd show up with a photo of the AF A340 & the time it took for that aircraft to be destroyed!

No brainer really. Job well done.

[OZcabincrew]

Hi!

I was operating on this flight from Narita. The comments that Travel Thickeness said in a previous post on page one is completely incorrect. If you would like clarification of what happened in this situation, please private message me and i'll be more than happy to answer within the limits i'm allowed. The crew did a fantastic job and i wouldn't change anything if it had to happen again.

A note to everyone, please don't post information claiming to be facts if you don't know they're facts, otherwise you will really offend someone.

Oz

[elektra]

Well said. Don't have to know much or read much to see that this was promptly and safely handled. We shouldn't even talk about % of "false"warning etc. A warning is a warning and until the QRH has some troubleshooting pages, we have NO CHOICE but to treat it as real. Unless someone could convince me that this QF crew could have landed even sooner, I'd say they did exactly what every passenger would have wanted.

well done.

[blueloo]

Now if there were any creative cabin crew, they could have grabbed all the bags left on board (now lost property) the aircraft and auctioned them off !! Just like they do in Jetstar Coolangata!

[jettlager]

The following is a cut and paste from crikey.com re QANTAS's cost cutting measures-

------------------

Is Qantas compromising its passengers' safety by cost-cutting?

Crikey Daily - Wednesday, 24 August

Crikey received this tip from an anonymous subscriber:
It is a requirement of Japanese law that all foreign air carriers, operating into and out of Japan must have a Japanese language speaker as part of the crew complement. Qantas have as a matter of course, over the past 18 months or so been operating into and out of Japan with domestic crews. Historically these crews are not language qualified. I am led to believe that the Qantas crew involved in this week's emergency disembarkation in Japan didn't have a Japanese language speaker as part of the crew complement. The PAs to passengers were made by a holidaying Qantas employee. If this is the case, Qantas has violated its agreement on flying into and out of Japan.
Advertisement

That's a pretty serious accusation against Qantas following the recent emergency landing in Osaka where nine people were injured. The plane, carrying 178 passengers and 13 crew, was on its way from Tokyo to Perth when it diverted to Osaka.

So did Qantas contravene Japanese law? No, says Geoffrey Tudor, director of public relations at Japan Airlines, telling us that there is "no legal requirement – under Japanese aviation law – for Qantas or any foreign airline to have Japanese speaking crew."

But in another respect, our tipster seems to be on the money – the recent emergency landing and subsequent passenger evacuation was apparently "anything but usual," an ex-Qantas exec tells Crikey. "I have it on very good authority" that a "non crew member on board gave the emergency evacuation PA after landing, where the predominantly Japanese passengers were herded out of the aircraft via the slides."

Why wasn't there a bilingual crew member on hand to assist Japanese passengers? We called Qantas, where a spokesman called Lloyd (he wouldn't give his last name) told us that there had been a fluent Japanese speaker on board. In a follow up call, we asked Lloyd whether this person was a member of the flight's crew? The answer: no. On this particular flight, he said, the normal Japanese speaker was ill, and wasn't on board. So it was another Qantas crew member – not assigned to the flight – who stepped in.

Had this stand-in not been available, however, would Qantas have left its Japanese passengers in the dark? When asked if Qantas always has a local speaker on board, Lloyd told us that it wasn't Qantas policy per se. Instead, it's a "matter of course" – and Qantas "aims to have" a fluent speaker on board. So if a Japanese speaker hadn't been available on the day, Japanese passengers could have been left without a guide.

In fact, says our ex-Qantas exec, Qantas "used to employ Japanese Flight Attendants based in Japan who flew on the route for both customer services reasons eg helping Japanese passengers fill in immigration entry cards for Australia, and for safety reasons. Being Japanese Cabin Crew, these crew were fully trained in all safety and emergency evacuations procedures on a regular basis." So why is this no longer the case? "Simple, cost cutting of the like still being advocated by Dixon and Dame Margaret!!" Ah well, he says, "as long as no shareholders on-board were inconvenienced then I guess it was OK (not)."

------------------

Qantas- "Shareholder returns and executive bonuses at ALL cost".

[Cerberus]

Well they got everyone out without killing anyone which has to be good! I don't know the whole facts so I am not in any position to question the crews actions but will add a bit of info which might be of interest.

If the smoke detectors are like in our 330s they are optical and not heat/ionistaion activated. We frequently have spurious warnings with anything from humid conditions to mangoes decomposing to blame. Mostly we are lucky because the hold is still open but sometimes that is not the case. If there is a warning, the cargo fire extinguishing fires one bottle into the hold when actioned and then (for ETOPS cert) meters in another bottle of extinguishent over the next few hours.

On the ground, a school of thought has that it is better to taxi in, get the pax off and then open the holds to check. In the air, so the line of thought goes, it becomes much more of a coin toss as to what you should do after landing. But coz of that bast*rd, Mr Harry Hindsight, I guess you will be damned if you do and damned if you don't! For me I am delighted that we didn't add any more fatalities to what has already been a horrendous month in aviation.

Cerberus

[OZcabincrew]

Blueloo,

all passengers retrieved ALL belongings from the aircraft at a later date with no complaints of personal items going missing, so nothing was in lost property.

Jettlager,

yes there was a language speaker on board which went ill in Narita, so a paxing japanese speaking F/A was used. What would be the case if you had 2 or even 3 language speakers onboard and they all went sick from food poisoning or something, you would use your resources and use a passenger like a tour leader etc that could speak both English and Japanese. I am made aware by a long haul CSM that she has been on numerous Japan trips with long haul crew and no language speaker, so..........

Also the evacuation was not given by a PA, it was initiated by the evacuation signal alarm which prompt crew to start the evacuation commands/process, including the paxing language speaker yelling the commands in Japanese in the cabin, because as every paxing crew member is required to assist in such a situation.

There are still about 6 QF long haul Japanese crew still based in Japan, it is all very quiet though, don't hear much about it.

Again i say, don't try and post facts when you don't know. I was on the damn flight, message me and i will tell you directly! There is no finding fault in the crew, absolutely i agree we need atleast 2 language speakers onboard and this has been expressed to management.

Oz

[christn]

If you have a Smoke/Fire warning there is NO doubt! The crew reacted timely, landed and all survived!
Congratulations to all involved for a job well done.

(from a fellow professional)

[Jetlegs]

OZcabincrew rthank you for sharing your facts with us, and congratulations on getting all pax off.

Don't waste anymore of your energy on contradicting Jetlager; everybody who even infrequently reads the cabin crew forum knows about the quality of Jetlagers posts :yuk: and his/her never failing urge not to let the facts get in the way of a story that can make Qantas look bad.

[blueloo]

Ozcabincrew, I was merely taking the piss...I didnt expect QF cabin crew to do that sort of thing.....I made the remark as Jetstar Gold Coast have a regular auction of lost and found......with proceeds going to charity i presume, however, If you have the opportunity of purchasing some items at a greatly reduced price, I suspect items may spend more time becoming lost, rather than being found...............