Qantas 747's damaged at Avalon . . .
 

Qantas jets collide at airport
The Age

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Two Qantas jumbo jets - including the plane involved in the Manila mid-air explosion last July - have collided while being towed at Avalon.

"Two 747s at our Avalon maintenance base have come into contact with each other during towing this morning," a Qantas spokesman said.

"Both aircraft sustained some damage, the extent of that is still being assessed."

The spokesman confirmed one of the planes was the aircraft that was forced to make an emergency landing earlier this year when its oxygen tank exploded mid-air, blowing a hole in the plane's fuselage.

Repairs to the aircraft involved in the July incident were undertaken in Manila by Boeing, but further work was being done at Avalon.

Those involved in this morning's collision, which occurred about 9.30am, have been stood down pending a full investigation, a Qantas spokesman said.

He said it was too early to determine the cause of the crash.

The airline believes both 747s will be out of action for at least a few days.

Hardly a surprise.
Story I've heard is a wingtip's been towed into the other aircraft's nose. Radome and forward pressure bulkhead, and wing leading edge both damaged.

Well done, Forstaff, and congratulations to the QF strategists who set Avalon up as our Centre of Excellence

Any chance of a photo?

Get what you pay for is right. When will bean counters learn that in aviation the quick cheap way isn't often the quickest cheapest way, and when will idiot managers have the kahonies to say no to them?

Settle Down Fellas!
 

I would remind those posting here that our fellow workers in this industry are involved with this incident. Recriminations aimed at FS and QF help no-one.

Despite the politics of the situation, there are many who earn their living at AVV HM. Calling the place names and saying how bad it is may only hasten the demise of 747 HM in Australia.

Please remember, too, that there are human beings, working people, who are at the centre of this storm, who now have their livelihoods at stake. Please spare a thought for them in their current state of mind. :sad:

Geez guys. Lighten up! It wasn't a hull loss so the records intact!:rolleyes:



;)

Tug driver..Oops!
 

A certain tug driver might be looking for a new job come monday

When they stop performance bonuses, and mangers get paid to manage, not run the place into the ground.

blackd
 

here here blackd, I recoil when I read the venom that is posted here at times.Without knowing the circumstances too.
beyond the politics of the avv set up are ordinary workers doing what we do.Plenty of ex qantas/ex AN folks there too.And .. its not as if anyone at a Qantas base never ever dented a jet whilst towing.

If they've made a mistake they will have to suffer the consequences.

What......never had a towing accident in Sydney.......ever? LOL.

Don't know what's happening in our great great country, seems to be a lot of hate and bigitory developing. We have the best place on earth don't screw it up.

Interesting... when you damage a plane, Qantas spokesman David Cox said workers involved in the incident had been stood down “pending a full investigation”. . When you sell of the company Dixon said the $A11 billion ($US9 billion) deal from the consortium Airline Partners Australia (APA) had been "clouded by emotion", as board members and management stood to make huge personal gains."The real Achilles' heel was that it got very, very emotional -- principally because I and the senior management team were going to earn tens of millions of dollars as part of it. Go figure

Gotta love the media..
 

Silly mistake we all agree on, but very minor and has happened many times before i am sure. Funny thing is that the news have just stated that "2 qantas aircraft at Avalon have collided on the RUNWAY ."

:rolleyes:

Usual media exageration.

HTB

With one aeroplane having its wing tip smashed and who know's the extent of damage to the wing front spar, and the other plane having its radome smashed off and a hole in the fwd pressure bulkhead - i think the structural damage would be quite extesive.

I have also heard that the plane under tow may have had its nose gear rotated past the 90deg mark, as then the tug slamed on his brake the plane kept on rolling sheering the tow bar :oh:

I hope all the people involved had their "Tow Safe" aprovals up to date :D

ampclamp,thats fair enough but to be fair does this law apply to all employees within the group?

Does accountability extend to the upper floors as well?

I'm sure qantas are investigating the incident fully in order to find someone to blame and sack. No blame culture they say! I beg to differ.
This airline is now reaping the benefits of it's past ten years investment into the future of this industry in Australia, Training, Infrastructure, Goodwill it has shown to it's employees.

Of course, I am joking!

While I spare a thought for those involved, I have no sympathy for the company and hope they continue to reap what they sow. :suspect:

I feel for the workers directly involved as someone else said they are only human. Obviously nobody would deliberately do it so it's just an accident/incident that can happen in any industry & does all the time.
The real concern will be QF's handling of this event. I hope the guy/s get a fair hearing but with QF's now continuous media attention I'll bet that QF will do all they can in the publics eyes to show that an individual is/was responsible & not QF's poor track record of the way they treat their workers contractors as well.
Did a B737 conversion to freighter not have a hanger incident some time back? Sh1t happens, as long as no one was hurt it's back to the panel beaters:)



CW

It sure does, just like one day at Sydney Terminal when an A330 was pushed back with the aerobridge still attached.

As 'stuffing-up' is clearly not the sole preserve of contractors, perhaps some of the Qantas ginger-beers should maintain a discrete silence. Have they not heard of the adage that begins 'there for the grace of God.....'?

anyone in the know willing to shed some light on how aircraft these sizes are towed around? obviously someone towing, extra eyes watching the rest of the plane? anyone in the cockpit while towing?

Don't forget the time that the SIT tow and stow crew nearly took the wingtip off a -400 due to them shutting down all power and hydraulics before the body gear had a chance to lock in the straight forward position. This caused the aircraft to crab into the door of H96. Bugger

Or the time heavy maintenance was doing a reweigh in H271 and had the aircraft roll off the pads as they had set the brakes too many times before re-pressurising the accumulators. In this case it was good luck and not good management that saved the day.
The hangar doors were open to allow the tug access and this allowed the nose of the aircraft to roll through them rather than take them out.

The aircraft was stopped by an inadvertantly placed cargo tug. The damage ended being the fairing on the R WLG door. Another lucky escape.



At the end of the day it all comes down to a failure of company policy and procedures.
QF management is known for hiding behind the P & P manual, so somewhere along the line today the processes management have put in place failed and incident has happened.

The unfortunate guys on the floor might get a huge shafting for following the rules that their management have told them to follow.

Before anyone points fingers at the people at AVV, SYD has a fairly decent track record. The A380 was slightly damaged just weeks ago. Wasn't EBW damaged in MEL when a truck ran into it?

Accidents do happen - let things take thier course but really, SYD has a fair track record of damaging aircraft.

One machine was the "Manila oxy. bottle popper" and the other was the "battery powered plane"

bbbbbbbbzzzzzzzzzzzzbbbbbbbbbbbbbzzzzzzzzzz

P & P is there for a reason, be accountable for your actions, it's not lego! A bad carpenter blames their tools.....conversly, I do sympathize!

Meeja !!
 

http://static.pprune.org/images/icons//icon8.gif Meeja !!
The Bimbo S.S. reading the Ch. 10 news (Syd tonight) described it as a Qantas CHRASH.:ugh: Media who'd feed them.http://static.pprune.org/images/smilies/pukey.gif

Dazler I know the P & P is there for a reason, but it sucks when managers and the like hide behind it or update it on the run to save their own butts. This was a common move by one short ex SYD HM manager a few years ago

redtbar
 

No mate accountability is selective at some levels as you imply but that is not the point I was making.
I think what I was saying was if they have a case to answer taking into account the million things that will be MEDA'ed tap rooted etc they'll be dealt with. What we need first are the facts before judgement is passed.

cheers,
ac.

Who will get the blame..... the poor bastard who is the PIC (person in charge)... the towing policy covers every possible scenario with the same statement..." The person in charge will ensure that..... blah blah blah"

so... continue to tow at your own peril, knowing that full well that if anything goes wrong... even if it gets hit by lightning during a tow, the PIC will be blamed and asked to touch his toes and hold tight.....

As for towing around the ever shrinking jet base.... try dragging a 744 between h131 and the run bay when the blast fence is in the southern position and an aircraft is in w14.... who is to blame if you whack a winglet.... PIC.
never the :mad:ing idiots who build the shyte in the way.

Hope the guys in Avalon get a slap on the wrist only.... but with this culture of blame thats festered in this place, who knows

my my my....it was only a few months ago that LAME's were sticking together for the first time and we needed too ...now we are bagging LAME's at the first chance without any real info....how many of us have not made a mistake...lets support the guy's involed,and dont bother to tell me that i have not used correct grammer or used a few more commers as i dont care we are engineers not english teachers

Video showing some of the damage here

Had to laugh when they said "both planes are expected to be out of commission at least until the weekend"...

another superlame,that 744 run away in H71,was an accumulator failure not a crew mistake,very scary:sad:

EP sorry about that, we got the other story on our shift. Still very lucky either way you look at it

Now they are the "World's most experienced airline". I believe this was Pan Am's slogan back in 1961. QANTAS can't even come up with their own slogan. How much did they pay for someone to steal that and use it?

Anyway, the incident at AVV today was most unfortunate, but the usual OOH AHH brigade will be out in full force, and out will come the pointing fingers shifting the blame on the guys involved.

Not only will the PIC be held responsible, but all involved on both aircraft will more than likely undergo a drug and alcohol test, not to mention the rabbits that may have witnessed the incident.

Now we'll just have to await the torrent of e-mails and ammended procedures to towing after this incident. These incidents have been around since year dot, and will continue to happen, no matter what procedure is in place, or which idiot manager writes them. It's a thing called "Human Factors". I'm sure all in QF have attended a HF course over recent years. Who knows how much O/T has been worked by the people involved, or the shift they've been on. So long as none were under the influence of alcohol or drugs, it will be, for all intent and purposes, an accident. N one goes ot of their way to intentionally damage an aircraft or their own reputation.

Maybe QF management are the ones who need to be tested.

a parting gift to you geoff from the LAMES OF EBA 8

My understanding it has to be a LAME on the flight deck when being towed, not a AME is this correct. Anyway sh$t happens, its happened before and will happen again. (Must say though that 747/400 involved in the oxy incident is starting to look like my wifes car. Best time is when they got ol EBB's wing caught behind a power pole on the base,the more pushing and shoving the more she got stuck. ( I happened to be in the crew) we stood and watched for some time, (very entertaining) in the end they took the pole out after cutting of the power, big problem being nobody told anybody in Admin 1, so the techies and c/c were stuck in the lifts along with ground staff. All flights were delayed up to three hours or more as hot and bothered crews and staff were rescued, some of the girls were slightly distraught to say the least, we were ok we were only doing a MEL, those who were heading up the track, had the total S$its, no sense of humour what so ever. :E Hope nobody gets into to much trouble over this at Avalon, but knowing the company.......... there will be a witchhunt. :uhoh:

yep teresa green it was called wing tip growth in them days and its the same now happens when you try to turn one of these big babies the wing gets longer

You're spot on RIM. Maybe it's time to reissue that maint memo of 20 years ago that explained "wing tip growth"!!

Is there any Qantas pilot that has anything positive to say about the company? Why is it that any mistake/accident is automatically because of the decision to cut costs and make management changes? There are other reasons..believe it or not!

I think you'll find that 99% of the posts on this thread aren't from Qantas pilots. Qantas LAMES and ex-LAMES seem to make up the vast bulk. I am not sure what Obie is..... (hopefully under full-time supervision!)

Obie aka Amos2 won't be posting on this thread for a little while.:=

For those Classic drivers destined for type conversions & the FE's about to be made redundant sit tight the classic might be around a bit longer then December.

MC:8

"My understanding it has to be a LAME on the flight deck when being towed, not a AME is this correct"

Not anymore ppm was changed during the PIA, now any duly trained person with a tow safe card - another inconvenient truth!:ok:

yep FMU but i think the first time wing tip growth memo came out it may have been something like 30plus years ago when we first starting getting the 74's stuck at the end of h131 untill they got rid of that light pole