A history lesson in Australian Aviation for a certain reporter...
 

"Ben Sandilands from Plane Talking

....one thing is indisputable. This was the most serious incident ever to happen without loss of life in airline operations in Australia."

Well,

I'll kick off with Air China's 747SP descending into the YSBK control zone on downwind for 16R at YSSY.

How that didn't cause a disaster of epic proportion is anyone's guess.

What about Malaysia Airlines 744 off 27 in YMML, even after prompting from the tower, still took off on the short rwy, cleaned up a heap of lights etc, but no didn't jettison and land asap, nope, they continued to KL.:D

I'm sure there is plenty of other 'incidents', my fellow ppruners might care to share with the ever accurate, never exaggerating press....

Anyone have a report/info about both of these incidents, sounds like interesting stories?

I recall, whilst walking across the tarmac between AN & INTL terminals at Tulla one foggy morning, looking directly above me after a loud roar & seeing Olympic's undercarriage disappear into the fog....:eek:

Sing Air almost visited the tower at YSSY............ but may have been investigated....cant recal and too lazy to look!

I hate to "mention the war" again but...........
During '89 a charter mob from Europe ( 737-300) nearly collected the hill north of YBCG whilst trying to conduct a non precision approach to 14 in bad wx, they got very very low as I recall.


And just to show I'm not a biased '89er, a pre-89 TN 733 nearly landed on a road beside MK during an instrument app in bad wx, they lined up on a well lit road due to a large map shift.

oh yes..............A TN 727-200 had the wrong DME selected flying into Perth about 1980 sometime. Thought he was on profile for PH but instead was about 150 miles further east as he'd tuned the wrong DME. He got so low that Perth ATC lost comms and he lost the Perth VOR as well. They realised their mistake below 10,000' and climbed back up. Woops...

How about the SQ 747 that took off on 27, with a fifth pod, and went into the grass?

They somehow got airborne and continued all the way to Singapore!

Ben S must be a young feller :cool:

oh, and Alitalia and others tried to land on EN rwy 35, they got very low until EN tower called ML App and let them know....

G'Day 'ACMS',

I think you may find that the 727 concerned descended into Pingelly NDB,
ident at the time, 'PGL', instead of the locator at Parkerville, ident 'PRL'.....

Yep - he 'misappeared'.....low enough to be out of VHF comms - but popped back up again and continued to PH.
Pingelly NDB ident changed to 'PIY' soon after....

Whew!! :eek:

Wasn't there a Garuda that approached the wrong (and rather too short) runway in Melbourne? Could've been ugly all round :eek:

Jetstar's 'TOGA tap' incident, again on 27 at ML.

That wasn't far off a nasty result either.....

I'd dispute that - He's not a reporter but just someone who writes sensationalist crap. He obviously has little idea of what he's talking about.

Good thread. "Those that fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, are doomed to repeat them!"

Once again from the year we don't mention.... A foreign carrier given Australian domestic rights at the stoke of a pen. The Crew of the widebody was instructed to decend 1,500 not below the DME steps. These guys proceeded to decend below the DME steps, straight through the Camden control zone!!!

At the time the story was buzzing through aviation circles, but was pretty well buried in the wider press. Great journalistic ability/integrity then. Seems like little has changed. And the population of the day were deluded in thinking we were living in a democracy! :yuk:

How about the QFA 737 for 15ILS in Cairns. Both pilots had 33 LLZ tuned up, they followed the needles right towards terrain at Buchan Pt. Vectored back by Approach and GPWS would have kicked in, but still a lesson to be learnt.

Top Drop - now that's one I remember.

Believe it is why the LLZ on the non duty RWY is now selected OFF.

And then there is the Asiana aircraft (an ISO 9000 accredited operator)that showed on the radar at 6 miles from the threshold at some 300 ft early one morning coming in to YBCS in about 1996.

Saw an Al-A-W*G DC10 on short finals on the Tulla Freeway, gear down flaps down, starting to flare, I go what the! I think he then saw the cars and turned on the taps, got out of there. Didn't hear anything about that in the press.
Also heard about a few internationals lining up on Essendon by mistake, this was a few years ago, don't know if it still occurs?

Essendon in a big jet
 

I remember reading about Garuda trying to land at Essendon, or make that Pascoe Vale, but at least it didn't actually hit anything.

Wasn't there a collision over Sydney a long time ago when an international flight clipped the tail of a TAA jet, or maybe the other way around, and had its innards hanging out when it landed on a foam carpet. But it wouldn't have had as many people on board as the Emirates jet. Someone also ran off the east west runway at Sydney into the Cooks River about the same time in a 707 but I guess no one swallowed the water or they would have died for sure.

My worst fright was being in Mackay the night a TAA Friendship never made it coming in over the sea. We heard screams from a house down the street after someone had driven back from the airport with the news that he hadn't picked up a family member because the plane hadn't turned up. That put me off flying for a long time.

What about the time (1998 ?) an NJS 146-300 NJM I think took off from runway 33 (B5) at Cairns at flap 18, the F/O raised the flap instead of the gear. I believe the aircraft got very low; 70-100 feet over the Machans beach area; had stick push etc etc. Tower hit the crash button. That one was very close it was a fully loaded aircraft, 87 pax and in mid December 33 degrees and very little wind. The company changed SOP's shortly after. But once again all learnt some very salient lessons from that one. Moved on and became a safer operator after it all. No one killed maybe lives saved because of the right attitude to safety at a very professional organisation.

From memory a Canadian Pacific DC8 hadn't vacated runway after landing and TAA took most of the fin off. Very close to very nasty.

As far as the Ben Sandilands comment is concerned, I don't find it wholly unreasonable. On the basis of the speculation on the incident thread they were 4" from a Max power excursion into small buildings and a small overrun area.

How about the Qantas B767 who was preparing to ditch because the wx was below limits in Perth a few years back. Cooler heads in SYD prevailed and he did a auto land.