Preliminary Conclusion of Melbourne-March 20 Tail strike
What: Airbus A340 en route for Dubai
Where: Melbourne airport
When: March 20
Who: 257 passengers and 18 crew
Why: Incorrect weight data on an in-flight computer caused the tail of an Emirates plane to scrape the runway during take-off. ( The Australia’s air safety regulator concluded that the weight was incorrectly entered on the onboard computer which resulted in thrust setting and take-off reference speeds lower than those required for the aircraft?s actual weight. (The weight entered was 112 tons too light.) The incident caused substantial damage to the plane’s tail. The tail ripped out at least one runway light, and dislodged a flight data recorder at the plane’s rear. Manual correction of thrust caused the rear fuselage to scrape the tarmac. The Emirates investigation is considering a flight computer double-entry system “to protect against single data source entry error.”