Malaysia Airlines flight MH-128 had to return and make an emergency landing in Melbourne, Australia, on May 31st.
The Airbus A330-300 plane took off for Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but had to turn back after a passenger tried to enter the cockpit and claimed that he had a bomb.
The passenger, identified as a 25-year-old male, Sri Lankan Citizen, was restrained before the plane safely touched down in Melbourne. Everyone aboard remained unharmed.
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Bostjan Henigaman
What: Thomson Airways Boeing 737-800 en route from Cardiff to Las Palmas
Where: en route
When: Jan 25th 2010
Who: 186 passengers and 7 crew
Why: While en route, one of the passengers apparently suffered a panic attack, and attempted to enter the cabin, having to be restrained by crew and passengers.
The passenger was taken into custody on landing.
If this does turn out to be the case of a mental disorder (panic attack), one wonders what new steps will be taken to reduce incidents of this type. It seems as if unruly passengers are on the rise. Is it the reporting of the events that has changed or are passengers themselves changing, devolving into having less self-control? It seems like a trend-but what does it mean?
Or is there a simpler answer? Is it that earlier generations of fliers respected planes more?
Southwest Airlines flight WN-149 had to face a delay after the aircraft’s nose gear collapsed at Baltimore–Washington International Airport, Maryland, on August 4th.
The Boeing 737-300 plane was being pushed back when its nose gear collapsed.
All 126 passengers and 5 crew members disembarked safely.
The airline arranged a replacement plane for the passengers.
Delta Airlines flight DL-2109 made an emergency landing in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 30th.
The Boeing 737-900 plane took off for Salt Lake City, Utah, but had to return shortly afterwards due to vibrations on the airframe.
The plane landed safely. Everyone aboard remained unharmed.
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Rafael Alvarez Cacho
What: Transavia Boeing 737-BK2 En route from Sharm el-Sheikh to Amsterdam
Where: Primošten Croatia
When: Oct 20, 2012
Who: 192 aboard
Why: While the flight was en route over Croatia, smoke and the odor of burning plastic developed in the cabin. The pilot diverted to Zagreb-Pleso airport and made a safe landing although two passengers complained of breathing problems. Emergency Medical Services at the airport treated them.
Apparently there was no one available certified on Boeing, so an expert from Amsterdam was called in.
While passengers spent the night at a hotel, a replacement plane was flown in.
What: Air Macau Airbus A321-200 en route from Beijing to Macau
Where: Beijing
When: Feb 4th 2011
Why: Takeoff was aborted when fluid started leaking (described evocatively as a fierce spray, large fluid spill, massive spray). The plane aborted takeoff, and stopped on the runway. Passengers disembarked on the runway, (hopefully were bussed or carted back to the airport) and repairs were made on the plane.
The plane had suffered a broken seal, causing an oil leak. The leak did not affect runway operation which was not cancelled/
The flight took off again nine hours later after repairs and testing.
In the operation of the Airbus 330, a percentage of man-made decisions are taken away from humans in the cockpit. When you closely consider the Air France Airbus Flight 447 crash, it is easy to see that bad pilot decisions occurred when the pilots were not getting accurate feedback about what was happening. In old programmer lingo, this is “garbage in-garbage out.” And, unfortunately, when the data comes out of a computer, people tend to believe it, especially pilots in a falling plane, whose lives rely on that particular “garbage.”
Sure, mistakes were made. The pilot retired, leaving the cockpit to the copilots. If he had stayed in the cockpit, none of this would have happened.
Of the two remaining co-pilots, one still should have realized the other’s mistaken attitude (flying at a nose-up attitude with falling speeds.) Even something as basic as tandem cockpit control (where the flight controls move in tandem in the left and right cockpit), would have revealed to the second co-pilot what the other pilot was doing. But cockpit controls in the A330 are asymmetrical, and move independently.
If one co-pilot had caught that the junior co-pilot was flying at the nose-up attitude while the speed was dropping, none of this would have happened.
Not only did the failure of pitot tubes (the malfunctioning equipment that reads/relays airspeed) occur when they iced up, any failsafes that should have kicked in, didn’t. Thales Pitot tube icing was a known factor prior and considered by Airbus an “optional” fix. Because these tubes were frozen (iced over) airspeed data was incorrect.
If Airbus had demanded that the flawed Thales pitot tubes be replaced, the airspeed data would have been correct, and none of this would have happened.
The plane flew for a while with falling speeds, nose up. Then, the idiosyncrasy of the stall warning alarm system kicked in. When airspeed slowed too much, the warning went off, but when it slowed even more, it stopped. The pilots were in a feedback deadzone. Flying at a crawl, the warning quit. Speeding up from a crawl to slow turned set the warning off again. So when they tried to increase to the proper speed, the stall system went off.
It is a given that correct data and feedback are essential to a pilot. In the Airbus 330, the underlying design failed to provide accurate data and feedback. Could any pilots fly a plane if they did not know what is happening? It all comes down to a whole integration of synchronicity: a coetaneous concurrence of problems and failures converged on the pilots at once. Pilot error alone does not a crash make. Not even on an A-330.