A380 Qantas passengers narrowly missed death after fuel tank punctured, claims expert
Thursday, 19 Nov, 2010
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Passengers on Qantas QF32 flight which made an emergency landing on November 4 were far closer to death than was originally believed, according to new details now emerging about the cause of the engine blow out.
Further information has come to light in Australia that shrapnel from the engine explosion punctured the superjumbo’s fuel tank in the wing.
Experts believe it was a matter of luck that this did not cause the fuel to ignite which would have caused a huge explosion.
Head of aerospace and aviation engineering at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Professor Adrian Mouritz told reporters that Qantas was “very, very lucky”.
He added: “If that fuel ignited, that aircraft would have exploded.”
Australian media company Fairfax Media has revealed that it has seen initial reports that show speeding parts of metal shot from the engine and through a fuel line making holes in structural spars in the plane’s wing and then struck the fuselage and tore through wing panels.
Meanwhile pilots were faced with system failures and took an hour to work through a series of system error messages.
Vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots Association Richard Woodward told the Associated Press: "I don’t think any crew in the world would have been trained to deal with the amount of different issues this crew faced."
"The amount of failures is unprecedented. There is probably a one in 100 million chance to have all that go wrong."
by Dinah Hatch
Dinah
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