Jetstar admits it was slow to report missed approach

A report by Steve Creedy in The Australian says that Jetstar has admitted that its communications with air safety investigators over a controversial missed approach by one of its planes at Melbourne Airport were inadequate.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau this week revealed it did not initially probe an incident involving a Jetstar A320 on July 21 because information supplied by the airline five days later suggested it was unnecessary.

Jetstar on August 2 started an internal investigation into the incident and discovered that an enhanced ground proximity warning system had activated during the missed approach.

However, the bureau says Jetstar did not tell it about the developments until more than a month later.

“On September 11, 2007, in response to media reports of a potentially serious incident at Melbourne Airport, the ATSB contacted the operator, who provided additional information on the incident,” the report said.

“The ATSB reassessed it to be of sufficient seriousness to warrant the immediate initiation of an investigation.”

The ATSB interim report this week revealed that the Jetstar flight JQ156 from Christchurch sank to within 43ft (13m) of the runway after the crew moved a thrust lever to a wrong setting during a missed approach in fog at Melbourne Airport on July 21.

The Airbus A320, which had its landing gear extended at the time and was on autopilot, began to climb only after the captain realised something was wrong and took control.

The Australian understands the captain thought that he pushed the throttles to the take-off/go-around (TO/GA) position, which was usual for a missed approach. While he had briefly pushed it towards that setting, however, he brought it back to the flexible take-off/maximum continuous thrust (FLX/MCT) position.

This retracted the flaps and slats to the Flap 3 position but the plane continued to descend on the glideslope, activating a “don’t sink” warning on the enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS).

The captain disconnected the autopilot and tried to fly the plane manually but it initially continued to descend to a low of 43ft above the runway.

It finally began to climb after further control inputs, and the crew retracted the landing gear and reconfigured the aircraft. The aircraft climbed to 650ft, remaining there for 17 seconds before starting a shallow descent.

“Shortly after commencing this descent, the thrust levers were moved to the TO/GA detent and coincident with that movement, another EGPWS don’t sink warning was activated,” the report said.

‘After the thrust levers were moved to the TO/GA detent, the aircraft continued to climb and no further warnings or alerts were recorded.”

A second attempt to land also resulted in a missed approach, before the aircraft headed to Avalon airport and landed normally.

Both the ATSB and Jetstar have come under fire in some sections of the media about their handling of the incident.

It prompted Jetstar to send a message to all crews requiring the use of full take-off thrust in all missed approaches. JQ 156’s crew were sent for extra training and the airline published a flight standing order revising missed-approach procedures.

Jetstar chief executive Alan Joyce said the airline had responded proactively to the ATSB report. While he said the initial pilot incident report had been provided in a timely manner, he recognised that subsequent communication could have been improved.

The airline’s spokesman, Simon Westaway, said the pilot report in July did not mention the ground proximity warning and it emerged only after the airline decided to launch a further investigation as part of its normal safety policy.

He admitted that the airline’s first formal communication with the ATSB after the July report did not come until after the bureau launched its investigation on September 11.

He said that soon after that the airline was in a position to provide a draft document of its investigation, which had finished around the same time, and then a final version.

“We concede that the information flow to the ATSB could have been done more quickly,” Mr Westaway said.

“But we certainly did voluntarily provide information and did so off our own bat, not through prompting by the bureau.”

The ATSB said its investigation would focus on flight training standards, Jetstar’s incident reporting procedures, aircraft system operations and maintenance, provision of information to flight crews, and transition training.

A Report by The Mole from The Australian