Was US spy station responsible for Qantas flight horror?
CANBERRA – Air safety investigators are examining concerns that electro-magnetic interference from a top secret US base in Western Australia could have sparked an emergency aboard a Qantas flight from Singapore to Perth earlier this month in which almost 70 people were injured.
The West Australian newspaper said it understood the Australian Transport Safety Bureau will look into claims that transmissions from the Harold E Holt base at Exmouth caused a computer malfunction on QF72 which caused the Airbus A330-300 to climb unexpectedly before diving twice.
The base, which was set up by the Americans at the height of the Cold War, acts as a communications relay station for US and Australian submarines in the southern hemisphere.
The signals station is said to be one of the most powerful of its kind and its main mast, known as Tower Zero, is taller than the Empire State building.
It is known that fears about the possible effects of transmissions from the base on aircraft have been raised before and the ATSB has now factored those concerns into the wider incident investigation.
The ATSB said on Tuesday night it had narrowed the cause of the accident down to a fault in one of the Airbus’s complicated computer systems, known as Air Data Inertial Reference Unit, though investigators admit they remain clueless as to the specific cause.
Revelations the ADIRU was at the centre of the scare led to claims the accident may have links to a similar event involving a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 flight between Kuala Lumpur and Perth in August 2005 also involving a fault in the ADIRU.
Capt. Mike Glynn, vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, said it was unusual that computer faults had occurred in two different ADIRUs on two different aircraft in the same region of WA.
“It’s a very strange coincidence … it’s something I can’t discount,†he said.
Still in Australia, the Australian Communications and Media Authority wants to allow airlines to install mobile phone transmission equipment in planes, based on a nine-month trial in a single Qantas plane completed earlier this year.
Qantas plans to start in-flight mobile services early next year, albeit only with SMS, MMS and wireless internet capability.
mobiles outside the aircraft.
Virgin Blue spokeswoman Amanda Bolger said the company was keen to install the equipment for passengers on its new international airline, V Australia, but that it was unlikely to allow them to make phone calls.
“I don’t know if everyone would want to be in that captive environment with his or her neighbour gasbagging through an entire flight,” she said.
Ian Jarrett
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