Another plane in midair damage drama

A CATHAY Pacific Airways Boeing 747 aircraft with 363 passengers suffered mid-air damage while descending for a landing at Vancouver overnight.

There were no injuries but officials were trying to determine what happened to the plane at 20,000 feet while on a flight from New York to Hong Kong via the western Canadian city of Vancouver, said Jennifer Pearson, a Cathay Pacific spokeswoman.

An external panel on the aircraft's fuselage was damaged in the incident, according to Pearson, but she could not confirm or deny local media reports that the panel had been separated from the plane.

Source http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0...5003402,00.html

Oxygen 'bottle blast holed Qantas jet'

August 29, 2008 12:17pm

A BURSTING oxygen cylinder blew the hole in the fuselage of a Qantas jet last month that forced it to make an emergency landing in the Philippines, a report finds.

The tank failed and burst, blasting through the cabin floor from a storage area between business and economy class seats on a Hong Kong to Melbourne flight last month, a preliminary report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) found.

The investigation found one of the seven emergency oxygen cylinders below the cabin floor had exploded, news agency AP reports.

"On the basis of the physical damage to the aircraft's forward cargo hold and cabin, it is evident that the number 4 passenger oxygen cylinder sustained a failure that allowed a sudden and complete release of the pressurized contents,'' Julian Walsh, acting ATSB executive director, said today.

Bureau investigators are yet to determine why the tank exploded, almost two months after the July 25 incident.

They could not rule out such an incident occurring again.

Continued http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0...5003402,00.html

Got some info coming from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

First link a press statement.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/2008/release/2008_33.aspx

Second link a pdf file with some pictures and sketches.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/2008/relea...30_1mediaPP.pdf

These are Preliminary Factual reports, not the final thing yet.

Edited August 30, 200817 yr by Carib

Second link a pdf file with some pictures and sketches.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/2008/relea...30_1mediaPP.pdf

Truly scary stuff. From these diagrams, it's a small miracle that no one was seriously injured or killed with a 20-pound kinetic missile blasting through the cabin. There are so many ways this could have been much worse.

Just openly speculating, but this looks like a maintenance quality issue, probably related to a uninspected mechanical fitting. For all intents and purposes, pressure cannisters don't fail in and of themselves. They typically have safety factors of 3x or 4x the maximum expected load. Failures like these would seem more typically to happen at interfaces, such as connectors, valves, etc.

Thx for providing the links.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/invest...8053_Prelim.pdf

A bit larger file, but contains much of the links already provided.

Trouble now is that the oxygen bottle miraculously fell back into the hold and went out the aircraft through the hole it created by failing.

It would have been a lot easier to see what and where something broke/ruptured/whatever, if the bottle still had been present.

What's going on with Qantas?

This is from today's headlines on news.com.au and the day hasn't finished yet.

1.

More Qantas strife as fumes fill cabin

ANOTHER Qantas plane has hit trouble at Melbourne airport with passengers on a flight to Sydney this morning disembarking because of fumes inside the cabin.

2.

Flight delayed after wing damaged

PASSENGERS on a Qantas flight to London were stranded overnight in Melbourne after the discovery of damage to the plane's wing.

Qantas said QF29, scheduled to leave Melbourne at 10.50pm (AEST) yesterday, was delayed after an access panel on the wing was damaged prior to boarding. The panel had been removed to service a component behind it.

The plane with 308 passengers took off at 6.12am today.

3.

Japan-bound Jetstar flight grounded

MECHANICAL problems have grounded a Jetstar international passenger flight out of Sydney.

The A330-200 aircraft bound for Osaka was due to take off from Sydney International Airport at 11.30am (AEST) today, a Jetstar spokesman told AAP.

"A hydraulic-related issue meant we had to ask passengers to disembark," he said.

"Qantas engineers are addressing the problem."