sawyl | Fear of Flying (Reply)

No, I'm not thinking of Erica Jong's seminal 70s novel of the same name, but rather a rather more literal fear induced by a pair of unfortunate incidents, both involving Quantas. The first, spotted in Melbourne involved a mix-up over the emergency oxygen supply:

For ten months, crews have been filling airliner oxygen systems from a nitrogen cart that's supposed to be used to fill tires. The mistake went unnoticed until a couple of weeks ago when an observant aircraft engineer spotted service workers using the cart. "He was walking around the plane and asked what they were doing. When they said they were topping up the oxygen, he said, 'No you're not, that's a nitrogen cart,'" an unnamed source told The Age. As anyone who works with industrial gases knows, oxygen tanks have different fittings than other gases to prevent exactly this kind of mix-up. However, when the crews discovered the fittings on what they thought was their new oxygen cart didn't fit, they swapped them for the ones on the old cart they were retiring.

Whilst the second involved an near complete electrical failure:

Qantas Flight QF2 from London To Sydney via BKK (Bangkok) (a Boeing 747-400) suffered a total AC electrical loss 15 minutes before landing at BKK on 8 January 2008. The effect of the AC loss was that all AC powered equipment in the aircraft stopped working and the crew was forced to revert to standby battery power for instrumentation. A number of electrically controlled sub-systems were disabled... Power was available only to the Captains PFD, ND and standby Attitude indicator. They also had to contend with alt gear/flap extension, no anti-skid, no autobrakes, and no thrust reverser.

The cause of this mishap? The sink in the first class galley had become blocked with coffee grounds, thanks in part to a new cappuccino machine, which caused water to overflow onto a broken drip guard protecting the generator controllers, which caused the power to fail.

I may never be able to fly again...