Sydney - Passengers aboard a Qantas jumbo jet that made an
emergency landing in Manila told Saturday they feared for their lives
after a gash appeared in the fuselage and they plummeted towards the
South China Sea 9,000 metres below.
David Saunders, speaking on his return to Melbourne, said he
hugged his tearful girlfriend as debris flew about the cabin and
their 17-year-old Boeing 747-438 hurtled seaward on Friday.
'I heard an enormous explosion, things went quiet, the cabin
instantly lost pressure and the plane just started to dive,' he told
Australia's AAP news agency. 'I just grabbed my passport out of my
bag and put it in my pocket so that if my body was found they could
identify it quicker.'
Locals among the 346 passengers aboard Flight QF30 from Hong Kong
to Melbourne were cheered by family and friends when they finally
arrived in Australia's second biggest city.
Steve Winchester, who along with others had boarded QF30 in
London, said he was not alone in thinking he was about to die when,
an hour out of Hong Kong, there was an 'almighty bang,' a gust of
wind through the cabin and oxygen masks falling into passengers'
laps.
'Everyone was just thinking to themselves 'Oh! I think this is
it,'' he said. 'I heard someone scream. People were just looking at
each other in sheer terror.'
Others recalled that when Captain John Bartels brought the
stricken plane safely to rest on the tarmac in the Philippines
capital of Manila he matter-of-factly told the passengers: 'There's a
large hole in the side of the plane. I don't know how it got there.'
There was speculation that a fire extinguisher, or a high-pressure
oxygen cylinder, may have holed the skin of the aircraft when it
burst open.
A report from the Manila International Airport Authority said an
initial investigation revealed there had been an 'explosive
decompression' but did not speculate on the cause.
Passenger Michelle Mellinger paid tribute to Bartels for bringing
the plane down safely.
'There was a huge bang, which seemed to come from the back of the
aircraft, and a huge gust of wind came through,' she said. 'There
were a few things flying around and then oxygen masks came down.'
Mellinger said the plane made a normal landing and it was only
when passengers left the plane that they saw the jagged gash in its
right-side fuselage.
She said luggage was being held as part of the investigation and
they were not sure when they would get their bags back.
Chris Yates, an aviation expert with London-based defence
consultancy Jane's Information Group, said investigators would be
examining the hole 'to determine whether metal fatigue or
manufacturing defect caused the panel to be ripped away from the
remainder of the fuselage in flight.'
He added: 'This is not an uncommon occurrence. Every year there
are reports of panels being lost from aircraft in flight and these
instances are rarely, if ever, fatal.'
Richard Woodward, technical director of the International
Federation of Airline Pilot Associations, told The Australian
newspaper that the pilot would be well aware of what to do after
hearing the explosion.
'It's standard procedure,' he said. 'The crew practise that
non-stop and it's almost an automatic reaction - you stick your mask
on, you establish communication, you wind the altitude down and you
pull the speed brake. The plane comes down at about 10,000 feet a
minute, maybe more.'
Woodward explained that the 747 had what he called 'blow-out
panels' that let pressure out slowly to give the pilot time to
descend to an altitude where loss of air pressure was not so much of
a problem.
Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said engineers were on their
way to examine the plane.
'The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and the Civil Aviation
Safety Authority have been notified of the incident and Qantas is
sending its own engineers to Manila,' he said in a statement.
Since its establishment in 1920, Australia's national carrier has
never lost a jet to an accident.
David Newman, of Melbourne's Monash University, said the
worst-case scenario would be people being sucked through the hole in
the fuselage when an aircraft lost its structural integrity.
'If there's a major breach of the cabin and the hole is
sufficiently large, people can be carried outside with the
high-pressure air - basically, as they say, get sucked out of the
aeroplane,' he said.
The Royal Adelaide Hospital's David Wilkinson said the sudden
decompression when the fuselage was breached could have caused
passengers to lose consciousness.
'An analogy would be shaking up a can of Coke and opening it - the
sudden decompression makes everything froth and bubble,' he said. 'At
35,000 feet, the lack of oxygen can cause you to lose consciousness
in 30 seconds to a minute, and so you have that period of time for
the pilots to lower their altitude to reduce the loss of pressure or
for them to react and supply oxygen to the people in the plane.'
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