Video An Air Asia pilot has told his passengers he was scared and they should pray when their plane started to violently shake

[shaurene]

I fly Auckland Bangkok 3-4 times a year and i alays use Qantas. They are the best as far as i am concerned. And very competative. Very experienced pilots.

[tonywillo]

6 hours ago, CNXBKKMAN said:

 

I am only speculating but this says to me that Air Asia ops in KL have told the pilot to return to Perth. Why because it's cheaper to fix the aircraft in Perth and get the passengers sorted out with replacement flights, hotels etc. If it had gone to Geraldtown the passengers would need busing back to Perth. Engineers and parts would need to be driven or flown up to Geraldtown.  All of this costs $$$$$. Obviously it's safer to land at Geraldtown pronto but a commercial decision has been made to save some cash and fly to Perth. 

That being the case you can bet ATSB / Casa will be keen to speak to the pilots and air Asia, taking the less safe option by flying onto Perth would be an offence under Australian aviation law. A similar situation with another airline REX (the lost prop) occurred in 2015.

[CNXBKKMAN]

1 hour ago, MekkOne said:

 

How much (censored) there is inside you? Didn't you get it that you're probably replying to a pilot?

The point you don't get when you are rambling on about chemtrails and converting the passengers to Islam is the pilot has advised the passengers they are in grave danger then chooses not to land at a nearby airport. The aircraft may have popped some tyres and needed new brakes but the passengers would have been safe. 

        Who is to say I have not worked at an airline and sat down with pilots asking them about hard landings, RVR's, diversions, decompression, tech faults etc etc

[Notowork]

why blame the pilot? The incident was clearly a lack of maintenance!

 

[Dumbastheycome]

The  Pilot   said  "  survival  depends  on your  co-operation". In  other  words  don't screw  us  up  by  panicking.

Could  have  used better  words  but  hardly  was  announcing impending  doom !

[Andaman Al]

All of you speculating about this being a less 'safe' decision to go back to Perth have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

 

So lets say the Pilot chooses the closer airfield with much shorter runway. He is heavy, going into an unfamiliar airfield with limited facilities, (the airfield approach aids are just 'OK' when everything is working well on the aircraft) and because of the lateral vibration he CANNOT read any of his instrument panel!!, on one engine (therefore poor engine breaking on the already short runway), he goes over runway length, snaps off the front undercarriage starts a fire from which already traumatised passengers will not get out quickly enough and the Airfield has only minimum fire coverage with NO A330 ladders. How many dead? Who knows but one is too many.

 

The pilot knows he has a lateral vibration from a missing turbine blade, he has shut down the engine already. He knows that although he cannot see his instruments he has got the approaches into Perth inside his head, he knows the runway will take him and he has all the medical and firefighting facilities at his disposal for the passengers should anything go wrong on the landing.

 

From what I am hearing off mates down there, the Captain did NOT say he was scared and tell every one to pray, that was some Richard Head passenger who borrowed the intercom system off the cabin crew to say a few 'comforting words'. Is this a different picture yet? for all of you who have have never done anything more than fly microsoft flight sim from your already over burdened armchairs?

 

Neither can we say this was a 'lack of maintenance' at the moment. We have no idea what caused the turbine blade to fracture (did he hit a goose at 30 000 ft? - was it a piece of FOD from the runway?). Turbine blades are checked using non-destructive testing techniques and the maintenance guys have this down to a fine art. Very rarely now do we have turbine blades fracture in flight it is down to one in hundreds of thousands of hours, but IT DOES happen, <deleted> just happens.

 

Personally I do not agree with the Captains statement where he talks about 'survival', but I was not up there  kacking my pants responsible for 300 plus men women and children down the back.

 

The crew had a terrifying emergency for all on board and operated the aircraft under extreme duress, not even being able to read any of their instrumentation. The Captain made the decision to go to what he considered the SAFEST option taking into consideration all of the complications he knew he could encounter on landing. He make a textbook single engine landing in an A330 (likely his first real one away from the simulator) and every single person walked off, sure many suffering huge emotion, but without a graze to a single passenger.

 

If I were on that flight I would have hunted out the crew tonight and took them for a splash up dinner of their choice. Apart from a few words that were inappropriate with hindsight (and the Captain will be kicking himself) the Captain and his First Officer produced an epic result from a terrifying situation. I would give them both a bloody medal.

[MekkOne]

The point you don't get when you are rambling on about chemtrails and converting the passengers to Islam is the pilot has advised the passengers they are in grave danger then chooses not to land at a nearby airport. The aircraft may have popped some tyres and needed new brakes but the passengers would have been safe. 
        Who is to say I have not worked at an airline and sat down with pilots asking them about hard landings, RVR's, diversions, decompression, tech faults etc etc

Knowing Australians probably the captain decided to scary them to avoid them to start for ask for beers and liquor to get drunk and start a party...

[ELVIS123456]

4 hours ago, thaiowl said:

My son is a pilot with Air Asia (not Air Asia X who fly A330) and he is very capable and qualified (trained is Australia) as are all the Captains he flies with.

All Captains with Air Asia are qualified and trained in Australia like your son - what a load of (deleted).

 

[MekkOne]

speculating

You cannot use such a refined world in here, in my country we will say that is like feed porks with pears...

[Scott]

Inflammatory post and replies reported and removed.  

[ELVIS123456]

2 hours ago, shaurene said:

I fly Auckland Bangkok 3-4 times a year and i alays use Qantas. They are the best as far as i am concerned. And very competative. Very experienced pilots.

I too always use Qantas whenever I can. Otherwise I use one of the Top 10 or 20 safest as rated by reputable organisations like Airlineratings.com: 

http://www.airlineratings.com/news/997/worlds-safest-airlines-for-2017
They may cost a little more, but they have the best pilots, best planes and best maintenance - which is why they cost more. I think of the extra cost as 'flight insurance'. 

[Guitar God]

In an emergency, I'd prefer that my pilot was actually piloting the plane and not praying. 

The rule in an emergency is 

"Aviate, Navigate, Communicate"

not panic, pray and witness to your passengers. 

[Andaman Al]

20 minutes ago, Guitar God said:

In an emergency, I'd prefer that my pilot was actually piloting the plane and not praying. 

The rule in an emergency is 

"Aviate, Navigate, Communicate"

not panic, pray and witness to your passengers. 

The Captain did all as you suggest. The person wanting everyone to pray was a passenger who got the mic off the cabin crew. Next..............

[evadgib]

[fordguy61mi]

I always fly Air Asia when I go from Bangkok to Krabi, and I've always had a great experience. Now I'll be a little nervous.

[MaxYakov]

11 hours ago, thaiowl said:

From the video you can see the left engine has blown a blade. The captain shut it down but air flowing through it at 300 knots is enough to make an imbalanced turbine vibrate the aircraft. You can tell it's shut down because the spiral pattern in the engine is visible (it's going maybe 100-200 RPM as opposed to 3000+).

Just because you shut down the engine doesn't means the blades stop spinning from air rushing past them. There's no physical object to stop them spinning. During the pre-flight check you often seen engines spinning in the wind, depending on direction.

Procedure is to fly at slowest speed and descend so as to maintain the slowest speed possible to decrease air flow going into the engine.

Plane was not in any danger although the vibration is disturbing to passengers.

 

Hmmm. I guess there's no way to "feather" a jet engine (fan blades) that's been stopped. I'll have to work on this problem in my spare time.

[thaiowl]

14 hours ago, ELVIS123456 said:

All Captains with Air Asia are qualified and trained in Australia like your son - what a load of (deleted).

 

That's why I put "trained in Australia" in brackets because it referred specifically to my son. Without the brackets, the post would read:

My son is a pilot with Air Asia (not Air Asia X who fly A330) and he is very capable and qualified, as are all the Captains he flies with.

[halloween]

15 hours ago, ELVIS123456 said:

All Captains with Air Asia are qualified and trained in Australia like your son - what a load of (deleted).

 

Because you misread it. Try leaving out the brackets.

[dick dasterdly]

The OP clip doesn't show the captain doing anything other than warning the passengers there was a problem - keep calm.

 

The passengers already knew there was a problem, so I can't see anything wrong with him stating the obvious.

[Grouse]

Losing an engine is definitely a pan but not a May Day. The Airbus will tell you what to do - amber warning and land as soon as possible. Windmilling engine should not cause excessive vibration if shut down. Sounds like poorly handled.

[Andaman Al]

3 minutes ago, Grouse said:

Losing an engine is definitely a pan but not a May Day. The Airbus will tell you what to do - amber warning and land as soon as possible. Windmilling engine should not cause excessive vibration if shut down. Sounds like poorly handled.

The 'windmilling engine' was completely out of balance. The aerodynamic forces are huge even with one turbine blade missing. To give another example of things that 'whirl around' lets take a set of helicopter blades - a kind of vertical turbine. The blades are finely balanced using weights that are  put in the end of the blades. These weights will weigh the same as a penny, dime, quarter. If the blades are out of balance with each other by so much as the weight of a 5 cent piece, the helicopter can develop a serious vertical bounce and a shake that will transmit throughout the whole airframe. Once the engine started developing the lateral out of balance 'wobble' on the Air Asia aircraft with a 300 kt airflow around it, there was no way it was going to stop.

 

So tell us exactly what you base your conclusion on that the emergency was poorly handled? What would you have done to stop the aircraft lateral vibration? - clearly shutting the engine down did not suppress the vibration and leaving it running would have run the risk of further possible catastrophic damage to the engine with possible fire/explosion/wing box damage.. The pilot landed without a scratch to any passenger. What would you have done better with the benefit of your PhD in Hindsight?

[Grouse]

1 hour ago, Andaman Al said:

The 'windmilling engine' was completely out of balance. The aerodynamic forces are huge even with one turbine blade missing. To give another example of things that 'whirl around' lets take a set of helicopter blades - a kind of vertical turbine. The blades are finely balanced using weights that are  put in the end of the blades. These weights will weigh the same as a penny, dime, quarter. If the blades are out of balance with each other by so much as the weight of a 5 cent piece, the helicopter can develop a serious vertical bounce and a shake that will transmit throughout the whole airframe. Once the engine started developing the lateral out of balance 'wobble' on the Air Asia aircraft with a 300 kt airflow around it, there was no way it was going to stop.

 

So tell us exactly what you base your conclusion on that the emergency was poorly handled? What would you have done to stop the aircraft lateral vibration? - clearly shutting the engine down did not suppress the vibration and leaving it running would have run the risk of further possible catastrophic damage to the engine with possible fire/explosion/wing box damage.. The pilot landed without a scratch to any passenger. What would you have done better with the benefit of your PhD in Hindsight?

 

My son is an Airbus captain. I asked him what the industry was saying. Certainly should have landed at nearest alternate after reducing thrust and getting down to FL240

 

I was surprised flight time out and return were so similar with reduced altitude and one engine. I would not be surprised if the damaged engine was not shut down.

 

I did say "sounds like poorly handled"

 

We'll see.

 

BTW, I do not have a PhD in hindsight. Try semiconductor physics.

 

I have a PPL but fast jets are way beyond what I know. But I'll say this, if I got an ECAM amber "Land ASAP", that's exactly what I would do and to hell with Air Asia ops.

[Andaman Al]

25 minutes ago, Grouse said:

 

I have a PPL but fast jets are way beyond what I know. But I'll say this, if I got an ECAM amber "Land ASAP", that's exactly what I would do and to hell with Air Asia ops.

So you would land 'heavy - full of fuel' on a shorter runway with only one engine available for braking when you cannot even read your instruments to follow a new IFR procedure ? And when you land if anything does happen you do not have the fire coverage or medical coverage you need, you do not even have steps big enough to get the pax out the aircraft if you do land ok.  Your son will also know that Airbus state that a windmilling engine that is out of balance will not cause catastrophic damage to the wing box. I am sure your son has flown through 2-3 hours of moderate to severe turbulence in his life if he is a long haul pilot - what is the difference in terms of stress on the airframe? (clue - stress on the airframe is much worse during severe turbulence). There was no simple harmonic motion being set up in the aircraft. The Captain chose some very inappropriate words which I guess he feels foolish about now, BUT he made a great landing, nobody was hurt, the aircraft was not further damaged and the pax were all able to either rest in a hotel or progress their journey. We are all normally complaining when it all goes wrong NOT when it all went right.

[Grouse]

8 minutes ago, Andaman Al said:

So you would land 'heavy - full of fuel' on a shorter runway with only one engine available for braking when you cannot even read your instruments to follow a new IFR procedure ? And when you land if anything does happen you do not have the fire coverage or medical coverage you need, you do not even have steps big enough to get the pax out the aircraft if you do land ok.  Your son will also know that Airbus state that a windmilling engine that is out of balance will not cause catastrophic damage to the wing box. I am sure your son has flown through 2-3 hours of moderate to severe turbulence in his life if he is a long haul pilot - what is the difference in terms of stress on the airframe? (clue - stress on the airframe is much worse during severe turbulence). There was no simple harmonic motion being set up in the aircraft. The Captain chose some very inappropriate words which I guess he feels foolish about now, BUT he made a great landing, nobody was hurt, the aircraft was not further damaged and the pax were all able to either rest in a hotel or progress their journey. We are all normally complaining when it all goes wrong NOT when it all went right.

I don't know!

 

I don't even know if a 330 can dump fuel.

 

Let's see; I may well be incorrect - it won't be the first time .....

 

Was it not midday in good weather?

 

Anyway, great airframe!

[MaxYakov]

I'm wondering if making a plea to the passengers to pray for survival should be added to the checklists for several critical situations. Maybe Air Asia already has done this and the pilot was simply reading the passenger prayer checklist item to the passengers. 

[Andaman Al]

27 minutes ago, MaxYakov said:

I'm wondering if making a plea to the passengers to pray for survival should be added to the checklists for several critical situations. Maybe Air Asia already has done this and the pilot was simply reading the passenger prayer checklist item to the passengers. 

I am also keen to know if the cabin crew were dishing out as many of the miniature bottles of whiskey that the customers demanded  needed!  

 

I bet even though they were all told to pray for survival the CC would not give out anything in preparation for a forthcoming evacuation.  

[elliss]

On 6/26/2017 at 11:41 AM, Xaos said:

Unpro from a pilot.
Sack him

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk
 

        Ladies and  Gentlemen ,  we have a slight technical problem ,

          say goodbye  to your loved  ones. asap .

[rijb]

Should have checked the engine for coins, before takeoff...  

 

http://mashable.com/2017/06/27/woamn-throws-coin-plane-engine/?utm_cid=hp-h-2#nNWUSZklaaq6

[4MyEgo]

On 2017-6-26 at 2:41 PM, Xaos said:

Unpro from a pilot.
Sack him

Sent from my SM-G955F using Tapatalk
 

I wouldn't go as far as sacking someone with such useful resources, after all, he did land the plane safely, perhaps a "crash" course in English and how not to freak passengers out more than needed, me personally, I would have been so so so freaked out if sitting in that plane, as air turbulence is enough to get me praying.

[Credo]

What a tempest in a teapot.   

 

The pilot landed the plane safely.   Whether he asked people to pray, or swore or used improper grammar should not be the focus of much of anything.