Qantas mishap leaves customers stranded on tarmac for five hours

[DC3]

“Just the facts, ma'am”

 

[Steady]

There is a bit of discussion on Frequent Flyers Australia FB page (post by Jack Clemens)

 

[anat0l]

“Just the facts, ma'am”

Well, they may have been right in saying they spent 5 hours on the aircraft. But yeah, very different understanding to meaning 5 hours on the ground at OOL.

At around 2-3 hours on the ground at OOL, that's still quite a lot.

 

[mannej]

Could we please add this to a list of things that need to be added to Australian aviation to make it catch up with the rest of the world (the other thing is implementing the 100 ml liquids rule so that international transfers don't require going through security again).

-RooFlyer88

Yeah no thanks to that.

Back on topic, I was at OOL fairly recently and can recall the stairs being moved by a remote control. Certainly not manually pushed into place.

 

[elanshin]

OOL is a relatively large airport (sure its not the main gateways) so there should've honestly been any excuse that QF has for this result.

Clearly somewhere the decision tree failed here. As to how, who and what, thats the bit that needs to be explained but I highly doubt we'll get the actual answer.

 

[Seat0B]

Presumably the priority was getting them off the runway and to a gate and it wasn't expected to carry on for more than an hour or two.

This is typical, but unsound reasoning. It doesn’t matter how long they thought it would take; rather the true metric is how long it actually took. Sensible risk planning involves reviews, and if the targets aren’t being met, then a new plan needs to be developed. Water really is a necessity and should have been provided.

 

[Quickstatus]

I heard OOL wants to be an international gateway

 

[Seat0B]

Could we please add this to a list of things that need to be added to Australian aviation to make it catch up with the rest of the world

Put in a submission to the Aviation Green Paper!

Submissions to Aviation Green Paper

Hi Matt, I would like to make a simple submission and propose to the Government that Australia should have a 'Air Passenger Rights' similar to the EU air passenger rights. Would you be putting a submission too...

www.australianfrequentflyer.com.au

 

[DC3]

I heard OOL wants to be an international gateway

Mostly, a massive food court currently

 

[Quickstatus]

Was VX-VXC
Was ferried back to SYD the next evening

So in summary
5hrs on a 737 with limited/no catering
How does this compare to VA77?

 

[Seat0B]

The likelihood of a serious medical emergency happening at one of those places seems to be very low, so they wouldn't provision for it.

I realise that many people think like this but (not suggesting you do yourself) but the issue with risk management is not just how likely the event is but also the consequences if the risk occurs. The two together give the level of risk. And although a serious medical incident may well be low likelihood , the consequences significant. using ISO 31000 standard for risk management would suggest that is still a risk tha is too high to be left untreated. I’m with @RooFlyer on this one. QF seems to have very immature risk management approaches for land based issues, which is quite at odds with the way they plan for air based issues. In the air they do care about consequences, no matter how unlikely the event is to actually occur, and manage accordingly.

 

[Seat0B]

Bean counting means that the cost of covering someone who dies because there wasn't appropriate infrastructure in place to save the passenger in time would be outweighed by the cost of having the contingency there and maintaining it for a judged rare event.

The old Ford Pinto defence. Never a good look.

 

[Seat0B]

I heard OOL wants to be an international gateway

That’s a hard no from me.

 

[jb747]

In the air they do care about consequences, no matter how unlikely the event is to actually occur, and manage accordingly.

That’s because it’s managed by a different group of people. Pilots take care of it in the air, and ‘management’ have zero input.

 

[anat0l]

Found this article. I like how the headline continues, "...and yours could be next"

Qantas passengers speak out about the flight from hell

Qantas has been forced to apologise to customers again after passengers spoke out about the 'flight from hell'.

www.dailymail.co.uk

The latter half of the article starts to read like rubbish as they conflate the QF93 incident (which is not a Boeing 737 as the article might have you believe).


Admittedly, the article gives rise to an additional complication I hadn't thought about, which is confirming what the issue with the plane was and subsequently clearing it to be safely towed or whatever. Assuming there were engineers at OOL available (and it's possible there weren't any and may have had to be driven down from BNE, so that easily burns 1 hour), I guess they would have to clear whether the aircraft was safe to approach overall or whether other action was needed, e.g. fire services required, declare an emergency evacuation, etc.

Now I don't know if that whole rigmarole should take 2-3 hours, but it might impact the idea that they just couldn't get someone straight out there posthaste with stairs pulled by a service vehicle, let alone provisions to be lifted up into the aircraft.

 

[Scarlett]

KFC the Pines only 15min away

Did someone say… the flight was from NZ?

 

[DC3]

We, on AFF, certainly seem to know how to run an airline

 

[Scarlett]

Some of the commentary here is quite… disappointing. To be expected from at least one of the posters who has a known level of nonsense.

- This was an engineering issue. Please don’t conflate it with a medical emergency. Responses to both would be different.
- 5 hours stuck on the tarmac, or 5 hours total time on the aircraft?
- Qantas doesn’t run OOL and relies on the airport to support its operations: pays them fees for the privilege I believe. Therefore it cannot be only a QF issue. Both QF ops and OOL ops would have been trying to solve the problem.
- Sounds like the crew tried their best to give people drinks, but when water ran out, what then? It’s not as simple as magic-ing up a ‘couple of slabs of water’ to where the aircraft was.

How about, everyone involved (at both QF and OOL) tried their best to resolve an unusual situation, but the process took longer than both organisations would have liked and they have apologised.

Now, sure, longer term, we can probably criticise both organisations for minimising the contingency options available to them after 2000hrs. Maybe both organisations didn’t have as many contingency options available because they were trying to minimise costs? The flip side to that is that maybe it helps keep airfares lower for all of us…

Guess I’m a QF apologist. Or maybe just a realist.

 

[DC3]

Some of the commentary here is quite… disappointing …

A touch of ‘Chicken Little’ upthread?

 

[RooFlyer]

Someone just needed to think out of the box, engage their brain and allocate some resources to get the pax off the plane, down the stairs and to the terminal.

Or, if they had a contingency plan, all the thinking would’ve been already done and the resources pre-allocated.