Posted on 07/25/2008 6:58:31 AM PDT by cardinal4
MANILA, Philippines — A Qantas flight en route to Australia from London made an emergency stop in Manila on Friday after a loud bang punched a hole in the Boeing 747-400's fuselage, officials and passengers said.
(Excerpt) Read more at artoriuscastus.blogspot.com ...
Thank you. Something may have been pulled into the engine. The pilots were experienced and calm. Qantas Rules.
Explosion in the cargo bay?
That looks like the Captain. I wondered earlier if it was a door seal. Now Im wondering if it was bad rivets?
And he is still right!
I read that aluminum planes require maintenance after approx 30K take off and landings to prevent stress fractures and fatigue related failures. After the cabin is pressurized so many times the aluminum becomes brittle and cracks will appear. I don’t know if this is the case with this plane, but it’s as good a guess as any.
The close-up photo doesn't appear to reveal any evidence of explosive-related burns or the like, so if it wasn't an airframe/mechanical failure of some sort, may have been a can/cannister/tank under pressure in the cargo or passenger baggage that exploded.
I’ve been on at least one Qantas 747.Given that they don’t have all that many I wonder if this is the one (or one of the ones) I’ve been on.
The hole is a long way from any engine. Looks like something blew up in the cargo hold. Passengers said they could see into the cargo hold through the hole in the cabin floor, and that sure looks like cargo peeking out the hole in the fuselage.
Maybe an amateur terrorist bomb. Or maybe just some moron passenger put something in their luggage that shouldn’t have been there and some moron security screener missed it. I get the feeling there’s not a whole lot of screening of checked luggage being done. You could put all sorts of interesting liquids in there, in deliberately leaky bottles, adjacent to other leaky bottles containing interesting liquids. Or just a single bottle with a flimsy partition between 2 liquids, that will break down in the course of the flight.
I’m shocked it took 16 posts to reference that quote.
It looks like the wall of the plane is dented out, in addition to the hole.
I see a big problem with the whole sentence constuct "the plane dove 20,000ft" as if the plane had a mind of its own, or else as if the pilots lost control and only got control back in the nick of time.
Instead, from everything I can tell, the pilots were in control, and in response to the sudden cabin depressurization, the pilots executed a rapid, but completely controlled descent, as is standard emergency procedure to a level at which cabin pressure does not lead to the rabid depletion of oxygen from the brain causing death.
and a hole didn’t rip mid air either. Something caused the hole. The only thing that is ripped is this reporters fractured English. Maybe he was out late and got ripped. Sounds like he was ripped all the way through journalism school, anyway. Whatever happened to who what where when why and how or whatever it is that they are learn when they aren’t tripping on drugs.
I'd bet they have one of the larger fleets; in fact I just looked it up...currently 34, but most of their equipment in the '80s were 747's
I've flown 'em both between L.A. and Sydney, Sydney and Perth and Singapore and Perth.
Hmmm,I'm surprised that it's that many.I know that they use them between Oz and the US and between Oz and the UK (their prime routes).I always thought of Qantas as being a relatively small airline...perhaps because of the country's small population.
The investigation will reveal exactly what occurred in this case.
They’re all over Asia...my Aussie buddies travel QANTAS regularly over that entire section of the world.
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