ATSB Investigates Major Safety Breach on Malaysia Airlines Flight
Jackie Reddy August 31, 2018
Tiny insects have led to a big problem for Malaysia Airlines at BNE. A tactic used to prevent the pests from nesting inside of a craft led to the emergency landing of a recent flight to Kuala Lumpur. The incident saw the plane’s pitot tubes – which help crew to gauge airspeed – completely covered.
A tactic to prevent wasps from building a nest inside a Malaysia Airlines plane not only resulted in an emergency landing, but constituted a major safety breach, the Daily Mail reports. Malaysia Airlines Flight 134, which departed Brisbane for Kuala Lumpur on the evening of July 18, had to turn back to the Australian city when it was observed that the plane’s airspeed indicators were covered. This meant that the pilots of the flight were not able to correctly gauge their speed.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) investigated the incident and found that the craft’s pitot tubes – which are used to measure a plane’s speed – had been covered up to due to issues with wasps at Brisbane Airport (BNE).
It appears that these tubes had been covered when the plane first landed in BNE, but that the covers were not removed during the course of routine pre-flight inspection. An excerpt from the report into the incident issued by the ATSB reads, “Subsequent inspections during the turnaround did not identify the presence of the pitot probe covers and they were not removed prior to the aircraft’s departure.”
Commenting on the incident to The Australian, Steve Purvinas, secretary with the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying, “If those checks aren’t happening, they shouldn’t be flying a plane.”
Greg Hood, the Chief Commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, explained the methodology of the investigation, saying, “We will be focusing specifically on the procedures for flight crew and ground crew in relation to the pre-flight checks for the aircraft, and also the cockpit warning systems received by the flight crew as they accelerated down Runway 01.”
He also explained that, based on runway footage, the pitots remained covered at the time of departure.
“Now this limited the amount of information – the critical information – that is available to flight crew during the take off and in fact during the short flight, up to 10,000 feet, and then the return to Brisbane Airport where the aircraft landed safely,” Hood said.
[Photo: iStock]
You’re Reading
What happened with walkarounds and a good preflight?
Was this not the cause of a German charter aircraft crashing off the coast of the Dominican Republic with the loss of all lives on board?
The pilots probably end up getting slap on the wrist and probably avoid Australia route for a while
This is a little misleading. "A tactic to prevent wasps from building a nest inside a Malaysia Airlines plane not only resulted in an emergency landing, but constituted a major safety breach" The tactic of covering the tubes is not a major safety breach and infact common. Not following the proper procedure and forgetting to remove the covers is a major safety breach.
I'm utterly shocked. I've read the incident report in detail. Firstly, some system other than pitot pressures was clearly being used to indicate airspeed during the takeoff roll, since at rotation two of the pitots had not yet registered over 30kts, and a third was only reading 38kts at an actual airspeed of around 160kts. There were bright red SPD (speed incorrect) indications on both pilots' primary instrument displays. Secondly, the captain appears to have called 100kts based upon groundspeed rather than airspeed, which seems...wrong. I've only ever called takeoff speeds in airspeed, but all airspeed indicators were inop. Thirdly, under these circumstances I fail to understand why neither pilot called "Reject" by 100kts, let alone V1. This should be a no-brainer. It is clearly unsafe to attempt to rotate when there is not a reliable airspeed indication. By this time, because there's a disagreement between the three airspeed reporting systems, the control system should have transitioned to "alternate law 2", visible in the primary instrument displays, with cockpit klaxons possibly sounded too, although the preliminary report does not mention this. The cockpit crew cannot possibly argue ignorance of the problem in hand - and yet they didn't even discuss it(!) Pilot Flying simply called "Rotate" and did so.