EK 407 Emergengy at MEL
 

406/07 tail strike at MEL
 

Any one know what Aircraft has replaced the out of service plane?

My best mate, Paul Tucker, said it took out the localiser aerial at the end of the runway. This is only 5ft high. Sobering.

The aircraft made an overweight landing after smoke appeared in the cabin forcing them to abandon the fuel dumping.

This incident could have been a disaster.

A similar accident happened at Johannesburg on 9th April 2004. That involved an A340-300.

Prune :- EK407 Tailstrike @ ML

Wow - it looks like this came very close to being a major disaster.

According to pprune, it hit an object that was only 5 feet tall 300 feet past the end of the runway :eek:

Cheers,
Rick

seems Emirates are managing to convinve me to stay away from them, are they becoming the new China Airlines for incidents ? even the fact they tried to cover up the plane their pilots wrecked at Airbus before it was even put into commercial service

The 4 pilots were on the next long haul to DXB, two hours later.

What were Emirates pilots doing on an Etihad plane (which was the one that got wrecked)?

I can only recall 2 incidents that involved Emirates. One at JNB and this one at MEL.

Cheers,
Rick

No they weren't. They are still in MEL.

Cheers,
Rick

Update 11 April
 

From MEL Herald-Sun:

"A FULLY-LADEN jet came only centimetres from crashing at Melbourne Airport, it has been revealed.

Aviation officials say last month's accident involving an Emirates plane carrying 225 passengers was the closest thing to a catastrophic plane crash Australia has ever experienced.

The Sunday Herald Sun can reveal the plane, bound for Dubai, used all of the 3600m-long runway 16, but failed to become airborne until the last second, when the pilots pulled its nose up so sharply it smashed its tail into the ground at the end of the runway.

It was less than 70cm from the ground when it wiped out airport strobe lights 170m from the end of the runway.

It then took out a navigation antennae before barely clearing the airport's boundary fence half a kilometre away.

"It was as close as we have ever come to a major aviation catastrophe in Australia," one aviation official said."

More here:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...7-2862,00.html

surely the pilots cant be to blame for this, an A345 using up 3.5 km of runway and still struggling to get airborne??? sounds like an aircraft problem to me

Sounds to me like someone got their figures wrong when looking at the weight. They would use FLEX thrust on this departure, which calculates a reduced amount of thrust based on a/c weight -so if you get the takeoff weight wrong, you will not get enough thrust from the flex setting for the runway length.

Let's wait and see -it's all speculation (from me included) atm.

I too do not like to speculate but: I think you are correct on that one. A miscalculation on flex power would sure explain the long,long, long takeoff. I would think before V1 the driver would see he was running out of real estate and push up the throttles. At that point the motors would respond well to increased power because they would not need to spool up. The 345 has some very potent power plants. I have been on same AC same routing with full load and we were well aloft by the other end of the runway. If I remember correctly it was January and quite warm and humid . Perhaps someone was taking a few tons of gold back to DXB?

So why have the pilots submitted their resignations?

Based on the pilot resignations, my totally uninformed and wildly speculative guess is something dumb like flaps setting too low.

AN ERROR in which pilots entered wrong information into a computer appears to have caused an accident involving an Emirates A340-500 at Melbourne Airport last month.

The incorrect information reduced the 258-seat plane's take-off speed. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau classified the "significant event" on March 20 as an accident.

It is investigating how the wrong speed was selected, which resulted in the take-off being attempted at below the required minimum flying speed, resulting in a tail scrape and damage to airport landing lights.
An Emirates spokesperson said yesterday the bureau's report had not been finalised, so it would be inappropriate to comment.

But sources at Melbourne Airport said the pilots may have entered the wrong take-off weight for the plane. This calculates the take-off speed, which is then manually fed into the computer that sets the take-off thrust setting. Virtually all airlines use only the thrust required for a safe take-off, rather than full thrust, to reduce engine wear significantly.

The maximum take-off weight for the A340-500 is 368 tonnes. The flight from Melbourne to Dubai would have required a take-off weight close to maximum. The plane took off on runway 16, which is 3657 metres long, at 10.30pm.
With the wrong speed and thrust settings, the plane did not get airborne and ended up on its tail, which scraped along the runway.

The A340-500 lifted off after it had left the end of the runway. It hit approach lights and disabled the runway's instrument landing system antenna.
The crew flew the plane safely out over Port Phillip Bay to dump fuel before returning to the airport. However, smoke in the cabin cut this operation short after 30 minutes and forced an early return for a heavy landing.

Sources at Emirates have revealed that the two pilots resigned on April 2.

Source: The Age