Another Qantas incident

A Qantas Airways Ltd. plane traveling to Singapore was forced to return to Perth after experiencing problems with its navigation system near a military installation on Australia’s western coast, the West Australian said.

Flight QF71 was carrying 277 passengers on the Airbus A330- 300 aircraft when it encountered problems Dec. 27, the newspaper said. The plane used the same navigation system and was traveling in the same area as flight QF72 on Oct. 7, which abruptly lost altitude, injuring 40 people.

The Australian and International Pilots Association President Barry Jackson yesterday said airspace around the military installation, near the town of Exmouth, about 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) north of Perth, should be declared off limits to commercial airlines, the newspaper reported.

Calls to Qantas by Bloomberg News weren’t returned. The Australian and International Pilots Association, which has closed its offices until Jan. 5, didn’t return a call to its message service.

The Naval Communication Station Harold E. Holt, established by the U.S. in the 1960s, uses very low frequency transmissions to relay communications between Australian and American submarines. The U.S. Navy left the base in 1992 and it is now owned by the Australian Department of Defence.

On Oct. 7, an Airbus A330-300, flying from Singapore to Perth, plunged 650 feet (198 meters) in seconds before the pilots regained control and made an emergency landing at an airfield near Exmouth. More than 40 passengers and crew needed hospital treatment for spinal injuries, broken bones, cuts or concussion.

Investigating Plunge

Australian air safety investigators later said a fault in a flight system computer component may have caused the plunge. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau was also examining whether electromagnetic interference from the naval base could have caused the plane to dive, with a preliminary report finding such a scenario was “unlikely.”

The Dec. 27 incident was the latest scare for Australia’s largest airline, which has a safety record that was made famous in the movie “Rain Man” in which Dustin Hoffman’s character insisted on flying Qantas because it hasn’t had a fatal jet accident. On July 25, a Qantas aircraft made an emergency landing in Manila after an oxygen tank exploded, puncturing the plane’s fuselage at 29,000 feet.

Source: Bloomberg .com