Another incident in Cape Town!

What´s absolutely incredible that nowadays there still happens this things. Unbelievable.

I have flown on all the local airlines over here and Nationwides service is the best of them all. National carrier SAA falls at the bottom as their service is worse than poor. It says it all when the Springbok Rugby Team only fly with British Airways.

Statement from Nationwide (copied from PPRUNE)

Nationwide Airlines
Press Statement
08 November 2007 – 14h30
Nationwide Airlines Salutes Pilots and Crew
Nationwide Airlines Chief Executive Officer Vernon Bricknell today complimented his entire staff and in particular the Captain and crew of Flight CE 723 for their heroic efforts in helping to maintain the company’s outstanding safety record.
Flight CE 723 was discontinued following an incident yesterday soon after take off from Cape Town International Airport.
Bricknell says this is the first major incident that the airline has experienced since taking to the skies 12 years ago.
Bricknell says he is relieved that the incident, which took place yesterday at Cape Town International Airport, did not result in injury to passengers or people on the ground.
“Upon take off of Boeing 737 Flight CE 723 yesterday at Cape Town International, the captain heard a loud noise immediately followed by a yaw of the aircraft. The captain, after confirmation of information from flight deck instrumentation that one of the engines had failed, immediately applied emergency procedures, an emergency was declared and the aircraft returned to make an emergency landing in Cape Town,” says Bricknell.
Nationwide Airlines has since determined that during the take off roll an object which is yet to be defined was ingested into the engine causing engine failure. The subsequent forces experienced by the engine supporting structure caused this to fail and for the number two engine to detach from the wing. The engine-to-wing supporting structure is designed to release the engine when extreme forces are applied to prevent any structural damage to the wing that may impair the aircraft’s ability to fly.
He reiterated the fact that the Boeing 737 aircraft is by far one of the safest aircraft in service today. “The Boeing 737 is aviation’s most successful story,” says Bricknell
According to Bricknell, there are approximately 5 000 Boeing 737 in service around the world, with one Boeing 737 taking off every 9 seconds, every day.
He says Nationwide Airlines is working with the proper authorities to establish the nature of the unidentified object and will keep the public informed as more information becomes available.
Furthermore Bricknell says Nationwide Airlines has met and surpassed local and international safety best practice standards. The airline is accredited by IOSA, the Operational Safety Audit of the International Airline Transport Association (IATA).
He says the airline industry is the most regulated sector in the world in terms of safety, training and aircraft maintenance.
‘In no other profession are skilled individuals such as pilots required to undergo testing and to demonstrate their proficiency on such a regular basis. Training encompasses a wide variety of subjects and scenarios that hopefully flight crew members will never be called upon to exercise in the operational environment. Yesterday this training paid off – the skills of the crew were called upon and procedures were carried out in a text-book fashion,” says Bricknell.
Nationwide Airlines is a privately owned airline company which flies to local, regional and international destinations.
Ends.

I was surprised reading the thread on PPRUNE by the amount of anti-Nationwide sentiment. Friends in South Africa have always spoken of a real aviation success story, it seems however that those within the industry see it, and especially it’s CEO in a different light.

1L.

Lucky it didn’t end in disaster.. as was the case of American DC10 Flt191 in Chicago in 1979.. with the loss of all 271 souls onboard after losing an engine on rotation

Nationwide press release;

Flight CE723 departed from Cape Town on schedule at 1550. At take-off it was reported that the right hand engine separated from the wing. The aircraft continued to climb out. The aircraft returned and landed at Cape Town International Airport without further incident. No passengers or crew were injured. Passengers were disembarked and taken to a holding area where Nationwide Airlines representatives as well as trauma counselors were on hand to lend assistance.

When further information becomes available another press release will be made available.

All other Nationwide Airlines flights continue to operate as normal.

An account given by IAN PRETORIUS on the SA Transport forum.

This afternoon at about 15:50 whilst sitting at my computer involved in the railway preservation internet war I heard a jet engine roaring. The cloud base was at approx 2000 ft over Table View with light drizzle. I thought to myself why is Mike Beechy Head flying practice runs for the Overberg Airshow in this weather (the initial sound was something like one of his aircraft).

I ran to my trusted ATC scanner and switched on and the first thing I heard was the tower talking to Charlie Victor the ground crew. He said get that rubble off the runway immediately. We have an emergency. The aircraft has to return. He then spoke to Nationwide who said to him we have an emergency. We have lost hydraulics and partial disintegration of our right engine. The traffic controller said it is not part disintegration. The whole engine is lying on the runway. At this time he was vectored to fly to Romeo India Victor (Robben Island) and he maintained 3000 ft on one engine. The air traffic controller when asked by the pilot what they had seen said that on take off he first saw black smoke which turned into grey smoke and then the motor exploded and disintegrated and parted from the aircraft.

This happened just short of the cross runway 16/34 which is about 70% of total runway length. There was no way that the pilot could have stopped the aircraft before the end of the runway but they obviously had enough speed at that stage for the take off.

The aircrew were very calm and were obviously going through all their emergency procedures. The air traffic controllers on tower were frantically hurrying on Charlie Victor to clear the large parts off the runway so that the aircraft could return. All other aircraft on approach to Cape Town were immediately placed into emergency hold and there was a lot of banter going on as to how much fuel each of them had and what their reserves were. In the end five aircraft were diverted to George and three to Port Elizabeth.

At about 16:10 Charlie Victor indicated that the runway was clear for an emergency landing and the Nationwide flight was brought in from around Cape Point to runway 01 on a gradual descent on ILS as the cloud base was very low. They made a perfect approach and a very good landing without brakes. Fortunately the gear could not be lifted on take off so hydraulics were not required to get them down.

After the plane came to a standstill there was a lot of congratulations from other pilots who were in their aircraft on the apron awaiting take off. The Nationwide aircraft was parked on the cross runway 34 out of the way of the main runway 01/19. Passengers were disembarked in the normal fashion as the steps were driven out to that area and so were the buses. The runway was reopened at 16:58 after poor old Charlie Victor had to remove all small particles that had fallen on the runway in case they got sucked into jet engines and there had been hydraulic and fuel spill on the runway.

After the Airbus A340 incident last week and this situation today it becomes all the more clear that Cape Town needs a second ILS main runway. If that had been the case no flights would have been diverted in either incident. Billions are being spent on the passenger boarding side but nothing on operating.

As for the reason for the Nationwide separation incident there are many possibilities.

Debris could have been sucked into the fans causing fan separation, imbalance and ultimate explosion.
This debris could have been either sucked off the runway or could even have been a large bird.
The fan could have broken and caused an imbalance resulting in the explosion.
The bearings could have seized on the fan.

It does not necessarily mean bad maintenance although that is a possibility. The controlling body of air safety sent a team from Johannesburg to Cape Town today and they arrived at about 19:30 to fully investigate this incident.

From what I heard on the radio everybody acted in an extremely efficient manner. The aircrew, the air traffic control, the emergency services and the ground handling crews really showed that this type of emergency is handled incredibly well when it happens. Good for them.

Regards,
IAN PRETORIUS

“They took off and left the engine behind!” Must be the understatement of the year!:D

http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2216890,00.html