by Jim Eames
DCA’s HS-125 had a slightly more restricted role to other aeroplanes in the DCA fleet. Although it could be used for radar calibration and the testing of instrument-approach equipment at an airport, its primary use was to provide DCA’s examiners with an aircraft which could broadly match the performance of the gas turbine-powered aircraft used by the major airline operators.
Avalon in the sixties handled a varied assortment of aircraft operations. These were the days before simulators took over the bulk of pilot training, and aircraft like Qantas’ Boeing 707s were a regular sight at the airfield as they, too, performed ‘touch-and-goes’. Avalon was also used as the testing base for the Royal Australian Air Force’s Mirage jet fighters as they rolled off the assembly lines at Melbourne aircraft factories.
DCA’s HS-125 was being flown on a training exercise by two of the department’s most experienced pilots, Jack Macalister and Peter Lavender, on 24 January 1967 when disaster struck. Macalister and Lavender were approaching for their eleventh touch-and-go for the day when the air-traffic controller advised that a Mirage was taxiing for take-off and instructed the pilots to make a right turn after their touch-and-go to allow the Mirage to climb away to the left after take-off.
The HS-125 executed the touch-and-go, the Mirage took off and the HS-125 was then told to continue its circuit and report on final for another approach. All went according to plan as the aircraft’s throttles were closed at around 200 feet to allow its airspeed to come back to 115 knots and it crossed the runway threshold at around 30 feet and touched down.
Macalister and Lavender later told investigators it was only when the aircraft started to skid along the runway that they realised the undercarriage was not extended and they went into emergency mode, closing down the aircraft’s fuel cocks and turning off the master battery switch to lessen the fire danger as the jet screeched along the runway for 731 metres in a shower of sparks, before coming to rest. By the time Macalister and Lavender evacuated the aircraft it was already ablaze as the friction from the runway had torn open a fuel tank and flames covered the rear section of the plane.
The subsequent investigation by the department’s own Air Safety Branch, quickly refuted both pilots’ insistence that they had lowered the undercarriage as the undercarriage was still in the retracted position when the aircraft was inspected and tests showed it was completely serviceable.
Although the aircraft was equipped with a warning horn designed to alert the crew if the undercarriage was not down on approach to land, the pilots later recalled that earlier in the circuit around the airport they had muted the horn noise when it sounded. And in another unfortunate turn of events, even though it had been muted, a backup system existed whereby a warning was also designed to sound when the aircraft’s flaps were lowered. Unluckily for Macalister and Lavender, on this particular touch-and-go they’d decided to carry out a flapless landing.
Although DCA had been a world leader in encouraging openness and the wide circulation of accident causes to enable lessons to be learned by other pilots, when it came time to release the report of this incident, something of an internal battle ensued in an attempt to ‘limit’ the damage to the department’s reputation.
Finally, however, given that the incident itself had been widely publicised in the press, along with repair costs of around a quarter of a million dollars, the results of the investigation into ‘one of their own’ subsequently featured in the department’s Aviation Safety Digest for all to see. It left little doubt as to the cause of the accident.
It is quite clear from the investigation that the crew failed to make use of the means available to ensure that the undercarriage was extended and safe for landing.
It said disciplinary action had been taken against the pilots and the department’s training procedures had also been reviewed.
The fact that an accident of this type can occur to an aircraft being crewed by two senior, highly experienced, professional pilots is some indication of the degree of care necessary for the conduct of concentrated training exercises in modern complex aircraft. As cockpit sequences are repeated, circuit after circuit, it is unfortunately all too easy to gloss over, and perhaps gradually disregard, the methodical implantation of the prescribed cockpit checking procedures so essential to safe operation.
Perhaps most of the embarrassment would have been to the two pilots involved, who would continue to sit in airliner cockpits in judgement of other pilots flying Australia’s air routes. One can only imagine the atmosphere in the cockpit when either of the two DCA examiners were checking pilots on their pre-landing procedures.
The HS-125 incident wasn’t to be the last such mortification for DCA. Four years later the department’s Director of Operations for NSW, Bob Green, landed his Cessna 110 with the wheels still retracted when he arrived for an airport inspection at Port Macquarie. Not one to fail to see the irony of it, Green’s office wall at DCA’s NSW headquarters later featured a framed photograph of the incident.
But at least Avalon, in open country west of Melbourne, was a relatively isolated location when it came to embarrassment with landing gear. Sydney’s Kingsford Smith airport is a totally different prospect when something the size of a Boeing 747 ends up on its nose in the middle of the main runway.
16
Ansett International arrives—well, in a fashion!
As far back as many in Australia’s aviation industry could remember, Ansett-ANA—later Ansett Airlines, for many years one half of Australia’s two-airline system—had ambitions to spread it wings into international skies. But while the ambition may have been there, the Australian government’s policy of nominating one airline, Qantas, as its international flag carrier, always stood in the way; although this was never enough to dampen Ansett’s enthusiasm for trying.
On several occasions over the years the opportunity looked promising: in the 1970s with the move to independence by Papua New Guinea, the airline’s founder, Sir Reginald Ansett, lobbied the Papua New Guinea government to have his airline operate services between Port Moresby and Australia; some years later, with Ansett now under the Sir Peter Abeles and Rupert Murdoch regime, state governments, particularly Queensland, agitated for additional international services which Qantas claimed were uneconomical for it to provide.
All attempts foundered, however, until Ansett’s chance came with the policy changes which led to the more open skies in the 1980s and 1990s and the airline introduced services to Bali, Indonesia, in 1993. Within a year they had leased two Boeing 747s from Singapore Airlines and Ansett had added Japan and Hong Kong to its international credentials.
The introduction of the much larger 747 into an airline with a well-honed domestic mindset would represent a steep learning curve for Ansett, a curve which would bring heavy pressures on the operational and organisational requirements of the airline, pressures which would be starkly revealed in what was to take place at Sydney airport on 19 October 1994.
Ansett International’s Boeing 747 Flight AN 881 had taken off from Sydney just after 10 a.m., bound for Osaka, Japan, with 253 passengers and 21 crew aboard. Within an hour into the flight, with the aircraft cruising at 31 000 feet, the crew noticed one of the 747’s four engines was losing oil.
When it soon became obvious that the oil was decreasing at an alarming rate, the engine was shut down and a decision made to return to Sydney. Along with the requirement to jettison fuel to reduce the aircraft’s landing weight for Sydney, the return flight was a busy one for the crew, themselves a mix of experience and training.
While the 58-year-old-captain, who came to Ansett from Cathay Pacific with 21 000 flying hours—more than 7000 of them on Boeing 747s—was a pilot of long experience, the first officer, although also an experienced pilot, had not yet completed his line training on the 747. The third occupant of the cockpit was a newly rated flight engineer on his first revenue flight as a qualified flight engineer.
That return flight to Sydney was later revealed as a particularly busy ti
me for the flight engineer. In addition to monitoring the fuel-jettison process, balancing the fuel in the aircraft’s tanks and making entries in logs, he was also being used as the coordinator for some of the arrangements being made between Ansett management on the ground for the transfer of passengers and the crew to an alternative aircraft for Japan.
It was raining in Sydney airport that morning and, with limited visibility, air-traffic control cleared the aircraft for an instrument approach from the north to Sydney’s main runway. Acknowledging the training advantages under these conditions, the captain elected to have his copilot fly the aircraft.
Everything went as normal on the approach to land until the crew selected appropriate flap settings and lowered the landing gear. That was when the landing gear warning horn began to sound, indicating that the undercarriage had not extended.
Although it appears the crew had earlier discussed whether some of the aircraft’s hydraulic systems might be affected due to the loss of one engine and they attempted to establish why the horn was sounding, they believed the gear was down and decided to continue with the landing. Several hundred feet above the runway approach the captain, perplexed that one of the gear warning lights was still showing red on his panel, queried the flight engineer as to whether all the required ‘green’ lights were on. He responded that they were. Unknown to them, however, the 747’s nose wheel had only partially extended.
With rain falling and visibility limited, the air-traffic control surface-movement controller in the tower did not see the 747’s problem until it was too late. By the time he did the 747’s main wheels were on the ground and the nose was already being lowered.
The first reaction by the two pilots was to initiate a go-around, but by now reverse thrust had been selected and that would not be possible. The following twenty seconds or so must have been agonising for the crew of Ansett Flight 881 as the front section of the Boeing’s fuselage dropped onto the runway surface and the aircraft skidded for more than 800 metres on its nose.
Fire-and-rescue services were quickly on the scene and applied foam to what appeared to be smoke coming from the nose of the Boeing, but as it turned out it was merely steam created by the friction of the aircraft’s skin on the wet runway. Fortunately there were no injuries and neither was it necessary for an emergency evacuation.
The subsequent investigation into the accident by the Department of Transport’s Air Safety Investigation Branch highlighted problems with the flight engineer’s interpretation of the landing gear lights on his panel, a failure to recognise that one of the five gear-indicator lights was not illuminated, along with crew resource-management deficiencies on the flight deck. Commercial pressures related to the introduction of the 747s into the Ansett fleet and inadequate line training of personnel were also criticised.
The good news for Ansett was that damage was confined to abrasive wear and distortion of the fuselage skin, although the ignominy of having the pride of its fleet resting forlornly on its nose at Australia’s primary international airport probably represented its major concern.
Ansett’s long-awaited achievement of its international wings was destined to last less than a decade. Struggling under the weight of poor management decisions, including uneconomic equipment procurement, the airline would eventually be purchased by Air New Zealand early in 2000, only to go into voluntary administration within two years—an unfortunate end to an Australian icon and the dreams of its founder.
17
When a runway ‘isn’t long enough’
Light rain also had been falling as Pan American’s Flight 811 approached Sydney’s Mascot airport on the morning of 18 July 1971, and for the 284 passengers and crew the long haul from Los Angeles via Honolulu and Fiji was almost over.
At the controls was Captain William Thomas, 52, a veteran of more than 26 000 hours in the air but of only one previous landing at Sydney, and that on Sydney’s long north–south runway. On this particular morning he had been cleared to land into the west on the shorter, 2377-metre east–west runway, and although this runway was not equipped with an instrument-landing system, pilots flew down a flight path provided by a visual aid known as a T-VASIS, an Australian invention which comprised a series of lights set off to each side of the runway which, viewed from the cockpit of an approaching aircraft, guided the pilot onto the runway threshold.
The first sign of a problem came when the air-traffic controller in the tower stared in surprise as the big Boeing appeared to still be at a height of 200 feet at the end of the runway he was planning to land on. The controller continued to watch as the Boeing levelled out and then appeared to float, losing height ever so slowly as it progressed along above the runway, with the controller all the while expecting the engines to roar into life and the aircraft to execute a go-around.
But there would be no go-around for this plane. Instead, he saw the wheels of the jumbo touch down halfway along near the junction of the two runways, its nose wheel still high as it started into its landing roll. Then it was lost to him behind a shower of spray and smoke as the engines went into reverse thrust and the aircraft’s brakes came on.
In the seconds that it was out of sight to the controller, PAA Flight 811 had run off the end of the runway and had been brought to a shuddering stop with its nose wheel buried several metres into the mud at the runway’s end. Much further and it would have collided with a cement wall protecting pipes at the end of the runway, with possible disastrous results.
As it was, there were no injuries, and passengers completed the final few metres of their journey to Sydney’s international terminal by coach. The press, however, had something of a field day, highlighting the ‘near miss’ aspects of the incident along with a statement by Pan American suggesting that the runway itself was ‘too short’.
Never one to tolerate having his department’s infrastructure or safety facilities come in for unjust criticism, DCA’s director general, Sir Donald Anderson, a former pilot himself, countered with a one-sentence response which managed to stop such an accusation in its tracks: ‘Any runway’s too short if you land halfway down it.’
The Air Safety Investigation Branch inquiry which followed considered three principal questions central to the incident. First, why did the aircraft touch down so far along the runway; second, why did it fail to come to a halt in the runway length remaining; and, third, why did the pilot not go around at some time before the overrun became inevitable?
After much analysis of the T-VASIS system runway touchdown distances and the Boeing braking-and-stopping capabilities, the final report concluded that the pilot in command should have made a decision to abort the landing and go around again once a misjudged landing approach was evident.
But while there might have been some embarrassment in the photographs and television footage which followed the incident, the Boeing 747 itself would come out of it remarkably well. Despite the physical shock of a sudden stop and a nose wheel choked above its axle in soft earth, the Boeing 747 would be cleaned, checked for airworthiness and operate a return service to Los Angeles the next day.
As the Pan Am and HS-125 episodes show, landing an aircraft is a vulnerable time when it comes to awkward moments and, along with its civilian counterparts, the Royal Australian Air Force has had its share, with its operations in Papua New Guinea featuring in several of them.
Papua New Guinea is a country where, at least for the uninitiated, flying jungle-covered mountains and valleys, one airstrip looks very much like any other. It may be apocryphal, but the story goes that some years ago the pilot of a RAAF Caribou called up the air-traffic controller at Goroka, in Papua New Guinea’s Eastern Highlands and one of the country’s busiest airfields, to inform him he was in the airfield’s landing circuit. Seeing it was the first he’d heard of the aircraft, the surprised controller looked out towards the horizon but couldn’t find any aircraft within eyesight. So he asked the pilot to reconfirm his position.
The pilot did so and announced he w
as now turning in to his final approach to the airfield. By now the air-traffic controller was outside his tower, his eyes probing all points of the compass but to no avail. There turned out to be a good reason the controller couldn’t see him. By the time the two of them had sorted it out, the Caribou had landed at a different airport entirely.
The RAAF experienced a similar incident in Papua New Guinea in the mid-1960s when the wrong identification of an airstrip, which under different circumstances might have led to a minor mishap, actually resulted in a crash and serious injury.
During a Defence Force training exercise in June 1965 two RAAF Caribous were detailed to deliver aviation fuel to the airstrip at Moro, near Lake Kutubu in Papua New Guinea’s Southern Highlands. The two aircraft, both loaded with 44-gallon drums of aviation fuel and aero oil, left Wewak, on Papua New Guinea’s north coast, in the morning and a little more than an hour later were over Moro. The leading aircraft descended through a hole in the cloud cover to land but soon after landing its captain reported his aircraft was bogged in Moro’s mud.
Hearing this news the crew of the second Caribou decided to return to Wewak but in the process offload their cargo at Laiagam, another airstrip which they had been instructed to use as an alternative fuel drop should Moro be unavailable. While the crews were aware from earlier briefings that map coordinates for some PNG airstrips were not accurate, they made the added mistake of identifying the airfield at Porgera for Laiagam, an error which would have serious consequences.
While Laiagam was a reasonable 823 metres long and 61 metres wide and its surrounding terrain allowed an approach from either end, Porgera’s runway, at a height of over 7000 feet and surrounded by 12 000-foot-high mountains, was only 457 metres long and 45.7 metres wide, had a ten degree upward slope at its southern end and, due to a high ridgeline could only be approached from one direction.
