AVIATION/ ATBS UPDATES ON EMIRATES FL407

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, ATSB, has released its interim report into a near disaster involving an EMIRATES A340 at Melbourne, Australia, on March 20, 2009. The A340 barely became airborne after running out of runway, and then striking its tail on the ground, taking out some airport lighting and landing systems. The 2 Pilots in command were fired by the Airline. On March 20, Emirates Flight 407 was on International Service from Melbourne to Dubai, UAE, with 257 passengers and 15 crew members onboard. At 10:31:53pm, the Captain called for the First Officer to rotate. The First Officer attempted to rotate the aircraft, but it did not respond immediately with a nose-up pitch. The Captain again called 'rotate' and the First Officer applied a greater nose-up command. The nose of the aircraft was raised and the tail made contact with the runway surface, but the aircraft did not begin to climb. The captain then selected TOGA on the thrust levers, the engines responded immediately, and the aircraft commenced a climb. The crew notified ATC of the tail strike and that they would be returning to Melbourne, where they landed without incident. The tail strike resulted in substantial damage to the tail of the aircraft and damaged some airport lighting and the instrument landing system.

The ATSB reports says that a simple keystroke error by a Pilot is the cause of the incident. The First Officer mistakenly entered the plane's take-off weight as 262.9 tonnes, when in fact it weighed 362.9 tonnes. The Captain, who cross-checked the figures, did not detect the error in the data entered. The mistake meant the jet's engines were programmed with insufficient thrust to achieve takeoff. That fact became apparent as the plane started to run out of runway without having left the ground. When the captain realised the plane was not lifting off, he ordered maximum engine thrust and extra elevation, exceeding the maximum take off angle of 13.5 degrees by 0.2 degrees, scraping the tail along the runway and clouting antennas and a light fixture at the end of the runway as tried to climb into the air. (The takeoff run is displayed in photo above). When Flight Attendants alerted the Pilots that there was smoke in the cabin shortly after takeoff, the Pilots requested an emergency landing, dumped excess fuel over Port Philip Bay and touched down. Investigators say they do not believe fatigue was a factor in the mistake. The Captain and First Officer both had a 30 hour break since their previous flight, but an earlier report said the Captain had only slept for 3.5 out of the previous 24 hours. In a statement released after the interim report was made public, Emirates said the safety bureau's investigation was in line with its own internal investigation into the incident. "Safety is of paramount importance to Emirates," the statement said. "Since this incident 9 months ago we have established working groups to examine aircraft procedure across out fleet, and have introduced a number of additional safety measures that exceed standard international airline practice." Procedures have been developed for better cross-checking, with both Pilots required to independently enter the data on separate laptops to spot anomalies. But what is still under development is a real-time runway length calculator that tells pilots how much tarmac is left, where the plane is on the length of the runway, and systems that check take-off speed and engine power settings. The investigation continues.