Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [101]
The flight crew conducted a series of manual checks and worked out that the plane was still controllable. But it was in bad shape. Captain de Crespigny told Channel Nine’s Sixty Minutes that the wing had been cluster-bombed: ‘Engine number two: overheat and failure. Engines one and four: degraded two levels in thrust. Electrically, the left-hand side of the aircraft was dead. We lost 50 per cent of the hydraulic systems. The brakes underneath the wings were reduced to 30 per cent braking efficiency, and anti-skid was inoperative. Fuel system: three tanks out of 11 functioned, no transfer system was available. No jettison system. We had multiple holes in the wing, which disrupted the airflow over the wing and caused the stall speed to increase.’7
The pilots tapped details of each of the damaged systems into the plane’s onboard computer to work out the landing distance required to put a damaged A380, 50 tonnes above the aircraft’s maximum landing weight, safely onto the tarmac of runway 20C of Changi Airport. The computer said it could not be done: the plane was too heavy with too much fuel on board, which the crew could not jettison. The Australian pilots knew the runway was dry, so they removed the computer’s inbuilt allowance for wet runways and the answer came back that they could land with just 100 metres to spare: a tiny margin for error on a runway 4000 metres long. The cabin crew was briefed to prepare for a possible runway overrun and evacuation. On the ground, emergency vehicles howled onto the edge of the runway in preparation.
Even for a pilot with 15,000 hours in the cockpit, 570 of those at the controls of an A380, it was going to be a challenging landing. The flight crew knew the landing gear was compromised and lowered it using the emergency extension procedure. There were no leading edge slats; limited aileron and spoiler control; anti-skid braking was restricted to the body landing gear only; and there was limited nose-wheel steering. It was likely the nose would pitch up on touchdown and the full brakes could not be applied until it was safely on the runway. There would be no flare on landing, where the final nose-up pitch on landing cuts the rate of descent to zero, and de Crespigny would have to rely on gravity to bring the nosewheel down. As he descended to 4000 feet on approach to Changi Airport, he was acutely aware that speed control on his final approach was supremely important – too fast and the plane would overshoot the end of the runway, too slow and the plane would stall. At 1000 feet the autopilot cut out for the second time and de Crespigny decided to fly the plane in manually. A380s have reverse thrust on the number two and three engines. With the number two engine out of commission, he set the number one and four engines to provide symmetric thrust and controlled the speed of the plane solely with the number three engine. Six seconds after the rear wheels touched down the nosewheel settled onto the tarmac and de Crespigny slammed on the brakes that were still working and put the number three engine into maximum reverse thrust. The plane rolled to a stop with 150 metres of runway to spare. The passengers burst into spontaneous applause.
But the drama was not over. The aircraft’s control systems were seriously compromised. The landing gear on the left of the body was overheating. It registered 900 degrees and rising. Meanwhile, aviation fuel was leaking out of the left wing. As the crew ran through the usual shut-down procedure, the screens went blank, dropping into emergency power mode. The only communication left was a VHF radio. First Officer Matt Hicks contacted the emergency fire services commander