Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [7]
He was also reported to be anxious that the airline did not suffer its first ever jet hull loss, which occurs when it is cheaper to write the hull off and buy a new plane than foot the damage and insurance bills. Reports in the Australian Financial Review at the time suggest it was the ‘biggest repair job in Australian aviation history, conservatively estimated to cost $100 million.’19 Fixing the crashed plane, christened City of Darwin, would maintain Qantas’s claim to have never lost a jet.
But the airline’s reputation was about to take an incredible battering as it emerged that cost-cutting and poor management procedures had led directly to the accident that put passengers’ lives at risk.
When the pilots were landing QF1 it never occurred to them at any stage to put the engines into full reverse thrust. Had they landed with the flaps fully open – at flaps 30 instead of flaps 25 – and thrown the four powerful Rolls-Royce engines into full reverse thrust then, according to the subsequent ATSB report, ‘the overrun would most probably have been avoided’. That they didn’t was because it had been trained out of them to save money.20
Up until 6 December 1996, Qantas instructed all pilots flying the B747-400 to land with flaps 30 and maximum reverse thrust. At flaps 30, one senior pilot noted that the plane ‘wants to land’. But as from 6 December 1996, Qantas had instructed all pilots to land at flaps 25 at which, the same pilot noted, the plane ‘wants to fly’. Boeing wrote to Qantas in 2000 reiterating that it recommended flaps 30 to ‘minimise landing distance’. Landing at flaps 25 meant the plane came in five to six knots faster and had a slightly longer touchdown. Boeing also warned against the policy of using only idle thrust on landing. The aircraft manufacturer said that not using full reverse thrust could be habit-forming in pilots. ‘The pilot may then fail to respond quickly when such reverse thrust is needed during a … landing in some type of performance critical situation.’21
Qantas pilots had been trained not to land with the flaps full out or use full reverse thrust on landing. A survey of Qantas 747-400 pilots after the QF1 crash found that more than half said their training did not include a variety of situations where flaps 30 and full reverse were required, and over a third said they had received adverse comments from captains and trainers for selecting flaps 30 and full reverse on landing. Around half the pilots said they had only rarely used flaps 30 or full reverse in the 12 months before the accident in Bangkok. The crew on the flight deck of QF1 had barely used flaps 30 or full reverse since the company brought out the edict instructing pilots to use flaps 25 and idle reverse, almost three years earlier.
This was coupled with the fact that most Qantas pilots, including the pilots of QF1, had not received any simulator training for landing on contaminated runways such as the rain-soaked one they encountered at Bangkok. Crucially, they were not aware of how reverse thrust was a ‘critical stopping force on water-affected runways’, said the ATSB report. ‘The QF1 flight crew were not atypical of most other company B747-400 pilots. There was therefore an unquestionable link between the performance of the crew and the company flight operations system in which they trained and operated.’22
Qantas brought in the flaps 25 and idle reverse thrust edict to save money. Prior to December 1996 the Qantas philosophy had been to provide aircraft with the shortest possible landing distance. The change began in June 1996, when a representative from the wheel brake manufacturer