Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [81]
What their myriad flashing warning lights could not tell them was exactly what had happened. The three members of the flight crew in the stricken jet’s cockpit knew they were in trouble. But it would only be on subsequent investigation that all 19 crew and 346 passengers on flight QF30 would realise just how close they came to becoming the first victims of a fatal Qantas jet crash. The Longreach plane had a gaping hole in its fuselage in front of the wing, underneath the economy cabin right-hand door. The entire right wing forward leading edge-to-fuselage fairing had been ripped away, leaving a hole two metres long and one and a half metres wide. The cause, according to the preliminary ATSB report, appeared ‘to remain unique in world wide experience’.12
One of the seven emergency oxygen bottles bolted into the side wall of the forward cargo hold had exploded. The explosion had ripped the giant hole in the fuselage and sent a large part of the green oxygen cylinder, with the valve still attached, shooting up through the cabin floor like an airborne torpedo. After punching through the floor, the cylinder struck the R2 door frame and handle, knocking the handle up into the one-o-clock position, and knocking off the valve from the top of the bottle. The handle was moved 120 degrees from the closed position, shearing the handle as part of the safety mechanism to prevent the door being opened in flight. The impact with the door handle turned the speeding cylinder upside down as it continued to shoot upwards. Still rotating, the cylinder smashed into the overhead storage bin above the door, crushing the locker, before falling to the floor and being sucked back out through the holes in the floor and side of the plane. At least that’s what the experts at the ATSB believed, because the vital evidence, the oxygen cylinder, was nowhere to be seen and was ‘presumably lying at the bottom of the South China Sea’.13
When the cylinder ruptured the metal hull of the aircraft, its two pressure relief valves vented air from the aircraft, forcing open the two circular blowout doors on the left side of the jet and easing pressure on the damaged door. Fortunately, none of the wreckage had gone into the spinning blades of the closest Rolls-Royce jet engine. Parts of the missing leading edge fairing panel were found on the number three engine pylon and a cut was found on the engine intake. The engine was later replaced as a precaution.
The Qantas jet was lucky. In 1989 a United Airlines Boeing 747 on its way to Australia suffered a catastrophic door failure. The fuselage of that plane was ripped open and nine passengers were sucked out of the jet by the sudden change in cabin pressure. The plane eventually landed safely.
Although one of the passenger oxygen bottles was missing, there was still enough air in the remaining bottles for 65 minutes. The flight deck was supplied by its own separate emergency oxygen supply. Once the plane had levelled out at 10,000 feet the use of oxygen was no longer necessary, but Captain Bartels faced another problem. The exploding oxygen cylinder had also cut through electrical and mechanical systems needed to fly the plane. On the flight deck the crew were assessing just how much of their equipment was still operational. A total of 85 wires had been damaged by the cylinder. Almost half of these affected the oxygen