More on our breaking news this morning. Passengers on board a Qantas flight from Melbourne to Perth have experienced a mid-air emergency after they heard a loud bang. The captain was forced to shut down an engine before landing at Perth Airport.
For more, aviation expert, James Nixon joins.
More to our breaking news this morning, Passengers on board a Quantus flight from Melbourne to Perth have experienced a mid air emergency after they heard a loud bang. The captain was forced to shut an engine down before landing at Perth Airport. For more, we're joined by aviation expert James Nixon. Good morning to you. Well allowed bang, an engine issue, the captain forced to shut it down. What could have happened here?
Well, it's quite interesting because usually these things are very quiet. The big bangal ones happen on the ground when you're just taking off or just after you've taken off. That's usually when the big bang ones happen. The others are usually a slow decay and the engine just dies. For this to be on descent coming into Perth and then make a big bang is quite different. The first thing that happens is the attention getter goes off. That's the big bell in the red light. We press the button straight away to make it quiet, to stop that noise, and then there's a startle factor. We use a word that starts well, it's only got four letters and it's much faster to say than startle. And having got our thoughts, together. We then just jump into the procedure. And the trick these days is to secure the engine. That's why you can see in the map that they've got a holding pattern. They've gone straight into the holding pattern and that means that editor we're out flying anywhere. They just hold the airplane and then do the whole procedure. Once they've finished shutting it down, then they can approach and land.
Wow, it's scary, isn't it. I would have gone straight for the profanities as well. Just going through this, it says that the plane can continue to fly with one engine. Is this why planes have two engines so that when something like this happens, we're all safe.
That's the idea. So the idea is that this airplane can go for three hours after having an engine failure before it needs an airport. The more modern planes, the A three fifty and the seven eight sevens can go five and five and a half hours after having an engine failure quite safely before they need an airport to land in. But pilots try and get it on the ground as fast as possible because we don't believe the statistics.
So quantus investigators will they be looking for here and can it happen again?
It can happen any day. Yeah, Look, this is an aging fleet, and the engines usually they're a different manufacturer. Of course, they have different manufacturers for the airframe and different ones for the engines, and so it depends how old these engines are. But it's an aging fleet to say, three thirty fleet that Quanas has got. In fact, out of the one hundred and forty seven airlines operating this airplane, they're one hundred and twenty seventh oldest fleet. They're going to replace them soon with the A three fifty for Project Sunrise and some more seven eight sevens. So it's getting on a bit. And you know it happens when the airplanes get old.
So do you reckon this is a maintenance issue, Like, do you think it will happen again potentially with this aircraft or similar? No?
I think this is just a one off and you can never tell what's gone on. It's just let an oil line go or something, and it's it's just as likely to go on a brand new airline as an old one.
Okay, well that's some good news. Scary though for those passengers on board, really appreciate your time,