Qantas Flight 1 - Misplaced Pages

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Qantas Flight 1" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (April 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

(Learn how and when to remove this message)

1999 landing in Bangkok with minor injuries

Qantas Flight 1
Accident
VH-OJH, the aircraft involved in the accident, eight years later.
Date	23 September 1999 (1999-09-23)
Summary	Runway overrun caused by hydroplaning
Site	Don Mueang International Airport, Bangkok, Thailand 13°55′38″N 100°37′01″E / 13.927333°N 100.617056°E / 13.927333; 100.617056
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Boeing 747-400
Aircraft name	City of Darwin
Operator	Qantas
IATA flight No.	QF1
ICAO flight No.	QFA1
Call sign	QANTAS 1
Registration	VH-OJH
Flight origin	Sydney Airport
Stopover	Don Mueang International Airport
Destination	London Heathrow Airport
Occupants	410
Passengers	391
Crew	19
Fatalities	0
Injuries	~38
Survivors	410

Qantas 1 (QF1, QFA1) is a Qantas passenger flight between Sydney and London. On 23 September 1999, the aircraft operating the QF1 that had departed from Sydney that day was involved in a runway overrun accident at Don Mueang International Airport in Bangkok as it was landing for a stopover.

Flight

Qantas flights travel between London and Australia on a route known as the "Kangaroo Route". The Kangaroo Route traditionally refers to air routes flown between Australia and the United Kingdom, via the Eastern Hemisphere.

This flight was operated by Senior Check Captain Jack Fried in a Boeing 747-438 S/N 24806, delivered new to Qantas in August 1990 and registered VH-OJH; it was withdrawn from use in September 2012 and broken up at Pinal Airpark in 2014 for parts. The flight departed Sydney earlier that day at 16:45 local time, and after more than eight hours of flight time, was approaching Don Mueang International Airport at 22:45 local time.

Accident

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Qantas Flight 1" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

During the approach to Bangkok, the weather conditions deteriorated significantly, from 5 statute mile visibility half an hour before landing to approximately one half statute mile visibility at the time of landing. The flight crew observed a storm cloud over the airport and ground reports were that it was raining heavily. However, these conditions are common at Bangkok. Seven minutes prior to Flight 1's landing, a Thai Airways Airbus A330 landed normally, but three minutes before Flight 1's landing another Qantas Boeing 747 (QF15, a Sydney-Rome via Bangkok service), conducted a go-around due to poor visibility during final approach. The crew of Qantas Flight 1, however, were unaware of this.

The first officer was flying the aircraft during the final approach. The aircraft's altitude and airspeed were high, but were within company limits. The rain was now heavy enough that the runway lights were visible only intermittently after each windscreen wiper stroke. Just before touchdown the captain, concerned about the long touchdown point (over 3,000 feet past the runway threshold) and unable to see the end of the runway, ordered the first officer to perform a "go-around" and the first officer advanced the throttles but did not engage the takeoff/go-around switch (TO/GA). At this point, visibility improved markedly and the landing gear contacted the runway, although the aircraft continued to accelerate. The captain then decided to cancel the go-around by retarding the thrust levers, even though he was not flying the aircraft. This caused confusion as he did not announce his actions to the first officer who still had formal control. When over-riding the first officer's actions, the captain inadvertently left one engine at TO/GA power and as a result cancelled the preselected auto-brake settings.

The landing continued, but manual braking did not commence until the aircraft was over 5,200 feet (1,600 m) down the runway. The aircraft then began to aquaplane and skid its way down the runway, departing substantially from the runway centreline. Company standard operating procedures mandated that idle reverse thrust should be used for landings and that flaps should be set at 25 degrees, not the maximum of 30 degrees. The combination of flaps 25, no auto-braking, no reverse thrust, a high and fast approach, a late touchdown, poor cockpit resource management, and the standing water on the runway led to a runway overshoot.

The aircraft gradually decelerated, ran off the end of the runway over a stretch of boggy grassland, colliding with a ground radio antenna as it did so, and came to rest with its nose resting on the perimeter road. The ground on the other side of the road forms part of a golf course.

There were no significant passenger injuries during an orderly evacuation of the aircraft carried out some 20 minutes after the rough landing. Thirty-eight passengers reported minor injuries.

Damage

The collision with the antenna caused the nose and right wing landing gear to collapse, the nose landing gear being forced back into the fuselage. The aircraft slid along in a nose-down, right wing low attitude, causing some further damage to the nose and damage to the two right engines and their mountings. The intrusion of the nose landing gear also caused the failure of the cabin intercom and public address system.

The damage was such that the aircraft was initially a write-off, but to preserve its reputation Qantas had it repaired at a cost of approximately AU$100 million (the exact figure was never disclosed by Qantas). Returning the aircraft to service enabled Qantas to retain its record of having no hull-loss accidents since the advent of the Jet Age, and also proved to be the more economical option for the time, as a new 747-400 was listed close to $200 million.

Notes

The aircraft was a Boeing 747-400 model; Boeing assigns a unique code for each company that buys one of its aircraft, which is applied as a suffix to the model number at the time the aircraft is built, hence "747-438" denotes a 747-400 built for Qantas.
There have been several fatal crashes of Qantas aircraft, all of them propeller-driven. As of January 2018, the last fatal Qantas aircraft crash was in 1951 and the last Qantas aircraft to be a total loss was a Lockheed L-1049G Super Constellation propeller airliner that was destroyed by fire on 25 August 1960 in another runway overrun accident, after one of its engines failed during takeoff on the island of Mauritius.

References

^ Benns, Matthew (2009). The Men Who Killed Qantas. Sydney: William Heinemann:Australia. ISBN 978-1-74166-891-9.
"ATSB Boeing 747-438, VH-OJH Bangkok, Thailand" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 January 2021. Retrieved 15 July 2009.
Conforti, Kaeli. "Qantas 'Kangaroo Route' To Fly Between London And Darwin Starting November 14". Forbes. Retrieved 24 January 2023.
"VH-OJH Qantas Boeing 747-400".
^ Nancarrow, Doug (2015). Game Changer. Sydney: HarperCollins Australia. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-4607-5044-5.
Job, Macarthur (1992). Air Crash Volume 2. Weston Creek, ACT: Aerospace Publications. pp. 172–175. ISBN 1-875671-01-3.

Bibliography

Australian Transport Safety Bureau report on the accident Archived 16 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine

External links

Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network

v t e Aviation accidents and incidents in Thailand
1960s	United Arab Airlines Flight 869 (July 1962)
1970s	EgyptAir Flight 864 (December 1976)
1980s	Thai Airways Flight 231 (April 1980) Garuda Indonesia Flight 206 (March 1981) Thai Airways Flight 365 (August 1987) Vietnam Airlines Flight 831 (September 1988)
1990s	Bangkok Airways Flight 125 (November 1990) Lauda Air Flight 004 (May 1991) Thai Airways International Flight 261 (December 1998) Qantas Flight 1 (September 1999)
2000s	One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 (September 2007) Bangkok Airways Flight 266 (August 2009)
2020s	Singapore Airlines Flight 321 (May 2024) Thai Flying Service Flight 209 (August 2024)

v t e Aviation accidents and incidents in 1999 (1999)
Feb 24 China Southwest Airlines Flight 4509Feb 25 Minerva Airlines Flight 1553Mar 15 Korean Air Flight 1533Mar 27 F-117A shootdownApr 7 Turkish Airlines Flight 5904Apr 12 Avianca Flight 9463Apr 15 Korean Air Cargo Flight 6316Jun 1 American Airlines Flight 1420Jul 2 Tramore helicopter crashJul 7 Hinduja Cargo Services Flight 8533Jul 16 Martha's Vineyard plane crashJul 23 All Nippon Airways Flight 61Jul 24 Air Fiji Flight 121Aug 7 TACV Flight 5002Aug 10 Pakistani Atlantic shootdownAug 22 China Airlines Flight 642Aug 24 Uni Air Flight 873Aug 31 LAPA Flight 3142Sep 3 Edinburgh Air Charter Flight 3WSep 5 Necon Air Flight 128Sep 14 Britannia Airways Flight 226ASep 23 Qantas Flight 1Oct 11 Air Botswana crashOct 25 South Dakota Learjet crashOct 31 EgyptAir Flight 990Nov 9 TAESA Flight 725Nov 12 Si Fly Flight 3275Dec 7 Asian Spirit Flight 100Dec 11 SATA Air Açores Flight 530MDec 21 Cubana de Aviación Flight 1216Dec 22 Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509Dec 24 Indian Airlines Flight 814Dec 25 Cubana de Aviación Flight 310
1998 ◄ ► 2000

Aviation accidents and incidents in 1999 (1999)

Feb 24 China Southwest Airlines Flight 4509Feb 25 Minerva Airlines Flight 1553Mar 15 Korean Air Flight 1533Mar 27 F-117A shootdownApr 7 Turkish Airlines Flight 5904Apr 12 Avianca Flight 9463Apr 15 Korean Air Cargo Flight 6316Jun 1 American Airlines Flight 1420Jul 2 Tramore helicopter crashJul 7 Hinduja Cargo Services Flight 8533Jul 16 Martha's Vineyard plane crashJul 23 All Nippon Airways Flight 61Jul 24 Air Fiji Flight 121Aug 7 TACV Flight 5002Aug 10 Pakistani Atlantic shootdownAug 22 China Airlines Flight 642Aug 24 Uni Air Flight 873Aug 31 LAPA Flight 3142Sep 3 Edinburgh Air Charter Flight 3WSep 5 Necon Air Flight 128Sep 14 Britannia Airways Flight 226ASep 23 Qantas Flight 1Oct 11 Air Botswana crashOct 25 South Dakota Learjet crashOct 31 EgyptAir Flight 990Nov 9 TAESA Flight 725Nov 12 Si Fly Flight 3275Dec 7 Asian Spirit Flight 100Dec 11 SATA Air Açores Flight 530MDec 21 Cubana de Aviación Flight 1216Dec 22 Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509Dec 24 Indian Airlines Flight 814Dec 25 Cubana de Aviación Flight 310

1998 ◄ ► 2000

Categories: