I
DID a bit of reading for my Qantas
flight today.
It was more a matter of good timing than a tactical approach to informed
travel, but not long before I stepped onto my Qantas A380 in Melbourne this
morning I finished reading QF32 which is the book written by
Richard De Crespigny.
He was
the very clever pilot that landed the Flying Kangaroo's first double-decker
aircraft when an engine exploded over Indonesia a few years back.
I heard
lots of stories about the now-infamous incident from the Qantas folk I met
doing the trip to Seattle last year so was interested and bought the captain's
book when it hit the shelves earlier this month.
Not the
best reading for someone about to fly an A380?
True.
But that
incident, and reading the book, had the opposite effect upon me and I'm now a
loyal Qantas customer hoping that if I'm every in a plane that has a faulty
engine there's a team of QF pilots in the pointy end.
Captain
De Crespigny and his crew did such a magnificent job that day landing the
disabled aircraft when only one of the 21 flight systems was working normally
and all four engines were "degraded'' with a complete failure of the fuel
system.
I have no
doubt, after hearing the inside information from the Qantas team, that if the
same thing happened to any number of other airlines it would have ended with
the loss of every life on board.
But the
experienced Qantas crew kept the damaged aircraft in the air for a couple of
hours, then wrestled it onto the ground at Changi Airport and safely evacuated
every person on board.
Captain
De Crespigny did say one thing in QF32 that I experienced first hand last
night.
In one
chapter about the revolutionary Airbus vessel he described the "dance of
the ailerons'' which keep the plane steady in flight.
There's a
collection of flaps on the wing that operate automatically when the aircraft
hits a bit of turbulence, flapping and waving to adjust and stop the plane
ducking and diving around the sky.
I
couldn't see the wings from my seat on the second level, but I did take notice
when the seat-belt sign came on somewhere near Hawaii.
The A380
hardly moved, you have to love those ailerons.
Qantas,
it's always a pleasure.
