Navigation blunder sees AirAsia plane landing in Melbourne instead of KL

[michgyver 0]

An AirAsia flight bound for Kuala Lumpur from Sydney flew to Melbourne instead because the pilot had entered the wrong coordinates into the internal navigation system, said a news report based on the findings of an air safety investigation.

According to The Guardian, "a combination of data entry errors, crew ignoring unexplained chimes from the computer system, and bad weather in Sydney" led to the Airbus A330 landing in Melbourne just after 2pm, some three hours after take off on March 10 last year.

The publication also noted that while the Melbourne airport is 722km southwest of Sydney, Kuala Lumpur is 6,611km northwest.

Citing the findings of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) published today, Guardian said the problem occurred when faulty earmuffs prompted the captain and first officer to swap their usual pre-flight checks.

"Ordinarily, the (ATSB) report said, the captain would conduct an external inspection of the plane while the first officer stayed in the cockpit and, among other tasks, completed the position initialisation and alignment procedures.

"On this day, however, the captain's ear protection was not available so he took over the cockpit tasks, which included entering their current coordinates, usually given as the coordinates of the departure gate, into the plane's internal navigation system."

The ATSB found that the captain manually copied the coordinates from a sign outside the cockpit window into the system, and that later analysis showed a "data entry error".

Instead of entering the longitude as 151̊ 9.8’ east, or 15109.8 in the system, the pilot incorrectly entered it as 15̊ 19.8’ east, or 01519.8.

"This resulted in a positional error in excess of 11,000km, which adversely affected the aircraft's navigation systems and some alerting systems," Guardian quoted the ATSB.

However, the ATSB also noted that the crew had "a number of opportunities to identify and correct the error" but did not notice it until they had become airborne and started to track in the wrong direction.

"Those opportunities included a flag or message that flashed up on the captain's screen during crosscheck of the cockpit preparations, which the first officer later told ATSB investigators he had seen but not mentioned because it was 'too quick to interpret'; and three separate chimes which, because they were not accompanied by a message from the computer, were ignored.

"A fifth sign that something was wrong came in the form of an alert blaring: "TERRAIN! TERRAIN!" This was not ignored – both pilots said it had 'startled' them. But, as that alert meant they were about to hit something and they could see the way ahead was clear, and as the busy runways at Sydney airport made the full response to such an alert 'undesirable', they pressed on," said Guardian.

However, when the autopilot was engaged at 410 feet, it tracked the plane moving left, toward the flight path of another runway.

According to the ATSB, when the captain and first officer tried to fix the system, it "resulted in further degradation of the navigation system, as well as to the aircraft's flight guidance and flight control systems".

Following this, the pilot requested to return to Sydney and informed the air traffic control that only a visual approach was possible, which is to land the aircraft without the assistance of the navigation system.

As the weather conditions had worsened in Sydney, air traffic control had advised the pilot to head to Melbourne.

In Melbourne, three hours was spent on fixing the problem and the plane arrived in Kuala Lumpur at 10.20pm, six hours behind schedule.

Advising AirAsia to upgrade its flight systems in order to prevent or detect such problems in future, the ATSB also said that even experienced flight crew are not immune from data entry errors.

Read more: https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/354992#ixzz4JYkyLYvP

[KK Lee 5]

GIGO, the first thing we learned in computer class.

[flee 5]

How one simple mistake turned an AirAsia X flight into a nightmare

 

AN investigation into an AirAsia X flight that turned the wrong way after taking off from Sydney has revealed a litany of failures by the airline and crew.

 

See: http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/how-one-simple-mistake-turned-an-airasia-x-flight-into-a-nightmare/news-story/ec4805f5c5c1e3bea7593416ad3d9679

[Khalil Abd Halim 0]

this will never come out in Tony Fernandes twit for sure, ill try to avoid Airasia as much as i can

[affendi osman 0]

this will never come out in Tony Fernandes twit for sure, ill try to avoid Airasia as much as i can

Why avoiding them?

[Mulyadir Fitri 0]

this will never come out in Tony Fernandes twit for sure, ill try to avoid Airasia as much as i can

If you start avoiding airlines everytime they have incidents, you will soon run out of airlines to be on. Or rent a private jet. Or use a boat Edited September 7, 2016 by Mulyadir Fitri

[flee 5]

this will never come out in Tony Fernandes twit for sure, ill try to avoid Airasia as much as i can

Emirates crashed their Boeing 777-300 in Dubai - will you also avoid Emirates too?

MAS has yet to find its missing MH370 with almost 300 pax and crew missing. Will you avoid MAS as well?

[Amirul Mazlan 0]

Another garbage by newspaper

[Mulyadir Fitri 0]

The media is having a field day with this. Had they manage to return to SYD, this would not have been such a headline news

[Jeffery Lim 0]

The reporting seems to be weird. I thought the pilots key in the wrong location and the computer gave some weird response during airborne. To solve the issue, they wanted to return to SYD but due to weather, they were asked to divert to MEL instead. Not like they key in the location to MEL..did I miss something??

[Izanee 0]

Yeah, the way the media has portrayed this is that the pilots Keyed in data for Melbourne and flew there by accident. You have to read carefully to see what the problem was. I had to read it twice before I understood it!

[wee c k 0]

https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5771318/ao-2015-029_final.pdf

 

Official report from ATSB itself.

[flee 5]

Yes, media sensationalism at its best again!

 

9M-XXM is an old ex-Dragonair aircraft leased from Aercap. Not sure why D7 did not update its flight management system before it was refitted and returned to service in D7 configuration. Anyway, the aircraft is now with Thai Airasia X as HS-XTD.

[Vicknesh PS 0]

Is Melbourne the nearest diversion for Sydney?

[Amirul Mazlan 0]

the way media potrayed it as if the pilot thought they are flying to KL while suddenly end up in Melbourne unknowingly.

 

Western/mat saleh newspaper.......

 

Yesterday i saw one newspaper on newstand (the australian times, if im not mistaken) carried the story of capt zahari from MH 370 about his last call to a woman with big picture on the front page.

 

I didnt bother to read..

[leon t 0]

thought that the 2 pilots have to key in the same set of coordinates into the FMS?

but the fact remains that the CPT keyed in the wrong coordinates and didn't realised it till airborne and warnings from the aircraft alerts.

[wee c k 0]

Everything is explained in detail. Error was made and ignored (with reason that they never really realised what and which ECAM msg that came up) before takeoff. ECAM will not really cancel itself. They need pilot input to either acknowledge and determine it it safe to continue with the flight with a known defect / downgrading equipment or to investigate further d failure. Everything that can goes wrong went wrong that day. Can it be avoided? Yes.

thought that the 2 pilots have to key in the same set of coordinates into the FMS?

 

but the fact remains that the CPT keyed in the wrong coordinates and didn't realised it till airborne and warnings from the aircraft alerts.

 

One pilot normally PF enter the coordinates. Another one will verify. That's the standard practice.

Edited September 8, 2016 by wee c k

[Sharil Abdul Rahman 0]

The fact that the investigation was for an event from last year, and only released today says alot about it.

 

The ATSB must have been really thorough with the investigation.

[BC Tam 2]

Something caught my eye on page 9 of ATSB report

"An inoperative thrust reverser ....... is a permissible fault with only minor impact on A330 operation ....."

Wow, means all the spectacular roars and dust/water sprays that has so fascinated me all this while could have been done away with after all ?!

[Radzi 2]

Something caught my eye on page 9 of ATSB report

"An inoperative thrust reverser ....... is a permissible fault with only minor impact on A330 operation ....."

Wow, means all the spectacular roars and dust/water sprays that has so fascinated me all this while could have been done away with after all ?!

Yes it is just a bonus, not a necessity.

[leon t 0]

aircarfts can still fly with some of its equipment inoperable as there is this here is this MEL or Minimum Equipment List which allows the aircraft to fly. Even an aircraft with its APU inoperative will still be able to perform its flight.

Edited September 8, 2016 by leon t

[BC Tam 2]

Would it be safe to assume then that the minimum runway length required for landing the craft is determined without the thrust reversers being applied ?

[wee c k 0]

Would it be safe to assume then that the minimum runway length required for landing the craft is determined without the thrust reversers being applied ?

Thrust reverser on the 330 do helps the aircraft to slow down and stop. Normally idle reverse is selected on long and dry runaway, just in case the brakes or spoiler fail, so that it will be faster to activate full reverser when needed. Having said that, if autobrake medium are to be set for landing, maximum thrust reverser application doesn't give any benefit at all, because the autobrake will do a better job. But still we select it to idle anyway.

 

We do calculate before descent how much rwy do we need to stop with the current configuration. i.e autobakes, spoiler, reverser. Plus buffer for pilot skill which is 15%. Even on maximum takeoff weight, landing distance will be around 2500m.

[Cire 0]

So it was a wrong entry by the captain into the flight nav.system which later compounded by several futile recovery attempts by the cockpit crew that worsen the situation. A request to return to SYD was not possible due to poor weather at SYD, and hence the flight was diverted to MEL for safety and repair.

And this happened in 2015.

Really, a haive of nothing..

[Waiping 12]

The report was just release on 7 Sept 2016.