Air Asia plane makes emergency landing at Palembang airport

[Sri Ramani K. 0]

PALEMBANG, 05 March 2008 - A plane that is owned by Air Asia, with flight number QZ 7661, has made an emergency landing at the airport of Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II in Palembang, on Sumatra island. The emergency landing was made around 17:30 local time on Tuesday. The Boeing 737-300 with 99 passengers and crew on board was traveling from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) when they had to make an emergency landing because of a broken window.

 

According to Rudi Rums, engineering staff at Air Asia, one window broke when the plane was flying at 35,000 feet. The pilot, Farid Iskandar, decided directly to put the plane on the ground in an emergency landing. At this moment engineers from Air Asia together with people from the airport are still working on the broken front window of the plane.

 

http://news.indahnesia.com/item/200803050/...ang_airport.php

[E Faizal 0]

The plane is too old??? Or to much being use... non-stop

[Loh Wilson 0]

does it mean the plane suffer from decompression? Not a good news anyway

[Nabiel Haniff 1]

the old aircraft...

the old window...

huh..

AirAsia,RECHECK your aircrafts..

Maintain Your Status As A biggest LCC...

[Azuan Zahdi 2]

I flew the same route on the same airline QZ last sunday. Its an old plane but not that old.

[Jerry Ang 0]

There should be an explosive decomp.

 

Scary tho...but glad it landed safely...

[Rozhan 0]

'Broke front window' in the article would mean one of the cockpit's windows. But did it really break apart or cracks appeared?

 

I understand such windows have a definite lifespan and should be replaced at designated periods. However there has been a case where the window broke prematurely at 15,787 hours on a CX A330 (well within its ultimate life of 17,000 hours). Airbus reduced it to 15,000 before a newly design window was introduced. (Kai Talk, Flight Safety Journal of Cathay Pacific; issue 3, 2005)

Edited March 6, 2008 by Rozhan

[Khaled 2]

If crack window can still continue. Must be some other serious problem here.

[Min 6]

Airasia.... hmmmmm Its a wake up call now... WAKE UP!

[Sandeep G 1]

Cracked window can still continue - yes, but prudent to land ASAP. I recall a MAS 777 not too long ago en route to Perth having to return to KL due to the same problem. I also recall an SQ A345 flying SIN-EWR having a cracked windshield and diverting to LHR where VS engineers replaced the damaged component.

 

So let's ease off on the bashing - the tech crew are trained and entrusted to make such decisions - the aircraft landed safely, all 99 pax safe. There is probably no spare components on the ground in Palembang and perhaps the repair is taking a little longer than they would like as such. We can all speculate.

 

Why must we feel the need to immediately always jump to conclusions and blame the standard of maintenance - which, may I remind you is ALL done by ST Aerotechnologies in Singapore. <_>

 

 

[LeeCH 0]

Sandeep is absolutely right. Sandeep, in case you get the same situation when you come onto 777 in future, there is a checklist for it. Its in the unanounciated checklist section. Non-recall item.

 

OT. Didn't get rostered for PER. As Gibby may notice also, PER rarely appears on my roster even with the company flying in three times a day. I am more of a Europe plus India guy for the past year or so. Occasionally ADL or BNE once in a blue moon.

[Peter Smith 1]

Ya, man that SQ A345 was just months old when it happened. Window's can fail at anytime...you have to remember they go from extreme cool to extreme heat in the space a few mins at times. Most often its the heating element the causes the window to fail. It is no big deal, and 90% you would divert to have the element replaced, which is a routine procedure.

 

The failing and inspection of such things is the reason Boeing has brought out an eye brow replacement retrofit. By removing the eyebrow windows it save 300 man hours of inspection and extremely costly replacement when they do fail.

 

And yer, Bro Leech is never down in Perth...nor is he ever in Singapore when i'm there!!! He's very elusive...the phantom Triple FO hahaha

[Louis L. 2]

luckily no one was injured , i dowan to c any replay of aloha air ...... luckily the captain reacted quickly

[Irni Mastura 0]

Cracked window can still continue - yes, but prudent to land ASAP. I recall a MAS 777 not too long ago en route to Perth having to return to KL due to the same problem. I also recall an SQ A345 flying SIN-EWR having a cracked windshield and diverting to LHR where VS engineers replaced the damaged component.

 

Ya, man that SQ A345 was just months old when it happened. Window's can fail at anytime...you have to remember they go from extreme cool to extreme heat in the space a few mins at times. Most often its the heating element the causes the window to fail. It is no big deal, and 90% you would divert to have the element replaced, which is a routine procedure.

 

The failing and inspection of such things is the reason Boeing has brought out an eye brow replacement retrofit. By removing the eyebrow windows it save 300 man hours of inspection and extremely costly replacement when they do fail.

 

 

Hmm... interesting to know about this, thanks for sharing some insights guys. Now I'm curious, for cars there usually a concentrated point (usually at upper / lower corners of the car windscreens) that if slight but jabbing pressure is applied, like a small pebble bounced on it, it can resulted in thousands pieces of cracks all over the screen. My friend told me these common cases where with no reasons cars' windscreens cracked because of simple physics, so I wonder if it applies to airplanes' windscreens as well?

 

Edit: Not to say that the screens are made without taking into account this possibility, I've always thought that aircrafts windscreen is bulletproof! So this news about broken / cracked windows boggles me a bit. I wonder if that one tiny spot of 'achilles heels' applies on all types of windscreens.

Edited March 6, 2008 by Irni Mastura

[Azmir I. 1]

Airasia.... hmmmmm Its a wake up call now... WAKE UP!

Excuse me sir,if any of the aircrafts component were to fail inflight,and its subject to an ongoing investigation,lets leave it to the experts and stop from making wild accusations.Probably you have something against AXM Group,but lets be professional about it.Not all company is perfect,they have the ups and downs but so do MAS.Like what Capt Nik "Handsome" says,if youve got any children who is Form 3,better get started for him to be a pilot soon.Theyll be plenty of pilot jobs waiting for him when he turns 18.As for me,life in AXM/XAX is great,after serving 13 years in RMAF,atleast the pay is way better than when I was serving then,alas we do not bite the hand that feeds us.

[Ignatius 4]

I don't think the statement "broken window" should be used in the incident here, should be "cracks on cockpit windows".. or something like that.. Broken means berkecai (Shattered), so having that happen at cruise level spells death to both pilots up there.. now that is disaster... I thought cracks on cockpit windows happened before, even on MH flights right?? No big deal, just the media likes to makes things look so serious when actually it's just precautionary matters

[Radzi 2]

I've had cracked cockpit windows twice; I think I've posted the picture somewhere within this forum. No big deal.

[Gavin Andrew David 6]

Just another reason to splurge something new all over the web .. as usual , and people who do not know head or tail will start assuming and coming to conclusions .

 

I doubt there was any rapid decomp because if there was , it would be a really really big deal and i'm sure we would've heard all about it .

 

 

[BC Tam 2]

I doubt there was any rapid decomp because if there was , it would be a really really big deal and i'm sure we would've heard all about it .

If it's within a certain Datuk's sphere of influence, I would not be so certain of hearing/reading about it, not via the local media anyway. But then, this is where the marvel of the world's wild wilderness shine through !

[Sandeep G 1]

If it's within a certain Datuk's sphere of influence, I would not be so certain of hearing/reading about it, not via the local media anyway. But then, this is where the marvel of the world's wild wilderness shine through !

 

er... come on BC...

 

You can toast your marshmallows all you like, but no need to burn them into charcoal...

 

Let's not go overboard.....

 

I second Gavin.

 

Azmir, great to hear you're enjoying your time with the company! Sh*t happens, just wish more people could flush it rather than smear it all over the web thereby unneccessarily making mountains out of molehills.

[Nik H. 3]

Had one too, on the 732 flying from KCH to BKI somewhere over BTU. No big deal. There's a checklist for it, and one bit I remembered was to descend at slow speed below 10,000ft to reduce impact in the unlikely event of a birdstrike. It also depends if the crack was on the inner or outer pane.

 

Some comments here crack me up so thanks for making my day.....

 

Anyone remembered the BAC 1-11 incident in the UK years ago? Seeing the picture of the upper half of the pilot's body hanging out the cockpit window while being held in place by the steward was quite a sight.....

[Loh Wilson 0]

Anyone remembered the BAC 1-11 incident in the UK years ago? Seeing the picture of the upper half of the pilot's body hanging out the cockpit window while being held in place by the steward was quite a sight.....

 

Amazingly the captain survived

 

 

[BC Tam 2]

er... come on BC...

 

You can toast your marshmallows all you like, but no need to burn them into charcoal...

 

Let's not go overboard.....

Just echoing sentiments that were previously expressed elsewhere on this forum. Anything out of the ordinary you see ?

btw, which marshmallow did you make out I was toasting there ?

[Sri Ramani K. 0]

aiyah...cracked window only..SIGH

[Teoh Z Yao 0]

Irni did mention about explanation in simple physics terms...

 

I recall a phenomenon where my dad's coffee cup shattered out of a sudden - blame was on resonance...