Assessment 3: Factual Short Story

Flight QF32

Breaking News: A QANTAS Aircraft may have crashed in Indonesia.

“Police and Witnesses say they have heard an explosion as a commercial jetliner was flying over west Indonesia. … A Police Colonel says the plane was a QANTAS Air Bus that was flying from Singapore to Australia.”

- SkyNews, 4^th November 2011

At 1.01pm on the 4^th November 2011, the screen in front of an engineer on duty at the Qantas 24-hour Operation Centre in Sydney erupted with messages. A tsunami of red warnings from flight QF32, departing from Singapore and destined for Sydney, bombarded the engineer. The quantity of messages received appeared inconceivable – surely a system malfunction. Coolly, he headed up to the A380 maintenance watch deck in pursuit of aid to help repair his faulty system. Instead, he was met by a screen of “more than 130 gruesome red (warning) and yellow (caution) messages,” like the ones he had moments before witnessed himself, on the watch deck’s screen. What the engineer had first thought unbelievable was indeed very real – the QF32 flight, and the 459 passengers it carried, were in great danger.

10.01 am (Singapore time)

Remnants of the exploded engine

Flight QF32 departed from Singapore with little indication of the dramas that were to beset it. Captain Richard De Crespigny, First Officer Matt Hicks, Second Officer Mark Johnson, Check Captain Harry Wubben and Supervising Check Captain David Evans were all present in the cockpit. The A380 climbed smoothly higher and higher into the vast expanse of blue sky. Reaching 74 000 ft, two muffled sounds resonated through the cockpit – like the “backfire of a car” according to David Evans. These sounds were followed shortly by the flashing of red warning signs in the cockpit, as the ECAM (Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor) spat out countless checklists for the pilots to complete. Unbeknownst to the pilots at this time, the damage they had received was catastrophic.

Unbelievably, the turbine shaft, crucial to the operation of the aircraft, has failed. As a consequence, 185kg of metal was thrown into the engine causing it to explode. More than 120 pieces of debris from the explosion collided with the aircraft wing, fuselage and tail of the plane. The turbine disc broke into three pieces, with one of the pieces ending up in Batam, Indonesia. Instantly, tweets and Facebook posts appeared about an Airbus that had crashed. At this stage, those on board the aircraft were unaware of the activity on the Internet that surrounded this troubled flight.

11.46 am (Singapore time)

One hour and forty-five minutes after the Engine exploded, QF32 safely touched down on the runway at Changi Airport, returning the 469 people it carried to safety. In landing the plane, the pilots combatted unfathomable problems, averting what Neil Armstrong described as  “one of the most catastrophic in-flight disasters in aviation history.”

Passengers of flight QF32 being evacuated

 2.32 pm, Friday the 31^st of August, 2011 (Brisbane time)

Sitting in his jeans and sloppy-joe at home, Captain David Evans, the Supervising Check Captain on this fateful flight, shakes off the enormity of what he has faced and the remarkable way he and his fellow pilots reacted.

David grew up in Brisbane and was the eldest in a family of four children. His father was an engineer and his mother, a music teacher. As a young woman, however, she had faced her own dramas, working as a spy; an ASIO Agents. She had been instrumental in the findings established in the Petrov Affair. After graduating from Brisbane Boys Grammar School, David began a Bachelor of Engineering. It was not until one day that David went flying with two friends, however, that the “bug bite.” David describes this experience as an epiphany – “suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and that was to go flying.” David attended the Royal Queensland Aero Club located out at Archerfield, logging his first hour of flying in January, 1979. Twenty-nine years later, in 2008, Captain David Evans flew QANTAS’s first A380, a magnificent new aircraft that had received considerable publicity because of its size and comfort.

Captain David Evans (front) 

November the 4^th, 2011, started like any other day for Captain David Evans. As the Supervising Check Captain his job was to observe the pilot, Richard De Crespigny, and train Captain Harry Wudden in the role of Check Captain. David’s role, however, drastically changed as the flight progressed. He delivered a PA, to calm the passengers who, thanks to a channel on their allocated screens were able to see the considerable gash in the wing, and the gallons of fuel which gushed from this hole. Captain Richard De Crespigny in his book QF32, described David’s PA as “brilliant, textbook, [and] perfect.” When told of such a compliment David replied humbly, “It’s just important to be honest”: “one of the big comments that I hear from passengers is that they hate not knowing what’s going on … So I think one of the big keys about giving a successful PA is to just fess up about exactly what is happening.”        

Talking about his experience David appeared dignified and professional. When asked whether the responsibility of all the passengers on board worried him, David responded rationally that he refused to let this cloud his judgement: “Look … you’re certainly aware that there’s people behind you, but our little world is the cockpit, and we know the rest of the aeroplane is going to follow along. So you sort of detach yourself … when you’re really concentrating.” Did thoughts of David’s family at home disturb his equilibrium? Refreshingly, David honestly replied that he “didn’t have time to really [allow this to worry him],” but as the danger abated and he was relieved of some pressure he was able to contemplate his loved ones – wife Kate and three sons, William, Nicki and Tom.

David had been unaware of the effect of the flight on him until returning to Brisbane. On his arrival, David was met by a member of the ground staff who shook his hand and said in gratitude to David’s professionalism, ‘My family were on your flight. Thank you very much.” For David this was a trigger – “all of a sudden what I had bottled up inside unleashed.” Even speaking of that incident now, 10 months later, David’s eyes well up.

David’s love of flying, and the challenges it presents, has been surprisingly untainted by an event which would surely dishearten the most courageous and experienced of pilots. With the endless advancements occurring in regards to the technology used to build and fly aircrafts, some may argue that the presence of pilots in the cockpit has become unnecessary. Flight QF32, serves as a sobering example of why such a claim is certainly not true.

Captain David Evans (right) and Captain Matt Hicks (left)