Entry Posted December 5, 2010

http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/2888854/ao-2010-089%20preliminary%20report.pdf Very readable preliminary account of the Qantas A380 incident. Minutes after the explosion, the flight crew had to process and evaluate at least 17 separate warning messages (!), which took nearly an hour. (The second officer took several largely fruitless trips into the cabin to visually inspect the damage during this time.) Eventually they decided to land overweight with the left wing leaking fuel, and only one engine available for reverse thrust. (Only two engines on the A380 can reverse thrust.) After they landed, one engine would not shut down despite manual intervention by ground crew. During this time passengers were disembarked via stairs on the right side of the aircraft. Eventually the engine was drowned with fire-fighting foam but because it took so long to render the aircraft completely safe (over two hours after touchdown), and because the cockpit voice recorder only stores two hours of audio, all the audio from the initial incident was lost. 11:49