Qantas passengers tell of near-death experience

Jul 26, 2008, 6:16 GMT

Sydney - Passengers aboard a Qantas jumbo jet that made an emergency landing in Manila told Saturday they feared for their lives after a gash appeared in the fuselage and they plummeted towards the South China Sea 9,000 metres below.

David Saunders, speaking on his return to Melbourne, said he hugged his tearful girlfriend as debris flew about the cabin and their 17-year-old Boeing 747-438 hurtled seaward on Friday.

'I heard an enormous explosion, things went quiet, the cabin instantly lost pressure and the plane just started to dive,' he told Australia's AAP news agency. 'I just grabbed my passport out of my bag and put it in my pocket so that if my body was found they could identify it quicker.'

Locals among the 346 passengers aboard Flight QF30 from Hong Kong to Melbourne were cheered by family and friends when they finally arrived in Australia's second biggest city.

Steve Winchester, who along with others had boarded QF30 in London, said he was not alone in thinking he was about to die when, an hour out of Hong Kong, there was an 'almighty bang,' a gust of wind through the cabin and oxygen masks falling into passengers' laps.

'Everyone was just thinking to themselves 'Oh! I think this is it,'' he said. 'I heard someone scream. People were just looking at each other in sheer terror.'

Others recalled that when Captain John Bartels brought the stricken plane safely to rest on the tarmac in the Philippines capital of Manila he matter-of-factly told the passengers: 'There's a large hole in the side of the plane. I don't know how it got there.'

There was speculation that a fire extinguisher, or a high-pressure oxygen cylinder, may have holed the skin of the aircraft when it burst open.

A report from the Manila International Airport Authority said an initial investigation revealed there had been an 'explosive decompression' but did not speculate on the cause.

Passenger Michelle Mellinger paid tribute to Bartels for bringing the plane down safely.

'There was a huge bang, which seemed to come from the back of the aircraft, and a huge gust of wind came through,' she said. 'There were a few things flying around and then oxygen masks came down.'

Mellinger said the plane made a normal landing and it was only when passengers left the plane that they saw the jagged gash in its right-side fuselage.

She said luggage was being held as part of the investigation and they were not sure when they would get their bags back.

Chris Yates, an aviation expert with London-based defence consultancy Jane's Information Group, said investigators would be examining the hole 'to determine whether metal fatigue or manufacturing defect caused the panel to be ripped away from the remainder of the fuselage in flight.'

He added: 'This is not an uncommon occurrence. Every year there are reports of panels being lost from aircraft in flight and these instances are rarely, if ever, fatal.'

Richard Woodward, technical director of the International Federation of Airline Pilot Associations, told The Australian newspaper that the pilot would be well aware of what to do after hearing the explosion.

'It's standard procedure,' he said. 'The crew practise that non-stop and it's almost an automatic reaction - you stick your mask on, you establish communication, you wind the altitude down and you pull the speed brake. The plane comes down at about 10,000 feet a minute, maybe more.'

Woodward explained that the 747 had what he called 'blow-out panels' that let pressure out slowly to give the pilot time to descend to an altitude where loss of air pressure was not so much of a problem.

Qantas chief executive Geoff Dixon said engineers were on their way to examine the plane.

'The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority have been notified of the incident and Qantas is sending its own engineers to Manila,' he said in a statement.

Since its establishment in 1920, Australia's national carrier has never lost a jet to an accident.

David Newman, of Melbourne's Monash University, said the worst-case scenario would be people being sucked through the hole in the fuselage when an aircraft lost its structural integrity.

'If there's a major breach of the cabin and the hole is sufficiently large, people can be carried outside with the high-pressure air - basically, as they say, get sucked out of the aeroplane,' he said.

The Royal Adelaide Hospital's David Wilkinson said the sudden decompression when the fuselage was breached could have caused passengers to lose consciousness.

'An analogy would be shaking up a can of Coke and opening it - the sudden decompression makes everything froth and bubble,' he said. 'At 35,000 feet, the lack of oxygen can cause you to lose consciousness in 30 seconds to a minute, and so you have that period of time for the pilots to lower their altitude to reduce the loss of pressure or for them to react and supply oxygen to the people in the plane.'