Aussies Land Crippled Plane
Posted on 14 April 2010 by LynThomas in Travel
Two Australian pilots landed a Cathay Pacific Airbus A330 safely at Hong Kong airport, after both engines malfunctioned are being hailed as the newest heroes of the sky.
In a statement Cathay Pacific said that the plane’s left engine had shut down as the aircraft made its landing approach to Hong Kong’s international airport, with 309 passengers onboard from Surabaya in Indonesia.
The right engine also inexplicably cut out, leaving the pilots to cope with dips and surges in power, to stop the plane plunging into the ocean.
The emergency landing caused all four tyres on the left hand side of the plane to deflate, plus two on the right hand side, the airline reported. Passengers were evacuated on emergency inflatable slides.
“It was an amazing piece of piloting in extremely testing circumstances,” a colleague of the two Australian pilots told the South China Morning Post. “They effectively landed the plane on half an engine.What they did was nothing short of heroic.”
A small fire at the undercarriage of the aircraft near one of the wheels was sparked during the emergency landing.
Eight people were injured and taken to the hospital, although it is unclear whether they suffered their injuries during landing or evacuation.
Li Leung-ming, commander of the Fire Service Department’s air division, described the evacuation of passengers as “smooth.”
However, a 20-year-old passenger from Surabaya said the landing was calm, but chaos broke loose “when the captain told us there was an emergency and all passengers had to leave the plane immediately.”
Hong Kong’s Civil Aviation department is investigating the incident.
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[...] With one engine completely cut out and one intermittent, two Aussie pilots safely landed a Cathy Pacific Airbus A330. Only 8 people were injured. Read more… [...]