Pilot pressure caused errors

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This was published 12 years ago

Pilot pressure caused errors

By Andrew Heasley

A JETSTAR Airbus A320 slipped to within 51 metres of the ground during a botched, aborted landing at Melbourne airport, as pilots fumbled with wrong flap settings and a cacophony of cockpit alarms, Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigators have found.

A sequence of mistakes on a July 28 evening flight from Newcastle to Melbourne left the pilot flying the plane - a cadet recruit with just 300 hours Airbus flying experience - overwhelmed. The captain sitting next to him was so busy trying to recover the situation that his capacity was also compromised.

The plane dropped to within 51 metres of the ground during the landing attempt.

The plane dropped to within 51 metres of the ground during the landing attempt.

On landing approach the plane was variously descending too fast, the flaps weren't extended properly and an altitude alert went unheard by both pilots.

The first officer may have experienced ''cognitive overload'', Jetstar told investigators.

The captain reported a ''high workload'' in supervising the first officer, ''reducing his cognitive capacity and situation awareness of the aircraft's configuration'', the airline said.

At 75 metres, the captain realised the plane wasn't configured properly for landing, just as the ground warning system sounded and a message on a screen flashed: ''Too Low Flap'' - the flaps were on the wrong setting.

The captain called off the landing and the first officer throttled the engines to climb as a second terrain warning sounded.

Mentally overloaded, the first officer failed to reset the flaps, leaving it to the captain.

Compounding matters, another alarm went off due to an air conditioning fault.

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The Australian and International Pilots Association had warned a Senate inquiry this year about the risk of fast-tracking inexperienced pilots to airline cockpits.

But a Jetstar spokeswoman yesterday defended its methods.

''Any pilot who sits behind the controls of a Jetstar aircraft has the skills and qualifications to be there,'' she said.

''Go-arounds [aborted landings] are not uncommon and are a part of our systems of checks and balances for safe operations.''

In a separate incident, two Jetstar pilots made separate engine power calculation mistakes prior to take-off from Darwin for Bali on June 12.

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The first power calculation was made with the incorrect aircraft weight, then with the wrong length of runway, compounded by a pilot short-cut to bookmark the wrong data table for cross checking the calculations by the second pilot.

Jetstar later told all pilots that take-off calculations have to be checked independently and the practice of bookmarking data tables ''must cease immediately''.

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