Qantas forced to abort flight

By ROBERT WAINWRIGHT Tuesday 13 June 2000

A failed heater that caused the captain's window to crack has been blamed for forcing a Qantas crew to abort a flight from London to Bangkok carrying 352 passengers and crew.

Qantas confirmed last night that Flight QF2, on its way to Sydney, aborted after it left Heathrow Airport about 1.30pm London time on Sunday.

A spokeswoman said the outer pane of the captain's window cracked because of internal and external temperature differences as the aircraft was climbing. The plane returned safely to Heathrow just after 3pm and passengers were transferred to another plane that left London just before 7pm.

No one was injured, but company sources reported that some crew members were "a bit shaken".

"It happened about 10 minutes into the flight, just before the plane levelled off, when there was a loud noise which surprised the crew and could have been heard by passengers in the first class section," one source said. "But I doubt whether any of the other passengers knew what was going on because the cabin is sealed off."

Another source said: "The heater that keeps the window at the right temperature seems to have failed, which meant the difference in temperature with the outside caused a small crack to appear. The higher the plane went the bigger the crack became, so the crew decided to turn back. They had to dump 72 tonnes of fuel before the plane could land."

A Qantas spokesman said the plane was not the same 747-400 that crash-landed at Bangkok last September, or the plane whose undercarriage collapsed at Rome earlier this year.

A company spokeswoman said: "There was a three-and-a-half-hour delay, but there was no safety problem because the outer window pane has nothing to do with the plane's structure. If the plane was further into the flight, the captain would probably have kept going to Bangkok."

The replacement flight is due in Sydney at 6.20am today.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000613/A63088-2000Jun12.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), June 12, 2000