[Peetwo]

United flight UA839: A serve of reality sprinkled with spin & faery dust??  

Not going to bother to comment on yesterday's United 839 fuel Mayday occurrence at YSSY - zzziiip!...  

However for those of you that may have missed the almost endless MSM coverage, here is two of the slightly less dramatised media reports... :

Mayday as flight runs low on fuel
ROBYN IRONSIDE

A fuel mayday from United Airlines that triggered a major emergency at Sydney Airport yesterday morning was the second time the US carrier has been caught short in 12 months.

As flight UA839 came into land in Sydney from Los Angeles, the aircrew was faced with the prospect of a long holding pattern due to heavy rain.

With fuel starting to run low on the Boeing 787-9, the pilots alerted air traffic control they would need to land earlier than specified and a “fuel mayday” was issued to move them to the front of the queue.

That triggered a full emergency response, involving road closures outside the airport to provide a clear passage for fire, police and ambulance vehicles.

An Airservices Australia spokeswoman said a “level three full emergency response” was standard procedure when such an aircraft declared a mayday.

United Airlines also declared a low fuel emergency in Melbourne this year, when air traffic control informed the crew of a 30-minute holding requirement.

Civil Aviation Safety Authority spokesman Peter Gibson said the intention of the fuel mayday was to make sure everyone was clear that a particular aircraft needed to land as soon as possible. “It’s nothing more than that,” Mr Gibson said.

He said the United Airlines’ flight still had about 40-minutes worth of fuel when it landed.

United Airlines’ spokesman Madhu Unnikrishnan attributed the incident to a “mechanical issue” and said they were continuing to investigate.

United Airlines came under fire in 2014, for only carrying enough fuel to divert to Canberra Airport from Sydney, 55-minutes away. On that occasion, passengers and crew were forced to remain in the aircraft for four hours without food or sanitation, because there were no immigration facilities available.

The ATSB was yesterday still considering an investigation. P2 - That's code for - "...we need to establish whether it will be diplomatically and politically correct to investigate this incident..."

Next an informative piece, from the other Aunty, on what occurs at YSSY when a Mayday/emergency is declared by an inbound aircraft:

Sydney Airport: Inside the flow-on effects of a mid-air emergency
By Annika Blau and Kevin Nguyen
Updated about an hour ago


VIDEO: United Airlines mayday call triggers emergency response (ABC News) http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-04/un...y/10338038

It was just after 6:00am on UA839, the red-eye from Los Angeles to Sydney, and the flight hadn't gone exactly to plan. The 787-900 Dreamliner had burned through more fuel than expected in its 12,000 km journey across the Pacific.

The United Airlines plane was cutting it fine. Its fuel gauge showed it had 40 minutes of fuel remaining.

The 180 passengers were packing away their pillows and filling out their arrival cards with no idea what was going on. But it was a very different situation on the ground.

The mayday had been received and the control tower was ready. The crew believed they could land safely, telling air control they also had enough fuel to taxi to the bay.

But when air safety is involved, Sydney Airport is always prepared for the worst. Its emergency plan swung into action, reaching beyond the airport's wire fences and into Sydney's roads and emergency departments.

An emergency with a long reach

There's potential for mass disruption to the city's infrastructure if an emergency strikes in peak hour.

Port Botany and its industrial area is a stone's throw away. Hundreds of thousands of Sydneysiders live under the airport's flight paths.



PHOTO: Sydney's international airport is close to the CBD. (Reuters: Jason Reed)

Sydney Airport is closer to the CBD than many Australian airports so closing the roads is no easy task.

Southern Cross Drive — a major highway into the city — snakes its way through part of the airport and traffic chaos could engulf the city for hours.

The latest details of the airport's emergency plan are unknown. It's a restricted document, with "access granted on a need to know basis" for airlines and emergency services only, that's prepared in accordance with international and domestic regulation.

But aviation experts, some of the agencies involved and an earlier publicly available version of the plan give us some clues to what happened to prepare for the arrival of UA839.



PHOTO: Police are one of around a dozen agencies involved in the emergency response. (Reuters: David Gray)

'Danger of an accident'

A plane has to issue a mayday call if its fuel supply dips below 30 minutes, according to accident expert Geoffrey Dell from the University of Queensland.
But on Thursday morning, a "full emergency response" was declared with 40 minutes of fuel in the tank — the highest level of alert, reserved for when there is "danger of an accident".

So what happens when a plane issues a mayday call? It's quite literally a "captain's call" and the more information they can give those on the ground, the better. If the plane's been hijacked there's universal signals that the crew can give covertly.

The team on the ground determine the threat level and the more passengers, the higher it's graded.

The 1994 version of the emergency plan listed nine different scenarios to match various threats, including plane crash, bomb threat, fires, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and hazardous material risks. More than a dozen major agencies, from frontline responders to the Department of Health and Department of Community Services, have roles to play.

The first steps are establishing a base of operations or forward controls and shutting down the roads so emergency vehicles can get to the airport quickly.

In many airports, nearby highways are reserved for emergency landings and designed to be extra wide with no median strip, according to aviation academic Chrystal Zhang. There are strict height restrictions on buildings around Sydney Airport for the same reason, she says.



PHOTO: Air traffic controllers at Sydney Tower. (Supplied: Air Services Australia)

Police shut down roads

If there's no bomb threat, the main job for police is traffic control, according to Botany Bay police inspector Ben Johnson.

It might not sound heroic, but traffic control can be the difference between life and death. Every minute matters for getting emergency responders to the scene, says Dr Dell, who was commissioned to review the airport's plan in 2000.

"We've seen cases where fire trucks were able to chase a burning plane down the runway as it landed and immediately start putting out the flames.

"If they'd been a minute later, the fire would've engulfed the cabin, but instead, the worst injury was a broken ankle."

Traffic control is also about reducing risk to motorists, in case the plane needs to land on a highway.

While Sydney Airport is smack bang in the middle of city traffic, this also means help is close at hand.

"Say you had 500 casualties, then ambulances could be a limited resource and in the worst-case scenario, some ambulances could be making several trips. Having world-class hospitals nearby is definitely going to help," Dr Dell says.

"There's a lot of cities with airports 50 kilometres from the city so chances of survival would be a lot less than in Sydney, particularly if there's burns involved."

The airport's fire services are required to be at the emergency site within three minutes.

Water police will also spring into action — they were "on standby" in Botany Bay on Thursday, according to Inspector Johnson.

YOUTUBE: In 1961 an Ansett Airlines plane crashed into Botany Bay

What's happening on the plane?

Up in the air, the crew will make a call about how much to tell passengers. In UA839's case, they kept passengers in the dark, confident they had enough fuel.

Passenger panic is not helpful in an emergency situation, but Mr Dell says if a true crisis is imminent, "keeping passengers in the dark until the last minute is likely to provoke a worse reaction".

Some airlines have policies around whether or not to tell passengers, for others it will be the captain's discretion, Mr Dell says.

Once the plane lands, the priority is evacuating passengers and quarantining hazards like chemical spills or oil fires. Botany Bay is an industrial area, so police and emergency services are trained to deal with hazardous sites.

Passengers are medically assessed and treated either in a casualty processing area or in a nearby hospital. On-site counselling and support is offered to victims and relatives.

Nick Dole

@NicholasDole
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The 787 Dreamliner at the centre of the @united Airlines emergency in Sydney has just departed for San Francisco. #UA839 @abcnews @flightradar24
11:05 AM - Oct 4, 2018

Then, the recovery operation begins. If there is wreckage, it will be locked down and later removed. Next, the investigation phase begins, which could involve NSW police, coroners, civil aviation authorities, airport operators and even insurance companies.

On Thursday, UA839 landed without difficulty and passengers disembarked as normal, exhausted after a long flight but safe from harm. Shortly after refuelling, the plane took off for San Francisco.

What's the risk of a crash?

Inspector Johnson says full emergency responses are a "rare occurrence", but there have been three this year. But emergencies that turn into accidents are unusual.

Most plane crashes involve light aircraft rather than the large passenger planes that dominate international airports.

In June, a light plane crashed in a suburban Victorian street and burst into flames. Last year, another crashed into the roof of the DFO shopping mall in Essendon Fields ( http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-24/es...d/10295982 ) as horrified commuters watched from the highway.

[url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-08/plane-crashes-at-mordialloc/9851722]

PHOTO: A plane bursts into flames as it crashes into a street at Mordialloc, near Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne, on June 8, 2018. (Supplied)

The last fatal crash at Sydney Airport was in 1980, when Advance Airlines Flight 4210 suffered an engine failure shortly after taking off. The pilot flew back to the airport but crashed into the sea wall surrounding the runway while trying to land. All 13 people on board died.

Some 14 years later, a chartered flight bound for Norfolk Island would also suffer an engine malfunction after take-off. This time, the plane was "ditched" in Botany Bay. Its 21 passengers — students and teachers from Scots College plus a few journalists — watched in shocked silence as water poured in through the vents, convinced they were headed for the bottom of the harbour. But all of them, plus four crew, were rescued.

PHOTO: In February 1980 a plane crashed at Sydney Airport killing 13 people.

An ongoing challenge

Both Mr Dell and Ms Zhang say Thursday's emergency response shows how prepared and well-coordinated the emergency services are for air disasters.

Ms Zhang points out that there are international regulations that oblige airports to have flawless emergency response plans. But as Mr Dell points out, in some countries, there's a gap between theory and practice.

No matter how thorough the plan is, coordination between this many agencies is not easy.

"It's an ongoing challenge to keep everyone in the agencies skilled up to the level they need to be when emergency personnel are moving around a lot," says Mr Dell.

"You might have a police inspector who'd normally respond to the airfield posted elsewhere, so it's a constant challenge to make sure everyone understands what they're doing."

"It's a huge organisational activity with people under stress, but that's what the emergency services are used to — that's their bread and butter."

Sydney Airport said their emergency response plan is regularly updated and tested yearly, with the most recent simulation in August this year.