[Peetwo]

Etihad B777 occurrence Abu Dhabi 27 September 2016.

Via the Oz:

Inside an emergency landing
12:00amMITCHELL BINGEMANN, Paul Cleary

Dust flying through the cabin, stewardesses crying: passengers of a mid-air emergency recount their stories | VIDEO

A piece of tyre tread, ripped from the front wheel of an Etihad Airways-operated Boeing 777 and sucked into the plane’s left engine, was the cause of an emergency landing in Abu Dhabi last week.

The three-year-old Boeing 777 carrying 329 passengers — including 215 Australians — was on its way to Sydney on September 27 when a large bang heard throughout the plane signalled the catastrophic shutdown of the engine shortly after takeoff.

“During the takeoff roll as the aircraft rotated from the runway, the pilots heard a fairly loud banging noise and felt vibrations,” Etihad Airways chief operations officer Richard Hill told The Australian.

“One of the nose wheels had lost its outer tread. That hit the underside of the aircraft fuselage, causing some skin damage and it appears that part of the tread was ingested by the left engine which caused damage to the fan blade and some of the inner core of the engine as well.”

Mr Hill said incidents of tread separating from nose wheel tyres was rare and Etihad investigators did not yet know why it occurred.

“To my knowledge it’s the first time ever that we have had a nose wheel separation on takeoff,” he said.

“I couldn’t tell you what caused it but that’s what the investigators are looking at including the tyre manufacturers, the regulator and of course Boeing and (engine maker) GE because they may have some responsibility too.”

An official investigation being undertaken by the UAE General Civil Aviation Authority is trying to determine how and why the incident happened.

The plane, close to its maximum weight with a full tank of jet fuel for its 14-hour flight, circled the Emirati capital for about 30 minutes before making its emergency landing.
“This is a scenario that the pilots and crew train for every six months in the simulator,” Mr Hill said.

“The pilots followed the procedure, they shut down the engine and climbed in altitude. They then evaluated the information they had and then on a single engine made an immediate return and landing.”

As the plane was above the normal maximum landing weight it took longer to decelerate when it touched down. The added weight resulted in the tyres deflating.

“There is a huge build-up of heat in the brake assembly which is then transferred into the tyres. But aircraft tyres are designed ... with plugs in the tyres that melt and deflate to avoid them from exploding,” Mr Hill said.

Passengers on board the flight have described their fear as the incident unfolded, with one passenger saying the impact of the shutdown was so great that “dust flew out from every hole above us”.

Sydney student Emily Waterson, who was returning from a gap year in the US, said one flight attendant screamed and cried uncontrollably.

“The stewardess in front of me was the most distressed. She was freaking out and kept asking if I could see fire in the engine,” Ms Waterson said.


A passenger holds on during the emergency landing.

Another passenger claimed the flight attendants made the situation worse.

“Two of them were crying. All of them did absolutely nothing to help,” he said.

But passenger Sheila Lynch from Canberra said staff in the business class cabin acted calmly and professionally.

“The people in our cabin, and that of those immediately surrounding it remained quiet, decidedly strained, but quiet,” she said.

Ms Lynch said the call to “brace” rolled from one cabin to the next, creating a “continuous wave” of the loud exclamation.

“Personally I found this helped focus me into doing just that, though others later stated they found this frightening,” she said.

The Australian has obtained dramatic video taken inside the cabin which shows passengers bracing for a crash landing. The footage was obtained by a passenger who put the camera in his top after being told not to take pictures. After landing, airport security staff added to the stress by forcing passengers to delete photos of the incident.

“A soldier spotted me taking a photo and was yelling at me. He came over and made me delete the photos,” Ms Waterson said.

“One of the cops told me not to take pictures, so I just switched to video and put in my pocket with the lens out,” another passenger said. Mr Hill said Etihad had not gathered any evidence that suggested the crew acted unprofessionally during the emergency.

“From the debriefs we have done there is no evidence that the crew did anything other than act in a calm and professional manner in the way they have been trained,” he said.

“That was corroborated for me by two independent passengers on the flight who told me the crew acted calm and professionally.”

MTF...P2