A simple typing mistake by a Qantas employee set off a series of errors including wrong passenger numbers and weight for a flight from Canberra to Sydney.<\/p>\n
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) handed down a safety report into the event which took place on 1 December, 2024, when a Qantas flight from Perth to Sydney diverted to Canberra due to bad weather.<\/p>\n
A Canberra-based employee accidentally entered the wrong code into the flight plan to Sydney, known as an “addstop”, typing in the number for the Boeing 717 instead of the Boeing 737.<\/p>\n
This mistake prompted the airline’s system to offload 11 business class passengers from the flight and place 40 to 57 economy passengers on stand-by.<\/p>\n
The Boeing 717 has a seating capacity of 125 passengers, while the Boeing 737 fits 164 economy and 12 business seats.<\/p>\n
While the staff member told their manager and had the mistake corrected, the system did not automatically add the offloaded passengers back onto the flight and nobody noticed.<\/p>\n
“[The staff member] also recalled experiencing a high workload at the time due to an unusually large number of diversions and they felt pressure to complete the addstop ‘as quickly as possible’,” the report said.<\/p>\n
The report found the incorrect passenger numbers in the system set off a chain reaction, giving other teams the wrong information.<\/p>\n
“This error cascaded and erroneous passenger information was used by Qantas airport personnel to close the flight, and Qantas load control personnel to create the loadsheet,” the report said.<\/p>\n
When Qantas airport staff became aware of offloaded passengers thanks to another team member, they tried but failed to onboard them in the system.<\/p>\n
They then assumed load control knew about the error and would fix it.<\/p>\n
The mistake also meant the loadsheet had an aircraft weight 4291kg less than the actual weight of the aircraft.<\/p>\n
This resulted in calculations for take-off speeds that were just 3 to 4 knots lower than they should have been.<\/p>\n
ATSB’s director of transport safety Dr Stuart Godley said having the incorrect weight on the loadsheet “increased the risk of degraded performance” during take-off.<\/p>\n
“Fortunately, the flight crew elected to use the full length of the runway for the take-off, and did not apply the headwind component, which added an increased safety margin for take-off performance,” he said.<\/p>\n
Some employees tried to resolve the issue and communicate the weight error to the flight crew.<\/p>\n
Despite their efforts, the flight crew only became aware of the loadsheet mistake shortly after take-off.<\/p>\n
Once they knew about the error, the flight crew put the aircraft in a hold while the correct weight was confirmed.<\/p>\n
The captain said they did not experience any control issues during take-off as a result of the mishap, and the aircraft landed safely at Sydney Airport.<\/p>\n
“This incident highlights that it is not sufficient to rely on downstream controls or other functions to intervene or trap errors,” Dr Godley said.<\/p>\n
Qantas has since improved safety measures by mandating airport staff do a headcount when passenger numbers do not match.<\/p>\n
The airline has also improved communication channels between control staff and flight crews when a loadsheet error is found.<\/p>\n
Source: ABC & RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A simple typing mistake by a Qantas employee set off a series of errors including wrong passenger numbers and weight for a flight from Canberra to Sydney. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) handed down a safety report into the event which took place on 1 December, 2024, when a Qantas flight from Perth to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15911,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15912,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910\/revisions\/15912"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}