While Qantas has recently been in the news for all the wrong reasons, it seems the Flying Kangaroo is now held responsible for the violent storms in Sydney on Saturday night that forced one of its aircraft to divert to Newcastle.
With the Boeing 787 unable to land in Sydney, the airline took the appropriate action and yet still copped a bucket full of criticism for keeping passengers and crew safe.
To start at the start, Qantas flight QF28 departed Chile from Santiago International Airport (SCL) at 14:22 on Friday. The flight was operated by a three-year-old Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, registered VH-ZNJ with MSN 66074, and painted in the Qantas 100-year commemorative livery.
According to Flightradar24.com, it was due to touch down at Sydney International Airport (SYD) at 17:50 on Saturday, after a flight covering 11,363 kilometers (7,060 miles), which usually takes around fourteen hours.
Stormy Sydney prevents 787 landing
However, severe storms in the Sydney area forced several aircraft to be diverted, including this one from Santiago, the only international flight affected. The Dreamliner was diverted north to Newcastle, where it landed at Newcastle Airport (NTL), a regional center around 100 miles from Sydney.
While that kept the passengers, crew and aircraft safe, a report from news.com.au said that Newcastle Airport lacked the necessary facilities to accommodate and refuel the widebody, so it was, in effect, stranded for the night. The aircraft is configured to carry 236 passengers who, along with the crew, faced an uncomfortable night on top of enduring extreme turbulence during the flight.
There were no immigration services or accommodation immediately available, so passengers had to stay onboard for around seven hours while the aircraft sat on the tarmac. The news.com.au report said they were eventually allowed to leave the aircraft and spend the night in the terminal.
It’s tough being an airline
As expected nowadays, social media lit up with criticism of Qantas, although it is difficult to see what else the airline could have done in the circumstances.
In response, the airline released the following statement, thanking customers for their patience throughout the long, uncomfortable night.
“This included our flight from Santiago to Sydney which diverted to Newcastle. Qantas customer support team members travelled from Sydney to Newcastle to assist customers in the terminal through the night. We understand that this would have been a frustrating experience for our customers and an uncomfortable night and we thank them for their patience and understanding of the impact the storms had on flights into Sydney.”
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According to the Sydney Morning Herald, passenger John Myers described the flight as incredibly bumpy and that a crew member had said the turbulence was “extreme.” He said:
“A lot of us have been on flights that were bumpy, but that was on another level. Some people were holding hands, and a few people were gripping on tight, there were a few gasps, but no screams.”
Inflight catering to a new level
For the uninitiated, Australia’s Newcastle is no New York, so finding food and refreshments for more than 200 people in the middle of the night is not an easy fix. The report said that in the early hours of the morning, the flight crew appeared with hamburgers and drinks for passengers sourced from the local McDonalds. Meyers put that into perspective by saying:
“It was lukewarm, and I’m not usually a Maccas fan, but I was hungry and desperate times call for desperate measures. By and large, people kept their cool, and it was good to see that the people at the pointy end weren’t treated any differently to people in cattle class.”
The 787-9 returned to Sydney on Sunday, with the Flightradar24.com data showing it landed at 10:22. While Qantas has had an unusually high number of turnbacks this month, diverting an aircraft that can’t land safely is nowhere near a failure by any airline.
Of course, in situations like these, there are always things that could have been done differently, but overall it is hard to see how Qantas can be criticized for this one.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
Source: news.com.au
