Qantas Captain Richard de Crespigny has revealed how he piloted a stricken Airbus A380 into a successful emergency landing in Singapore.
Speaking as a guest lecturer at Melbourne’s Monash University last week and making his first public appearance since expertly landing flight QF32 in Singapore after an uncontained engine explosion in late 2010, Captain de Crespigny gave a minute-by-minute account of what was happening to the aircraft and how, and why, he reacted in the way he did.
Addressing more than 150 aviation industry guests, Captain de Crespigny described how he manually flew the aircraft through an overweight and high-speed landing without the use of full brakes, spoilers, slats or fuel transfer systems. And he hit back at criticism of the QF32 crew’s safety decisions, including their choice not to land immediately after the incident and not to evacuate passengers and crew via escape slides on landing.
“We were criticised on the internet for staying up so long, with some people saying we should have just driven it into the ground and landed in Singapore immediately,” he said. “It was threat and error management.
“If we’d landed straight away we may have got the approach speed too low and stalled, or approached too fast and ended up off the runway. The margin for error was so slight – just a few knots slower and we could have stalled. It took 55 minutes to stabilise the aircraft. We had fuel, and fuel gave us time.
“Our decision was based on the facts of ‘where are the passengers safest right now’.”
Captain de Crespigny said that, without satellite communications available, the crew had to use a mobile phone to communicate with Qantas for the first time once the plane landed.
“We actually searched for the number on an iPad and turned on the mobile phone and called Qantas,” he said.
The event was hosted by the Australian Association of Aviation and Aerospace Industries (AAAAI) and Monash University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in recognition of the efforts of the QF32 crew.
A preliminary ATSB report has recognised the professionalism of Captain de Crespigny and his crew.
Courtesy of the Royal Aeronautical Society, you can get the full story of the handling of the emergency with senior check captain David Evans, who was on the flight deck that day, by clicking here.
Captain Richard de Crespigny speaks at Monash University.
