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 December 1, 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
<\/p>\n
The report found that the first mistake set off a chain reaction by giving other Qantas teams wrong information. (ABC News: Mark Moore)<\/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
‘Error cascaded’<\/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
Wrong weight ‘increased the risk’<\/p>\n
The mistake also meant the loadsheet had an aircraft weight 4,291kg 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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A simple typing mistake by a Qantas employee set off a series of errors including wrong passenger numbers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[182050,12367,182055,182052,182053,43,182056,44,182051,3861,182054,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-323600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-air-incident","tag-australian-transport-safety-bureau","tag-boeing-717","tag-boeing-737-838","tag-canberra-airport","tag-headlines","tag-loadsheet","tag-news","tag-passenger-loading-event","tag-qantas","tag-stuart-godley","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}