Emirates Airlines Plane Nearly Crashes in Melbourne

This would have been a scary flight to have been on:

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A FULLY-LADEN jet came only centimetres from crashing at Melbourne Airport last month, it has been revealed.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has placed it in the most serious category of aircraft mishap available to it – an accident, rather than an incident.

An ATSB investigation update shows the accident was labelled a “significant event” by investigators, who also listed damage to the aircraft as “substantial”.

“During the take-off the aircraft’s tail scraped the runway surface. Subsequently smoke was observed in the cabin,” the report says.

A Sunday Herald Sun investigation has confirmed that the flight – EK407 to Dubai – almost failed to become airborne and barely made it over the airport perimeter fence, half a kilometre away.

Damage to the $220 million plane is so severe that the airline is considering writing it off rather than repairing it.

The fully-laden Airbus A340-500 was believed to have been travelling about 280km/h when it reached the end of the runway without becoming airborne.  [Herald-Sun]

The scariest flight I was ever on was a flight between Japan and Seattle about six year ago.  The plane was getting hit with some heavy turbulence when it suddenly sharply lost altitude which caused passenger to start screaming on the airplane.  I wasn’t screaming, but I was damned scared. 

The pilot was able to level out the plane and for awhile the plane was still getting battered by the storm that was causing the turbulence.  Apparently wind sheer was responsible for pushing the plane down so sharply like that.  There was people puking on the plane and the smell was just horrible.  I was never so happy to get off an airplane then after that flight.  Out of all the flying I have done that was really the only time I was scared my plane was going to crash.