Air New Zealand vs. Qantas

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 14:32:56 +0200, Ralph Holz
wrote:

Hi,

Jason Rumney wrote:

Yes they have, in 1927, 1934, 1942, twice in 1943, 1944 and 1951, they
just haven't killed a *JET* load of passengers. They landed a 747 on a
golf course in Bangkok once, but noone was killed in that one. They

Was it the golf course that is right next to the airport? Our 747 passed it on
the way to the terminal.

If yes, it doesn't take much bad luck to run into that course...

Particularly when complying with inadequate manufacturer and company
operating procedures in wet miserable conditions.

Dave

=====

NSW Rural Fire Service - become a volunteer today.

http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/

In article , jasonr (Jason Rumney) @
f2s.com says...
They landed a 747 on a golf course in Bangkok once

No they didn't. They over-ran the runway when landing in difficult
conditions and the aircraft stopped with its nose on the airfield
perimeter road. The golf course was outside the airport.
http://www.casa.gov.au/fsa/2002/nov/
http://www.atsb.gov.au/aviation/acci/ojh/safety.cfm
http://www.avweb.com/news/news/184281-1.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...fic/456110.stm

They
spent far more than was sensible repairing the aircraft so they would
not get a hull-loss recorded against their name

Do you have a checkable source for this?

Hi,

Jason Rumney wrote:

just haven't killed a *JET* load of passengers. They landed a 747 on a
golf course in Bangkok once, but noone was killed in that one. They
spent far more than was sensible repairing the aircraft so they would
not get a hull-loss recorded against their name, but it might be worth

From what I have read in the accident descriptions (see URLs that Peter has
given), this seems not to be the case!

Ralph

--
For contact details, please see www.ralphholz.de.

"Alan S" wrote in message
...

Well, let me put that another way.

Pick another major which has operated continuously since
1952 and hasn't killed any passengers, in any form of
aircraft, since 1952. You can include Airlines which
remained effectively the same after mergers and name-changes
(BOAC etc) if you wish. Take your time. I'm patient.

Hawaiian, BWIA & Tunisair are the only ones I know of.
(In fact HA have never had a fatal since they started in 1929, as
far as I am aware.)

However, you have to compare apples with apples. Don't
forget that from 1952 until QF took over TN in 1992, QF were
running a relatively mere handful of flights per week and
they were all nearly long haul with a good part of their operations
being in the uncongested airspace of the Australasia/Oceania
region. QF fleet size (pre-TN) was also meagre compared to
a lot of the world's carriers, so it's hard to compare QF statistics
up tp 1992 as just plain black and white compared against other
carriers that had 4, 5, 6, 7 times the fleet size and were operating
hundreds if not thousands of flights per day more than what QF
were, & in some heavily congested air space regions of the world.
Southwest has as enviable a record as QF when you compare
and ratio IMHO, even though they've only been flying since 1971.
(WN has 400 craft fleet flying 2,800+ flights per day in congested
airspace).
Consider WN does those 2,800 takeoffs & landings (the riskiest
part of flight) with most of their 400 craft fleet in the same time
frame that QF has 1 744 doing a SYD-SIN-LHR. Until 1992, that's
the sort of ratio one should compare QF's operations/record against. Apples with
apples.
Or to use another comparison, UA's record shows roughly about
one accident every 4 years, or, one accident every four and a half
million departures.
QF at it's size & operations back then would have one fatal accident
every thirty-two years to match that amount of departures, and would
need to fly something like 128 years to equal UA's flying exposure
from their creation up till now.

Make no mistake - I am not bashing QF, in fact far from it.
Their maintenance and operating ethos is of the highest standard
and has helped their record over the years as has the top quality
and utter professionalism of it's crews.
It has a magnificent record that does grow in stature each year
due to all the added domestic movements since 1992 keep
increasing the QF average over all of it's operating years.

Incidentally, including wartime incidents is a little
questionable there. What is your source for those dates and
incidents?

I don't know about the poster you were referring those remarks
to, but here's my database of QF's fatals over the years.

1927 - Mar24 near Tambo in Queensland, a DH-9C with 3 lost
1934 - Nov15 near Longreach, Queensland where 4 were lost
1942 - Feb20 off Brisbane (Belmont??) with a DH-86 where 9 were lost after control
was lost in low cloud
1943 - Apr22 at Port Moresby in a Shorts flying boat, lost control in an emergency
landing - 13 lost
1943 - Nov26 again Port Morseby in a Lodestar, 15 lost
1944 - Oct11 at Rose Bay (SYD) another Shorts. 1 lost, 29 survived.
1951 - Jul16 at Lae, a Drover lost the centre prop and 7 lost.

Both NZ/QF have sterling reputations in many areas, as do many
of the world's carriers, fatalities or not.

Cheers/Regards.
Al.

On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 08:58:16 +1000, "Al Bennett"
wrote:
snip an excellent well-researched post on Qantas safety
record.

Thanks Al. I certainly couldn't improve on that. I'll let it
rest there.


Cheers, Alan, Australia

Big Tony wrote:
By look of the photos in the link below they used a couple of large cranes
and some bulldozers and excavators to "extend the runway"

http://www.avweb.com/news/news/184281-1.html

Thanks for the link. Notice how the underside of the nose was pitted
with the imprints of some rather large golf balls ? Proof that golfers
tried to get the plane to move back away from the gold course by
throwing golf balls at it :-)

Another article puts the repair bill at USD$50 million, which I would think
it quite a bit less than it would cost to buy a new one.

You forget about insurance. From what I heard, once the plane was fixed
and put into service, it was quickly sold to some other airline.

"nobody" wrote in message
news:1114388349.193561bd79f7bc85a3376bdc67c1c654@t eranews...
Big Tony wrote:
By look of the photos in the link below they used a couple of large
cranes
and some bulldozers and excavators to "extend the runway"

http://www.avweb.com/news/news/184281-1.html

Thanks for the link. Notice how the underside of the nose was pitted
with the imprints of some rather large golf balls ? Proof that golfers
tried to get the plane to move back away from the gold course by
throwing golf balls at it :-)

Another article puts the repair bill at USD$50 million, which I would
think
it quite a bit less than it would cost to buy a new one.

You forget about insurance. From what I heard, once the plane was fixed
and put into service, it was quickly sold to some other airline.

Maybe I'm missing something here but what has insurance got to do with the
claim that Qantas spent more repairing their aircraft than they ought to
have? The plane is worth a sum of money as salvage versus a higher value
once repaired. If the difference between the two is more than the repair
cost then it's worth repairing. Whether the repair cost is met by Qantas and
/or their insurers isn't relevant here.

I have no idea how much a newish repaired 747-400 is worth but I'd guess at
$125m, I can't imagine the salvage value would be more than a couple of
million. So it looks like it may be worth a repair. Although the $50m repair
figure seems suspiciously round.


--
Big Tony

On Sun, 24 Apr 2005 20:18:56 -0400, nobody wrote:

Another article puts the repair bill at USD$50 million, which I would think
it quite a bit less than it would cost to buy a new one.

You forget about insurance. From what I heard, once the plane was fixed
and put into service, it was quickly sold to some other airline.

You heard wrong - it is still in service with Qantas, it was parked on
the stand next to my flight a few days ago.

Dave

=====

NSW Rural Fire Service - become a volunteer today.

http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/