Another day, another Qantas aircraft forced to make an emergency landing. This seems to be the leit motiv of this really unfortunate period for the Australian company.
A Qantas B767 with 200 people on board was forced to return to Sydney airport shortly after take off due to a hydraulic leak. The aircraft had taken off as Qantas flight QF19 for Manila at 01:20 LT landed back at Sydney airport about 3:00 PM LT after the ATC controller gave the plane priority clearance to land.
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Qantas engineers determined that fluid leaked from the spoiler actuator. Inspections performed before departure didn’t detect any leakage. Even if there wasn’t any safety issue, some passengers, probably shocked by the experience (and by the previous events involving Qantas aircraft lately) recalled that the aircraft was flying at low altitude after take off. The aircraft was fully loaded of fuel and circled for some 40 minutes, dumping fuel to lose weight, before landing safely in Kingsford Smith International.
Another Qantas B767 was compelled to land shortly after departure this year. On 30/03/2008 a B767-300 QF533 performed an emergency landing in Brisbane since the aircraft could not retract landing gear after takeoff, due to an unknown fault.
Here’s a video I found on Youtube about that emergency:
