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SYDNEY (AFP) — Australian safety investigators Friday blamed an exploding oxygen bottle for a mid-air blast which blew a gaping hole in a Qantas jet last month, and said they could not rule out it happening again.
Pic: An investigator from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau displays an oxygen tank taken from the grounded Qantas jumbo
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The emergency on the flight from Hong Kong to Australia caused the cabin to depressurise and forced the pilots to land the Boeing 747-400, carrying 365 people, in the Philippine capital Manila.
In a preliminary report, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said that one of seven passenger oxygen cylinders failed and then exploded in the aircraft hold, rupturing the fuselage.
The explosion punched through the cabin floor, driving the malfunctioning cylinder into the cabin before it fell back through the floor and out of the aircraft, it said.
Bureau investigator Julian Walsh said the oxygen cylinder had popped up with "significant force to do the damage that it has".
"The passengers were obviously very lucky," he said.
Walsh said the bureau failed to identify anything which could have prevented the accident, and that it was impossible to know why the cylinder failed because it could not be retrieved.
Walsh said he was not aware of a similar occurrence in aviation history, but could not rule out the possibility it may happen again.
"It's certainly a rare event but no one can discount the possibility of those sort of things happening," he told reporters in Canberra.
The report said that the incident occurred about 55 minutes into the July 25 flight as the plane was cruising at 29,000 feet (8,800 metres).
It said "a loud bang was heard by passengers and crew, followed by the rapid depressurisation of the cabin."
Passengers and crew donned oxygen masks and the pilots commenced a descent to a lower altitude and issued a mayday distress radio call before landing safely in Manila. No one was injured in the emergency.
The bureau said inquiries were continuing and that a survey of all passengers was also being conducted.
The incident, which left a T-shaped rupture in the 1991-manufactured plane measuring 2.0 by 1.5 metres, is the most serious in a series of glitches to have beset Qantas in recent months.
Just days after the Manila incident, a Qantas 737-800 was forced to return to Adelaide after a landing gear door failed to retract. And in early August, a Qantas 767 was forced to return to Sydney shortly after take-off when the pilot detected a hydraulic leak in the wing.
Qantas welcomed the ATSB report, saying its own investigations were consistent with the bureau's initial finding.
"We will continue to assist the ATSB to ensure that factors that may have contributed to the incident are understood and that any corrective actions ultimately identified are implemented," chief executive Geoff Dixon said.
Dixon said Qantas completed an inspection of the oxygen systems across its B747-400 fleet in early August to confirm there were no safety issues.
He said despite the seriousness of the incident, Qantas was proud of its safety record. The "Flying Kangaroo" has never lost a jet plane to an accident.
Dixon said the B747-400 involved in the mid-air blast would be repaired for less than 10 million Australian dollars (8.6 million US) and be back in service in November.
SOURCE | AFP
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