Their desperate battle is revealed in detail by a Federal Government report which shows how close the aircraft came to disaster.

At its lowest the aircraft was just 50 feet above the ground. Had the pilots not regained control the crash would have been worse than the Lockhart River disaster in Queensland. In that crash, the two-man flight crew and their 13 passengers were killed.

A report from the Transport Safety Bureau issued this week said an Embraer Brasilia aircraft ran out of fuel in one engine as it was about to land at Jundee in Western Australia last June.

At first the crew were unaware of the engine failure, possibly because of early morning glare on the instrument panel. The plane rolled violently to the left, almost stalled and was only 200 feet above the ground when the pilots regained control.

The near-disaster has prompted fevered speculation on aviation related websites.

The Embraer Brasilia aircraft was flying mine workers from Perth to Jundee, about 800km to the northwest. On board were two pilots, one cabin attendant and 28 passengers.

The bureau report on the Jundee near-disaster said that at 8.06am, the aircraft was on final approach to the Jundee airstrip when the left engine ran out of fuel.

When they applied full power to conduct a "go around", the aircraft rolled left "aggressively".

"The co-pilot [who was flying the approach] applied right rudder and aileron but was unable to control the aircraft," the report said.

"He informed the pilot in command that he was unable to hold the control inputs, so the pilot in command placed his hands on the control yoke and his feet on the rudder pedals and assisted the co-pilot."

By this time the aircraft was just over 200 feet above the gravel strip.

The "stick shaker" activated twice, indicating the aircraft was in danger of stalling and the warning "too low terrain" sounded.

At one stage the plane did a steep 40 degrees bank to the left. The pilots pushed the right engine to operate at 150 per cent of normal output as they wrestled to control the aircraft.

The pilots then noticed warning lights indicating the left engine had failed. They reduced the flaps setting and managed to regain control.

The pilots elected to fly to nearby Wiluna on one engine rather than land immediately. Ground engineers found the fuel gauges showed plenty of fuel in both tanks, even though the left tank was dry.

The drama of the near miss was highlighted when other pilots were asked to replicate the conditions in a flight simulator. "The pilots could not maintain control of the aircraft and the simulator crashed ..."

By Ross Peake National Affairs Writer

SOURCE | The Canberra Times | Canberra.yourguide.com.au