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Qantas A380 grounded after door almost ripped off at Sydney Airport.

A door on a Qantas A380 has been almost totally ripped off after one of the airline's double-deck planes struck scaffolding as it was being rolled out of a maintenance hangar at Sydney Airport.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/qantas- ... 5391o.html


That's gonna be awfully expensive. When towing aeries always do a walk-around first to make sure no doors or other bits are sticking out where they shouldn't be.

Are there not some ex-SIA or under utilised Malayan one's available for lease?

Think I have mentioned it before but I dropped a door over Bicester once. Sliding door on the BN2T for para dropping and the stop had dropped off so the door did as well. Fortunately from 10.000' it drifted back onto the airfield.

One wonders if it was apparently closed when they started the tow, but was in fact unlatched and came open without them noticing?

One has acted as brakeman occasionally on detachments. The riskiest bits always seem to be when one still has a man short for assessing clearances. There's no safe option but for the brakeman to do a lot of stopping, and the clearance guy to do a lot of running around, rather than try and make judgements with a parallax error.

Without a replacement aircraft, it will be difficult to accommodate 480 passengers unless seat occupancy is low at this time of year.

The poor team on the ground will probably take the rap for this one.

I immediately thought; cost-cutting, minimum-staffing, one down due sickness etc, management shouting to get it on the line asap and so on. All factors over which the tow crew have no control but sounds like typical commercial pressure to get the ‘frame moving.

For a juicy accident report on minimum engineering staffing almost leading to a major accident go find the report on the BMI 737-400 reg G-OBMM back in the old days and observe the holes in the cheese lining up for the inevitable result.

Good handling by the flight crew on that day!

It weren't the doors fault but the scaffolding surely. If it was fixed scaffolding the wing would be next

Seems more likely they maintenance frame hadn't been moved.