A A flight to Malaysia from Sydney accidentally flew to Melbourne instead because its pilot entered the wrong coordinates, an Australian aviation investigation report has found. Carrying 212 passengers, the Air Asia flight bound for Kuala Lumpur on March 10, 2015, was incorrectly guided to Melbourne after the pilot manually entered the wrong coordinates into the flight's onboard navigation systems. When manually entering the coordinates of the plane's position, the pilot incorrectly entered the longitude from a sign outside the cockpit window as 01519.8 east (15 degrees 19.8 minutes east) instead of 15109.8 east (151 degrees 9.8 minutes east), the report said. "This resulted in a positional error in excess of 11,000 kilometres, which adversely affected the aircraft's navigation systems and some alerting systems," the report said. The crew had "a number of opportunities to identify and correct the error," the report said, but didn't notice the problem until after the plane became airborne and started tracking in the wrong direction. Several message alerts and sounds suggested the error before take off, but the crew ignored them, according to the report. Once the captain and the first officer realised the mistake, they tried to fix the system. "Attempts to troubleshoot and rectify the problem resulted in further degradation of the navigation system, as well as to the aircraft's flight guidance and flight control system," the report said. As systems failed further, the crew asked to return to Sydney and conduct a landing without the use of navigation systems. However, weather conditions in Sydney forced the plane to land in Melbourne instead. Air Asia said all aircraft have been equipped with upgraded flight management systems since the incident. Read more at Pilots mistook Melbourne for Malaysia
Mmmm! It would be interesting to read the report of the 'Air Accident Investigation Board' into this incident.
I am very surprised that it was not noticed by Flight control before takeoff given that Flight Details(Flight plan) have to be logged in before departure.
Crazy talk Jack! The assistant pilot just has to copy the numbers to input, who would think he could screw that up? I doubt anyone was checking up on him. Now when the flight deviated from the norm for where it was supposed to go, probably no more than a small deviation, they started to get calls which the pilot ignored. Computers are great things but they only know what you tell them and they believe it even when what you are telling it is wrong.
Air Asia has a spotty record when it comes to pilot/co-pilot errors. Rapid expansion of routes scrapes the bottom of the barrel getting qualified reliable pilots and some take short cuts that put their aircraft and passengers at risk. Here in the Philippines the Air Asia spinoff is Air Asia Zest. Most of the aircraft are 90s vintage that haven't been upgraded to ADSB. ADSB automatically broadcasts the speed and direction, altitude and callsign of the flight among other things. ADSB fails if the callsign is not entered by the pilot/co-pilot. As a safety feature, in case of disaster, the authorities can be notified where to look for the aircraft which can mean rescue but if not, recovery. Air Asia Zest is not alone in operating non-ADSB aircraft, all of Cebu Pacific and PAL Express turbo-props do not have this capability so in case of trouble we can't quickly find you. Cebu Pacific has new turbo-props ordered so this might change for them. There are over 50 hobbyists like me who operate receivers that track aircraft all over the Philippines for companies like FlightRadar24, PlaneFinder and FlightAware pro bono with them providing the equipment. I run ADSB receivers for all three providing internet so they can automatically call home to put that information on their maps every 3 seconds. Here in Dumaguete we are at or near the crossroads of the skyways for domestic and international flights whose autopilots fly from beacon to beacon on the path from point A to B depending on the weather. In addition to the company web maps maintained by the respective companies, I also maintain 2 receivers at boys schools in Cebu City. The live URL for the comprehensive map is http://222.127.74.244/virtualradar/. When you buy a ticket you are putting you life in the hands of the companies and pilots of your flight. shakey
