Crew on Latam Airlines LA-800 were finishing clearing up after lunch and two-thirds of the way through the three-hour Sydney-Auckland flight on Monday when all hell broke loose.
About 300km west of Auckland, the 200 tonne-plus Boeing Dreamliner dropped like a stone for maybe 45 seconds. It would have seemed an eternity for many of the 272 passengers and crew, 50 of whom were injured as they were tossed around the cabin.
In an industry full of acronyms, for pilots the most important one would have kicked in: A.N.C.
A, for aviate, meant regaining control of the aircraft. They did that quickly. N, for navigate, saw them make the call to fly on to Auckland (pilots are constantly planning for contingency airports). C stands for communicate - alerting air traffic control at Auckland Airport from the flight deck.
And in a move praised by passengers, a pilot later walked through the cabin - by then strewn with casualties bleeding and in neck braces surrounded by others in tears. It was a chat with passengers that has spawned one strong theory as to what happened; an instrument blackout, which caused pilots to momentarily lose control of a plane travelling at about 960kph.
Boeing overnight alerted airlines to a potential problem with loose switches on the pilot seats of its Dreamliners reminding them of a 2017 service bulletin addressing issues with the switches on the back of seats that could mean they move forward if accidentally pushed, forcing pilots into the controls of the plane.
In a bulletin to airlines, Boeing reportedly says that if part of the switch is loose, a cover over the top can cause it to jam, “resulting in unintended seat movement.”
“We are recommending operators perform an inspection at the next maintenance opportunity,” Boeing said in a statement.
There are a number of theories swirling in the absence of official information.
Was it a software glitch, the seat movement that caused systems to be shut off, a problem with the autopilot or - less likely - clear-air turbulence that led to the problem? On one pilots’ forum, the possibility of random cosmic particles affecting computers is raised, while there’s a rumour a cabin crew member may have fallen on the seat controls while delivering something to the pilots.
One Dreamliner pilot told the Herald that from the outside it was hard to know what caused the plane to drop an estimated 100m.
But the airline and investigators should have a good idea by now and even on the day of the incident. The plane would have been sending real-time information to the airline, the engine maker and Boeing. The pilot said more than 200 pieces of data are transmitted a second from a 787.
“Engineers on the ground know about things before we do.”
The pilot the Herald said an airworthiness directive (AD) to depower Dreamliners that had been running for more than 51 days still applied to some airlines. It is not known if Latam must still carry out the procedure although it is understood Air New Zealand - which operates 14 Dreamliners - has a permanent fix installed.
The AD seen by the Herald, says that without the depowering action there was a risk of the “undetected or unannunciated” loss of the common data network, which handles all the flight-critical data (including airspeed, altitude, attitude, and engine operation), “and several potentially catastrophic failure scenarios can result from this situation.”
While industry groups label speculation on what happened at close to 41,000 feet as “unhelpful”, it is natural in the absence of official comment. There has been an information vacuum.
Latam is South America’s biggest airline, with a fleet of more than 400 planes across the group and last year made a $900m profit. It said little about the incident by Friday afternoon. It did issue a 92-word statement on Monday, when it acknowledged the plane had “a technical problem during the flight which caused a strong movement”.
Through its Australian PR agency, the airline said “some passengers and cabin crew were affected”.
“Latam regrets the inconvenience and injury this situation may have caused its passengers, and reiterates its commitment to safety as a priority within the framework of its operational standards,” the statement said.
The airline flies through Auckland exercising Fifth Freedom rights: it touches down to offload passengers and freight on the way between Santiago and Sydney. It doesn’t have a base here so the lack of support for the walking wounded who didn’t need hospital treatment and other traumatised passengers was inevitable as contracted ground handlers would have been deployed. Burger vouchers issued at the airport while accommodation was sorted aggravated a bad situation.
And the Latam PR response had some scratching their heads.
Marie Hosking, a partner at Convergence Communications and an aviation crisis communications expert, said best practice is to over-communicate in these situations in a way that is quite prescriptive
“The aim should be to have the first statement out in less than 30 minutes, followed by regular updates even when there is little or no new information to impart. These communications need to be going directly to customers, media, government and regulators through formal and informal channels.”
Hosking, a former Air New Zealand communications boss, said failure to do this leaves an information void that is inevitably filled by speculation, as was happening in the case of Latam.
“A regular cadence of factual communications goes a long way to heading off unhelpful speculation and negative reputation impact.”
Daniel Laufer, an associate professor of marketing at Victoria University said the airline risked ongoing brand damage.
“When the incident happened, Latam should have focused on providing psychological comfort to its passengers, as well as instructions on how they can protect themselves from harm.
He said the airline should have addressed passengers’ concerns; psychological and medical, described what the company knows about what happened, how it can prevent these types of events in the future and being more sympathetic and empathetic.
“Obviously, they don’t have all the facts (but) based on media reports, Latam has not done a good job in their response.”
Photos that have emerged of the aircraft in Monday’s incident, with much of its starboard wing covered in high-speed tape haven’t helped the airline. The tape is commonly used on planes, although not usually seen to this scale, and has been used on Dreamliners as wings undergoing a new paint job due to it deteriorating more quickly than expected in ultraviolet light.
Airlines typically have training exercises for a crisis at least once a year, with the communications response a critical part of that. Their representative body, the International Air Transport Association has a 42-page operating guide: Crisis communication and reputation management in the digital age. A step-by-step guide to handling a fatal accident (which Iata says can be modified for less serious incidents) starts with a social media post within the first hour, through to changing the branding on websites, media appearances from executives and handling the release of accident findings much later.
The aircraft involved in Monday’s incident was able to fly back to Santiago on Thursday and pilots and safety experts maintain the Boeing 787 is still a safe and reliable plane.
Professor Doug Drury, head of aviation at Central Queensland University said Dreamliners had many levels of redundancy, including six generators, if systems were lost.
“Electric failures do happen, there’s something that could cause a generator to fail. But again, the backup systems kick in quickly and pilots can manually change over so the aircraft isn’t going to go into a death spiral or anything like that,” he said.
“There are too many missing pieces to this puzzle to make a fully educated understanding of what happened because the black boxes in the flight data recorder will give us that”.
Information from those is being downloaded - most likely in Canberra - after being seized by New Zealand’s Transport Accident Investigation Commission, now helping its Chilean counterpart.
The Direccion General de Aeronautica Civil (DGAC) is leading the inquiry under the International Convention on Aviation.
The National Transportation Safety Board in the United States could become involved as that’s the base of Boeing, which is facing other safety investigations into its troubled 737 Max programme.
Drury said flight crew and cabin crew will have been interviewed, drug and alcohol tested and flight training records looked at.
They will be asked when they last drank, what they had in meals pre-flight and how much sleep they got.
Like Latam, Boeing has said little about the incident despite repeated inquiries.
“We are thinking of the passengers and crew from Latam Airlines Flight 800, and we commend everyone involved in the response effort. We are in contact with our customer, and Boeing stands ready to support investigation-related activities as requested.” the Chicago-headquartered firm said.
Drury said it was right Boeing was under the spotlight for other problems.
“Boeing does have some issues internally that they need to fix about their culture, but it has nothing to do. with this flight in particular.”
Australian lawyers are already offering to help LA-800 victims claim against the airline, which could range from $270,000 to millions of dollars.
This story has been updated to included Boeing’s statement today on the need to check seat controls.
Grant Bradley has been working at the Herald since 1993. He is the Business Herald’s deputy editor and covers aviation and tourism.
The airline sold its last slots at Heathrow in 2020.