Singapore Airlines tail-strike incident blamed on pilots

A series of basic pilot errors led to a Singapore Airlines 747 dragging its tail about 500m along an Auckland Airport runway in March this year, a damning safety investigation has found.

The aircraft, flight SQ286 to Singapore, was forced to circle the airport on March 12 for about 20 minutes before making an emergency landing. None of the 369 passengers, 17 cabin crew, or three pilots was injured in the accident, but the tail of the plane was extensively damaged.

A Transport Accident Investigation Commission report, issued yesterday, says the aircraft's three pilots were almost completely to blame for the strike, which occurred when the captain tried to take off at too slow a speed.

It says the incident was the result of the first officer mistakenly entering an aircraft weight figure 100 tonnes lighter than that of the aircraft into his take-off speed calculations.

The captain then failed to pick up the error when he checked the calculation, the second officer did not check it and all three pilots failed to notice the difference between their own calculation and that of the flight management computer.

As a result, the captain "rotated" the plane to a takeoff angle at 123 knots (221km/h) rather than the correct 151 knots (272km/h).

With the plane failing to take off, it tilted 4 degrees more than normal, resulting in its tail striking the runway and dragging for 490m.



Singapore Airlines said yesterday that it accepted the report's findings in full and had demoted the captain.

"The safety recommendations of the TAIC to SIA have been, or are being, implemented in full," said the carrier's public relations manager, Stephen Forshaw.

All three pilots had been reprimanded over the incident.

The captain was demoted and had since left the airline. The first officer was severely reprimanded and the third officer, who played no active part in the take-off, was "reminded of his obligations".

- NZPA