Thetownend.com

Flying over central Austrailia on Monday we had a little bit of excitement. The flight had been lovely and smooth for an hour or so and then all of a sudden the following happened:

1. A large bump and shaking
2. The plane suddenly dropped straight down a significant amount (I'm guessing 100s of feet)  
3. The plane nosedived to the right at a 45 degree angle

The whole incident only took about 2-3 seconds. There wasn't really enough time to get scared. It was only when the plane leveled out that we realised that something very scary had happened.

About 5-10 minutes later, the copilot cut the movie and apologised for what had happened. He said that it was due to the wash from the wings of a 747 flying overhead around 1000m above us. He said that they had no instrumentation that could have predicted what had happened. He wanted to reassure us that they were in complete control of the aircraft the whole time. But there was something about what he said and the way that he said it that made me think that it was much more serious than he had let on.

Are there any knowledgeable types out there  that can shed more light onto this ? You can obviously tell that I'm not looking forward to the 3 flights that I have to take later in the week to get back home !

NMH

Cheers NMH, I begin my 24,000mile odyssey next week, and I look forward to similar experiences.

I won't mention the significant amount (several hours worth) of turbulence that we met on the main flight from LA to Sydney then !  :?

NMH

Nearly NoMoreNomoreheroes  :shock:

Air Crash Investigation is back on National Geographic with a new series.  :wink:

I suggest what he said was true, and that 45 degree angle was possibly less and it felt worse than it was. Probably put the shits up everyone.

That or he had to dive to avoid the 747 flying straight at you that [ended up 1000 above you.

Hope there were no injuries.

I asked the pilot in our office and he said it sounds plausible .. an aircraft close by can affect another plane in this way

Tho he did say .. bet it was closer than 1000m .. more like couple of hundred!!

Of course it can. Doesn't anyone remember Goose :sob

I suspect that you are right and that the dive was to avoid the other plane. It definately was a 45 degree angle though according to a number of passengers I spoke to afterwards.

There were no injuries. One poor bloke walked out of the bog afterwards with piss all over his trousers though !  :D

NMH

:Soapy Wit Tank:

45 degrees, fuck me. No word of a lie the first Air Crash Investigation said 45 degrees was over the normal tellerances for an Airbus A310, so I hope you weren't on one of them. It's what started the fatal crash really.

Ooops. Too much info.

Enjoy your flight back :)

Gulp !  :shock:

Hopefully that means I'm a lucky b'stard ! I'm off to bed before you frighten me anymore !!!!

NMH

It must be something about Australia, the only time i have been really scared in a plane was flying from Cairnes to Brisbane!! The flight was horrid, it bumped, lurched, and it felt like it dropped several times, i shit myself.

Landed in Brisbane and i chucked up big time, mind u i did have a massive hangover!!!!!   :chunder:

:shock:  :boohoo:  :hide:

this is what scares me

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0219906/L/

I am always shakey when on planes  :(  A little bit of air turbulence and I have a nervous brake down. When we landed in cyprus last year I noticed smoke was coming down from the ceiling and starting rushing to get off the plane,until my dad told me it was the air con. Other than that I love flying. I don't like sitting by the window though and if there is screaming babies behind you and someone puking their guts out infront its not nice. Monarch planes are scabby and smell.

I don't like flying when I've got to sit next to arab, not because I'm worried about terrorists but because they smell.

ewww, smelly people on plane's are not nice either. Especially when someone farts, its such a confined space that the whole bloody plane must smell it.
 :?

What fucking cowboy airline did you fly with? All, and I repeat ALL, commercial airliners must be fitted with the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) to be able to fly commercial routes. Clearly the TCAS on your ac (and quite possibly the one on the 747) weren't working properly. There should be at least 1000 ft vertical minima separation between ac - I'm not really sure whether flying that close together (in height terms) has that dramatic an effect, depends which pilot you ask.

Cue the old adage - put ten pilots in a room, ask them one question, expect fifty different answers.

I'm about to jump on a plane in three hours. I truly hope my flight is substantially less eventful!

The whole thing is obviously yeovil's fault.

I suggest you have just become a statistic with which and air traffic controller might get beat with.  1000ft sounds like a near miss on airline terms (it's practically a collision if it's normal flight).  Even on take off the distance between each plane is judged to avoid the very thing you flew through and it caused the accident in New York a few years ago.

Sounds like the pilots had it under control though, as they do in 99.9% of these types of events I think.  Otherwise you would have noticed a rockijg motion as opposed to just a dip.

Most if not all commercial airliners should be cleared to RVSM (Reduced Vertical Separation Minima) standard, which lowers the vertical separation minima to 1000 ft. This allows more traffic to fly in the standard commercial routes. Its something I know about as I'm struggling to clear a fat & slow military ac you may all have noticed to fly in RVSM airspace - as we're slower than most civvy jets, we keep getting bumped into lower airspace. Bastards.

I thought it was Ralphy's fault, or have things moved on in the past three weeks.  :mrgreen: