Navy to blame?

Some of you will have heard of the recent near disastrous plunge that a Qantas flight made off the coast of Western Australia. Several passengers were severely injured. The cause of this sudden failure has yet to be identified.

This is from today's Melbourne Age newspaper.

Civil Aviation Safety investigators are considering the possibility that transmissions from the top-secret joint US-Australia naval base near Exmouth may have caused a Qantas aircraft to dive suddenly last month, seriously injuring a flight attendant and at least 13 passengers.

The base, in Western Australia, is used by the US Navy to communicate with its nuclear submarine fleet in the Pacific, and by the Australian Navy to maintain contact with its fleet of six Collins-class submarines.

Forty-four of the 313 people on board required hospital treatment after the Qantas Airbus A330, flying from Singapore to Perth on October 7, suddenly plunged, hurling passengers around the cabin.

The aircraft was cruising at 37,000 feet when the fault occurred, causing it to descend up to 650 feet in seconds.

The pilot made an emergency landing at Learmonth in north-western Western Australia.

An initial investigation pointed to a fault in the plane's air data inertial reference system which sent erroneous information to the flight control computer, causing the autopilot to shut down.