MASKING THE TRUTH?

All the talk, and most of the headlines at the weekend, were about an exploding oxygen bottle being the probable cause of the mid-flight explosion that tore a huge chunk out of the fuselage of a Qantas 747 and put the lives of hundreds of passengers and crew at risk. Frankly, I’m not so concerned about the oxygen bottle but what comes out of it and how it didn’t get to the passengers when the oxygen masks dropped out of the ceiling.

Were they faulty? Did they all deploy as required in an emergency? Were some of the elastic straps perished?  Were there enough masks for everybody?

Now, after the relief of getting home safely, passengers are starting to tell horror stories of those long minutes when the cabin depressurised and people fought for breath during the ten minute descent from 30,000 feet to 10,000 feet.

Children’s cheeks and lips were turning blue from lack of oxygen. Some people were sharing masks. One woman, reportedly, threw her child across the aisle so her partner could share the oxygen.

St Kilda architect David Saunders put it in non-technical terms. He said ‘The oxygen masks were effed’.

He said ‘The elastic was so old that it had deteriorated. I couldn’t get it around my head. I had to tie it around my head twice just to get it to stay on.’

Saunders was so certain he was going to die that he stuffed his passport in his shirt pocket so his body could be easily identified and as his mask fell off he started to pass out.

He had a joking premonition when he boarded, about how old 747 was.  There was water streaming from a light fitting, a panel hanging off the wall, and the rubber seal around the entrance door was frayed.

‘I even made a joke to the stewardess as we were taking off asking could we do a U-turn’.

The Qantas story led the American ABC news at the weekend. It could have been an even bigger story. It hasn’t come out yet but there’s speculation was the same plane that flew Pope Benedict back to Rome from Sydney last week. Imagine the conspiracy theories if it had exploded while he was on board.

And there’s another thing worth checking. What is the air frame identification? Is it VH-OGH as in Oscar Golf Hotel.  That’s the number on the 747 that ploughed off the runway at Bangkok some years ago. Qantas had the plane rebuild at a cost of about $100 million because, to preserve their safety record, the Qantas heavies wanted to maintain that they’d never lost a plane.

Almost did on Friday.

Monday, July 28, 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008