Concerns were raised several months ago about the safety of passenger jet that made an emergency landing on Friday after a hole appeared in its fuselage.

Entries in an online engineers' forum in February Hole forces Qantas plane to land ...
Qantas Airways to cut 1,500 jobs ...
Toxic find halts Philippine dive ...
Fuel bill sees Continental cuts ...
Two killed in Philippines blast ... referred to the detection of corrosion during a maintenance check on the plane, a Qantas Boeing 747.

Qantas said the plane had undergone checks but no faults were detected.

More than 360 people were on board the flight en route to Melbourne when it was forced to land in the Philippines.

The passengers described hearing a loud bang mid-flight, when the fuselage separated from the plane and caused a rapid decompression of the cabin.

They have since arrived back in Australia, while engineers have begun inspecting the damage in Manila.

'Fingers crossed'

Safety concerns were raised about the 17-year-old Boeing 747-438 Longreach in posts on an online engineers' forum in February, which referred to the detection of "serious corrosion issues" during a maintenance check at Avalon airport in March.

"Sources tell me the launch date has further slipped once to 5th of March... Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope OJK [the plane involved in mid-air drama] recovers from her plastic surgery," one participant wrote.

Aviation experts say corrosion could have been enough to have caused the 2.5-3m hole in the fuselage - if even a small section of the plane's aluminium skin was able to break free, the enormous pressures generated at cruising altitude could have done the rest.

Other possible causes might include accidental external damage to the plane on the ground, or something inside the plane which had not been properly secured and slammed into the fuselage at some point. Investigators will want to rule out the presence of any explosives.

A Qantas spokeswoman has confirmed that the plane did go through maintenance checks at the facility mentioned on the forum, but that "nothing out of the ordinary was detected during the checks".

"The most recent maintenance check on this aircraft were for a 'D' [most thorough] check in Qantas's Sydney facility in 2004 and two 'C' [regular] checks in Qantas's facility in 2006 and 2008," she said.

Investigators, including four officers from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, would also closely examine the maintenance regime of the aircraft, which was registered in 1991, Qantas said.

They would also focus on what happened at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok airport before the flight departed, it added.

A similar Qantas 747-438 Longreach flew Benedict XVI to Rome last week following his historic visit to Australia.

'Lot of emotion'

Passengers described hearing a large bang and feeling a rush of wind and debris through the cabin about an hour after Flight QF30 left Hong Kong at 0900 local time (0100 GMT) on Friday.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said the aircraft made an emergency descent from 29,000ft to 10,000ft before stabilising. It said initial information indicated that a section of the fuselage had separated in the area of the forward cargo compartment.

Passenger Olivia Lucas told the BBC everyone was "pretty scared for a few moments".

"Then everyone focused on getting their oxygen masks on," she said.

Phill Restall, from the UK, said the pilot then told passengers that they were going to land in Manila to have a look at the damage.

"Everyone was fairly calm, partly because they didn't realise the extent of it," he said.

"After we disembarked it started to dawn on people that this was a major incident. There were 350 people up there who were very lucky.

"Seeing the hole caused a lot of emotion. People were physically shaking. Many realised how close they were to their own mortality."

Dr David Newman, of Flight Medicine Systems, said forcing the plane into a rapid descent after a sudden loss of pressure was a standard emergency procedure.

(BBC)

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