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Air safety investigators were searching for clues Saturday as to
what caused a dramatic mid-air rupture that left a gaping hole in
the fuselage of a Qantas plane carrying more than 300 passengers.
Experts were working on the theory that an
explosion in the luggage hold or a broken panel caused a fuselage
break in the 747 that made an emergency landing in Manila Friday, a
source close to the investigation said.
Regardless of the cause, the source said the 365
passengers and crew on the flight from Hong Kong to Melbourne were
lucky to be alive after a three-meter hole was punched in the
jet’s belly at 8,800 meters.
“They were very lucky,” the source, who
asked not to be identified, told Agence France-Presse.
“While it is too early to say what actually
caused the hole, we will be looking at two possibilities . . .
something exploded in one of the bags or a panel came loose on the
fuselage,” the source added.
A pressurized container inside a piece of
luggage may have caused an explosion, the source said, adding that a
bomb was unlikely.
Qantas officials and experts from the Australian
Transport Safety Bureau are working with Philippine authorities on
the investigation.
Meanwhile, the plane’s passengers completed
their interrupted journey to Australia, staging emotional reunions
with relatives and recalling how they thought they would die as the
plane plunged toward the South China Sea.
Many were still shaken by the ordeal that saw
the aircraft plunge 6,000 meters in an emergency descent before
stabilizing.
As oxygen masks deployed from the ceiling and
debris swirled around the cabin, passenger Steve Winchester thought
he was going to die.
“Everyone was just thinking to themselves,
‘Oh I think this is it,’” he told reporters.
“I heard someone scream. People were just
looking at each other in sheer terror.”
Melbourne man David Saunders said he hugged his
girlfriend and put his passport in his pocket so his body could be
more easily identified if the plane crashed into the sea.
“I heard an enormous explosion, things went
quiet, the cabin instantly lost pressure and the plane just started
to dive. I thought we were going down into the sea,” he said.
The plane involved in the incident is 17 years
old and Sydney’s Daily Telegraph reported that engineers
discovered a large amount of corrosion in it during a major
refurbishment earlier this year.
Under the front-page headline “Rust Bucket,”
the newspaper said the jet received a new interior at Melbourne’s
Avalon airport in March and said aviation sources had told it
engineers had found a lot of corrosion.
-- AFP
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