An aircraft operated by Qantas’ regional offshoot ploughed through about seven lights along the edge of a runway during take-off in the early hours after its pilots mistook them for the centre line, causing minor damage to the plane.
The QantasLink captain involved in the serious incident at Mildura Airport in north-west Victoria early last week has since tested positive for a medicine he did not have a prescription for. Any pilot involved in an incident must undergo mandatory drug and alcohol testing.
The two pilots of the Dash-8 aircraft have been stood down pending the outcome of investigations by air-safety regulators and the airline.
A QantasLink Dash-8 similar to the aircraft involved in the serious incident at Mildura Airport.Credit: Wolter Peeters
Just before dawn on February 25, the pilots inadvertently lined up the aircraft with the edge lights at Mildura Airport instead of the runway’s centre line, according to an initial summary of the incident by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
During take-off, the Dash-8 struck and damaged multiple edge lights over about a 400-metre stretch of the runway. Despite hitting the lights, the pilots managed to take off on the scheduled flight to Melbourne after realigning the aircraft with the runway’s centre line.
Inspections of the turboprop aircraft after it landed at Melbourne Airport found minor damage.
The ATSB said in a statement that it launched an investigation last week into the “misaligned take-off” of the QantasLink aircraft but declined to comment on any actions that may have been taken, or were ongoing, as a result of the incident. “The investigation is still in the early stages of evidence collection,” it said.
Qantas said in a statement that its regional offshoot was investigating the incident at Mildura Airport and was supporting the ATSB and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority as they conducted their investigations. The airline declined to comment further.
CASA has to be notified by an airline if a positive drug and alcohol test is recorded by a pilot. It declined to comment.
The ATSB said it expected to complete a preliminary report into the incident in about six weeks, which would detail the sequence of events, evidence gathered to date, and the planned areas of further investigation.
The federal air-safety bureau is also investigating three “misaligned takeoff incidents” at Perth Airport over a 10-month period to April last year. In two of those incidents, runway lighting was damaged.
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