Hello possum? Pilot’s surprise discovery after crash-landing plane
A possum, kangaroo, a duck, a fox and insects wreaked havoc with aircraft in Australia last year, with pilots aborting takeoffs, missing landings and veering off runways because of the animals.
NSW
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A pilot forced to crash-land his plane after the nose wheel collapsed was stunned to discover the cause was a possum stuck in the landing gear.
The animal, which had apparently crawled into the landing gear cavity of the privately-owned Cessna, was not the only wildlife airspace encounter this year, with insects, a duck, a fox and a kangaroo also blamed for missed approaches, aborted landings, engine failures and pilots having to veer off runways.
The encounters are among more than 5000 mishaps reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in the past year, which included 219 serious accidents resulting in damage to the aircraft or property, or injury or death to a person.
In NSW, a pilot was killed after losing control of an aircraft while flying over an airfield in Braidwood. Investigations are continuing into the cause of the crash.
A separate investigation is also under way into the fatal crash of a gyrocopter near Orange airport in October last year.
Two people were killed in the crash, with early investigations pointing at a rotor assembly issue. Pilot error and mechanical failure appeared to be behind most of the more serious incidents, with 11 triggered by an animal encounter.
Among the wildlife encounters, the possum found in the plane at Warooka in South Australia in January triggered the most serious mishap, although the pilot escaped unscathed.
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The ATSB report said the aircraft was damaged after the nose wheel collapsed on landing.
“The post-flight inspection revealed a possum stuck in the landing gear unlock mechanism,” it said.
In another incident, a duck flying across the runway as a plane was about to take off from the Proserpine/Whitsunday Coast Aerodrome forced the pilot to abort.
It was not just animals that wreaked havoc on aircraft, with insects also causing engines to malfunction.
In February this year, a plane veered off the runway at Camden after its pilot aborted a takeoff after noticing the airspeed indicator was malfunctioning.
An insect stuck in the pressure-sensitive Pitot tube, which is used to determine the speed of a plane was blamed for the indicator malfunction.
A similar incident also occurred at Bankstown Airport where a pilot also chose to abort a takeoff when crew noticed the airspeed indicator appeared to be malfunctioning.
An insect in the Pitot tube was also blamed for the incident.
Insects also wreaked havoc with Boeing 737s with insects in tail-mounted Pitot tubes resulting in heavy elevator movement during one flight from Melbourne Airport and another plane striking “multiple insects” during takeoff on a separate flight.
The ATSB has been promoting the use of pilot checklists as part of a safety campaign.
In the decade to August 2018, 11 accidents with three involving fatalities had occurred as a result of the lack of or improper use of checklists, an ATSB spokesman said.
“ATSB transport safety investigators repeatedly see the tragic aftermath of accidents involving human error and decision-making,” the spokesman said.
“The ATSB cannot emphasise enough how important it is for all pilots to methodically work through checklists as a critical part of their pre-flight risk management plan.”
Originally published as Hello possum? Pilot’s surprise discovery after crash-landing plane