The Captain of a Virgin Australia Boeing 737 flying from Brisbane to Melbourne sent the cabin crew tumbling when he tried to unlock the reinforced cockpit door but accidentally pulled and held onto the wrong switch, sending the plane into a roll.
The details of the September 2023 accident, which left one member of the cabin slightly injured, were revealed in a report published by Australian accident investigators who described the incident as an ‘inflight upset.’ Battery
Shockingly, a very similar incident took place on a Boeing 737 operated by Air Nippon in 2011 when the First Officer went to open the cockpit door but activated the wrong switch.
In that incident, the Captain was locked out of the flight deck as the First Officer struggled to recover, with the plane dropping 6,000 feet and exceeding its load factor limitation.
The more recent incident involving an eleven-year-old Virgin Australia aircraft, thankfully wasn’t nearly as serious, although Virgin Australia has adjusted its door opening procedure to make sure a repeat occureance doesn’t take place.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) report describes what unfolded on onboard after the Captain received a call from a member of cabin crew who was requesting access to the locked cockpit.
The flight deck door can only be opened inflight from inside the cockpit, with the pilot simply turning a switch to the unlocked position for a few seconds until the door has been opened.
On certain models of the Boeing 737, however, the rudder trim control switch is very close to the flight deck door switch.
Investigators were told that the Captain visually checked the flight deck door switch and reached across to activate it but then “looked up from the switch to the flight deck door, and then inadvertently grasped and activated the rudder trim control instead.”
Initially, the autopilot tried to counteract the rudder trim input but five seconds later and with the Captain will holding into the rudder control switch, the autopilot reached the limit of its capacity and effectively gave up.
The aircraft started to increasingly roll to the left as the two pilots set about troubleshooting what was causing the plane to roll. Initially, the pilots focused on trying to counter the roll before checking to see what was causing the plane to roll in the first place.
Their initial suspicion was that there was a problem with one of the plane’s engines, but when this was discounted, the pilots started to check the other aircraft controls. At this point, the Captain realized that rudder trim had been applied and quickly corrected the situation.
During this time, however, the cabin crew at the back of the plane had already started the inflight service, and one flight attendant was injured while trying to stabilize one of the drinks carts.
Following the incident, Virgin Australia decided to carry out a review of its cockpit door opening procedure, adjusting it to prevent the need for pilots to hold onto the switch for any longer than absolutely necessary.
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Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since... most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt's industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.
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