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Home  >  A380 • Qantas  >  Vortex Sends Qantas A380 Into Terrifying Nosedive
A380Qantas

Vortex Sends Qantas A380 Into Terrifying Nosedive

Matthew Klint Posted onJune 14, 2018June 14, 2018 7 Comments

You’re sitting in your seat, two hours into a 15-hour flight. All of a sudden, without any warning, the plane nosedives toward the ocean…for 10 seconds. That’s what happened to passengers aboard Qantas 94 from Los Angeles to Melbourne on Sunday.

A first-hand passenger account best relates the horror. Janelle Wilson told the West Australian:

It was between 1½ and two hours after we left LA and all of a sudden the plane went through a violent turbulence and then completely up-ended and we were nose­diving.

We were all lifted from our seats immediately and we were in a free fall. It was that feeling like when you are at the top of a rollercoaster and you’ve just gone over the edge of the peak and you start heading down.

It was an absolute sense of losing your stomach and that we were nosediving. The lady sitting next to me and I screamed and held hands and just waited but thought with absolute certainty that we were going to crash. It was terrifying.

United Airlines lets you listen into Air Traffic Control (“Channel 9”) on select aircraft. When listening, you’ll often hear this warning as an aircraft departs, “United 839. Clear for takeoff runway 27L. Caution wake turbulence.” But it’s more than just a takeoff or landing issue.

Wake turbulence is a real thing. You can read all about it on Wikipedia, but in a nutshell, it is a disturbance in the atmosphere that forms behind an aircraft as it passes through the air. Get too close and you’ll feel it.

Qantas blamed the issue “short burst of wake turbulence from another A380 flying ahead and above it.” Apparently, an A380 bound for Sydney (QF12), which had departed just minutes before the flight to Melbourne, was 1,000 feet above QF04 and about 20 nautical miles away.

Friendly fire…

CONCLUSION

What a scary incident. It’s also a great reminder of why you should always keep your seat belt fastened when seated, even if the fasten seat belt sign is off.

> Read More: Emirates A380 Wake Turbulence Flips Over Private Jet!
> Read More: Nine Passengers in Hospital After Severe Turbulence on United Flight

image: Brian / Wikimedia Commons

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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7 Comments

  1. Paul Murray Reply
    June 14, 2018 at 10:47 am

    Haha, that’s a really classic failure on the misspelling of Wikipedia

  2. Garrett Reply
    June 14, 2018 at 12:16 pm

    Seatbelts. Wear the seatbelts. This is why having a lap infant scares me too. You’re just sitting there with your child cruising along and then BAM baby on the roof. That’s catastrophic.

  3. emercycrite Reply
    June 15, 2018 at 12:42 am

    What an absurd account.

    • Matthew Reply
      June 15, 2018 at 1:16 am

      Agreed. One passenger says “nosedive” and now everyone is using that in their headlines. In reality, it dropped one or two hundred feet, never pitched more than 3 degrees, and was on its way normally shortly afterwards.

  4. James Wagner Reply
    June 15, 2018 at 3:23 pm

    Don’t complain you got a free roller coaster ride and a bowel movent included ✈️

  5. Paolo Reply
    June 16, 2018 at 2:24 am

    So many wimpy flyers these days: a few bumps and it becomes “a terrifying nosedive ” and ‘newsworthy’.

  6. Pingback: Qantas A380 Took a Terrifying 'Nosedive' Due to Another A380

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