Fleet Air Arm
Association of Australia
Former FAA Pilot 'a hero'
27 July 2008
Former Fleet Air Arm pilot and today a civvy veteran, Capt John Bartels, was applauded for safely landing his Qantas jet which had suffered a large hole in its lower fuselage.
The jet was flying from Hong Kong to Melbourne last week when a loss of cabin pressure alerted the crew and passengers to an in-flight emergency.
John Bartels is no stranger to difficult flying. He flew Skyhawk jets in RAN's 724 Squadron until the fixed wing aircraft were retired in 1983, and he is a keen aviation photographer.
A former Navy photographer, Bevin Stringer, was quoted in the Melbourne Herald Sun as saying Capt Bartels' efforts, taking photos as he flew planes, had produced amazing photos. "He's got the best air-to-air photos of Skyhawks I've ever seen," he said.
Capt Bartels and his co-pilot Werninghaus Bernd had less than a minute to launch an emergency drill that saved all aboard their Qantas Boeing flight. At 29,000 feet, that is all the time allowed to stay conscious and alive without oxygen.
Breathing oxygen on the flight deck and with all controls working, they would have had little trouble taking the plane to the safer altitude of 10,000 feet, where the 19 crew and 345 passengers could breath without help.
Investigators are still checking the aircraft to see what caused the damage to the aircraft, and how the flight crew handled the emergency.
But Trevor Jensen, chairman of the Australian Aviation Safety Foundation, said he believed that a bang from the lower fuselage would have caused the flight deck crew to react as they had many
times in the training simulators.
He said Capt Bartels' and Bernd's ears would have blocked, a tell-tale sign the cockpit and
passenger cabins were fast losing air pressure.
"By then they would have had their oxygen masks on, and carrying out the emergency descent code of applying the thrust levers and speed brake," Capt Jensen was reported as saying.
"For the next six minutes the plane would have been on descent to 10,000 feet, a safe altitude where masks could be taken off and those on board could breathe normally and without assistance.
"The crew would not have known what happened to their aircraft until they got down on the ground. All they would have known was that there was a hole somewhere in the cabin."
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