AirAsia X flies to wrong destination

In March last year passengers on a flight from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur found themselves in Melbourne after the captain put in the wrong position at take-off, an Australian accident investigation report has found.

AIRASIA X A330-343 9M-XXB (CN 947)                 File Photo

This morning the Australian Transport Safety Bureau issued its findings into the incident in March last year involving an AirAsia X Airbus A330, registered 9M-XXM (CN 741) operating from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The report said that on departure from runway 16R the aircraft was observed by air traffic control to enter the departure flight path of the parallel runway 16L.
Following advice from air traffic control, the flight crew identified a problem with the on-board navigation systems. However, the report said that attempts to troubleshoot and rectify the problem resulted in further degradation of the navigation system, as well as to the aircraft’s flight guidance and flight control systems.
The crew then elected to discontinue the flight but were unable to return to Sydney as the weather had deteriorated in the Sydney area and the available systems limited the flight to approaches in visual conditions.
The aircraft was instead radar vectored to Melbourne, Victoria and the flight completed in visual conditions.
The ATSB said “it found that when setting up the aircraft’s flight management and guidance system, the captain inadvertently entered the wrong longitudinal position of the aircraft. This adversely affected the on-board navigation systems however, despite a number of opportunities to identify and correct the error, it was not noticed until after the aircraft became airborne and started tracking in the wrong direction.”

The serious incident is the third involving the AirAsia group in the last 18 months in Australian airspace.
On July 21 this year an AirAsia X A330 came within 152m of a Jetstar flight on the Gold Coast and on February 19 an Indonesia Air Asia A320 flew 300m too low on approach to Perth Airport at night.