An AirAsia flight took its 212 passengers to the wrong destination after the pilot entered incorrect flight information in the plane’s navigation system, according to a safety investigation.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) conducted an investigation on the Malaysia-bound AirAsia X Airbus A330 after the incident. The plane departed from Sydney but landed in Melbourne instead of Kuala Lumpur on March 10, 2015.
The report, published on Wednesday, revealed that the captain accidentally entered the wrong coordinates of the aircraft’s position while setting up its flight management and guidance system.
Instead of entering 15109.8 east (151 degrees 9.8 minutes east), the pilot put in 01519.8 east (15 degrees 19.8 minutes east). Thus, the navigation system thought the plane was near the South African city of Cape Town, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
“This resulted in a positional error in excess of 11,000 kilometers (6,835 miles), which adversely affected the aircraft’s navigation systems and some alerting systems,” the report stated.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the crew didn’t notice the error until the plane was in the air and heading in the wrong direction. Once the plane took off, the captain and first officer heard an alert of “terrain, terrain.” It usually goes off when the plane is too close to the ground, but since the pilots saw nothing in their path, they ignored the warning.
“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 report said.
The pilots only realized the mistake when traffic controllers asked them why the plane was turning the wrong way. It was crossing the path of other planes that were taking off soon.
The captain and first officer tried to fix the problem but it was of no use.
“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 system,” according to ATSB.
After losing the autopilot and auto-thrust features on the plane, the pilots wanted to return to Sydney manually. However, low cloud and rain conditions forced the plane to land in Melbourne instead, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
It reported the aircraft eventually touched down two hours after departing. The captain manually flew the plane with the help of air traffic controllers tracking it on radar and giving constant directions. The aircraft landed at Tullamarine Airport, where it stayed for three hours before taking off to Kuala Lumpur.
AirAsia released a statement stating the actions they took following the incident. The company stressed all AirAsia X planes received an upgraded flight management system to “monitor and prevent similar incidents from reoccurring.”
“We also wish to reiterate that we have regularly passed safety and security audits conducted by various international regulators,” the statement said.
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