Brilio.net/en - AirAsia is no stranger to the odd mishap when it comes to planes. Whether theyre losing your luggage or charging absurd prices for basics such as water, the cheap airline is everyones favorite love-to-hate company. While some mishaps end in tragedy, this one warrants a little bit of a nervous laugh as no one was injured and the plane did safely land, albeit in the wrong country.
Airbus A330-300 was taking off from Sydney on March 10th last year and was headed to Kuala Lumpur, or so it was scheduled. But traffic controllers were shocked when it started heading in the wrong direction. Instead of flying left, the plane was headed right. The pilot, who had been working with the airline for 18 months at that point, tried to return the flight to Sydney but bad weather had him making an emergency landing in Melbourne.
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Turns out that the slightest error in entering GPS coordinates can be pretty catastrophic for plane directions. By omitting a 0 from the coordinates, the GPS actually believed it was flying from Cape Town, not Sydeny, which drastically changed the route of the flight.
While Brilio wasnt able to contact the pilot, we compiled a few things that might have been running through his head while this little mishap went down.
Alright, were up and running. Gonna start up autopilot and cruise right along. Another day, another breeze.
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I love my job. I wonder whats on in KL tonight. Maybe SkyBar will have something fun lined up.
Hm, I could have sworn last time we went a little differently..
Well, I guess just sit back and let autopilot do what it was meant to do.
Thats weird. Why is the alert button flashing? We arent anywhere near the ground.
GPS Primary lost. Well.thats odd.
Thankfully, the malfunction was caught in time and the airplane didnt cause any harm to other flights taking off. This isnt an isolated incident as its happened twice before on two AirAsia flights from Sydney: in July 2011 and in January 2007. In 2013, Airbus manufacturer recommend that the system be updated to prevent such accidents from happening, however this update was only actually carried out on about half of the planes worldwide.