Passengers on a Qantas Airways Airbus A330 had received “limited and inconsistent” information about what to do during an evacuation, and the gaps in their knowledge led some to haul baggage with them down escape slides – a situation that contributed to injuries to six passengers, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) says.
The evacuation accident1 followed the A330-200’s return to Sydney airport minutes after departing with 222 passengers and 10 crewmembers for Perth because of a problem with one of the airplane’s three hydraulic systems, according to the ATSB’s final report on the Dec. 15, 2019, event.
The report described the landing as uneventful. But afterward, the flight crew stopped the airplane on a taxiway and turned on the auxiliary power unit (APU) and selected bleed air to keep the cabin air conditioned while the A330 was towed to the terminal. After the airplane arrived at the terminal, smoke or haze formed in the cabin and on the fligh…
