Despite multiple walk-around inspections, ground personnel, maintenance engineers, the flight crew and a dispatcher failed to notice that covers – installed to prevent wasp damage1 while on the ground – had not been removed from a Malaysia Airlines Airbus A330’s three pitot probes. As a result, the A330 took off from Brisbane Airport in Queensland, Australia, with unreliable airspeed information. The crew failed to react to airspeed warnings until the airplane was moving too fast to safely stop on the runway.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said the flight crew conducted the takeoff at “close to the pre-planned speed” shortly before midnight on July 18, 2018, climbed the airplane to 11,000 ft and circled while addressing the problem; they shut down the A330’s air data systems to activate a backup system that displayed safe flight envelope information. Using that information, airspeed management procedures and assistance from air traffic control,…
