Qantas Gets a Go Around Order Because of a Slow Solomon Airlines Plane

23rd Sep 2015

Qantas flight number QF510 was forced to "go around" this morning, just as it was about to land. The plane touched the Brisbane Airport runway, but immediately took off again, to the surprise of passengers on board.

The reason for this, it was explained, was that another plane that of Solomon Airlines, was still on the runway The Flying Kangaroo's jet was scheduled to land on.

A Qantas spokeswoman explained why this happened:

"It was an Air Traffic Control initiated go-around in order to maintain runway separation. We thought the Solomon aircraft would have taken off before the Qantas plane came in, but it was moving slower than anticipated."

One of the passengers on board the plane, Terry Carver from Sydney, said this was his first time to experience something like it:

"I think I might've once had a similar experience flying into Augathela when there were kangaroos on the runway. But I've never had that experience at a major airport in Australia."

Mr. Carver also said that there was no panic among the passengers, however, everyone was surprised:

"When the captain came on the PA he said there was an aircraft on the runway that wasn't following instructions. He later said it was an ATC issue which might be the same thing."

Runway occupancy times remain a problem at the Brisbane Airport. The airport has, on that matter, worked with Airservices Australia on reducing runway occupancy times to 41 second from 46 seconds.

The efforts are beginning to show results, as, just in August, 91.2 per cent of outgoing flights from Brisbane Airport took off according to their schedule, while 92.8 per cent of arrivals touched down within 15 minutes of their schedule.

In 2012-13, the situation was a whole lot different, with only 65.2 per cent of planes departing on time and 74.4 per cent arriving on time.