iscover
Mayday… Mayday… Mayday…
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At 1 a.m. local time on the morning of Monday, 10th October, a Boeing 747SP, registration number VH-SRX departed from gate 27 at Honolulu International Airport on its regular scheduled flight to Townsville. On board were some 252 souls, passengers and crew, people returning from holidays, people setting out on holidays, people travelling on business.
The flight progressed normally through the Pacific night, crossing the International Date Line into Tuesday. It passed by Tarawa and Nauru, experiencing the majesty of a dawn reduced to slow motion by the aircraft’s westward progress. Full daylight saw it overhead Honiara as the people below were making their way to work. On board, all was routine; breakfasts were served and people were preparing for their arrival at Townsville. Then something went terribly wrong. Smoke started to appear in the rear cabin. What caused it we shall never know. Perhaps carelessness with a cigarette, wrongly packed dangerous cargo, or even an incendiary device placed on board by machiavellian hands.
The situation deteriorated as the smoke spread throughout the aeroplane. Sydney was advised of the predicament by radio and the Townsville Search and Rescue Co-ordination Centre swung into action. It rapidly became apparent that it would be necessary to ditch the aircraft before it became uncontrollable. A ditching in a large commercial aircraft like this should be survivable, and sufficient life rafts were carried to accommodate all on board after the aircraft had come to a halt on the water. The real problem was to locate these survivors and to recover them to a safe place as quickly as possible. This was not as easy as it sounded. In this case the ditching ‘splash point’ was over 700 kilometres off shore, well outside the range of helicopters, and there was no shipping in the immediate area.
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