An AirAsia flight from Sydney to Malaysia ended up in Melbourne instead when the pilot entered the wrong coordinates into the internal navigation system, an air safety investigation has found.
The Airbus A330 was scheduled to leave Sydney international airport at 11.55am on 10 March 2015, and arrive in Kuala Lumpur just under nine hours later.
An investigation report by the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau (ATSB) into the March flight disclosed that the error was down to the A330’s captain “inadvertently enter[ing] the wrong longitudinal position of the aircraft.”
He had copied down the aircraft’s position co-ordinates from a sign displayed at the airport terminal gate while initialising the Airbus’ systems. Instead of entering 15109.8 east (i.e. 151˚ 9.8′ east), the captain entered 01519.8, resulting in “a positional error in excess of 11,000 km.”
“Flight data and analysis of the occurrence shows a data entry error occurred at this time,” said the ATSB.
The plane spent three hours on the ground in Melbourne fixing the problem before departing for Kuala Lumpur, where it arrived at 10.20pm local time, six hours behind schedule.
The ATSB said “even experienced flight crew are not immune from data entry errors” and advised AirAsia to upgrade its flight systems to assist in preventing or detecting such errors in future.
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