Friday 8 November has been an eventful day for Sydney Airport.
Australian Border Force (ABF) has been suffering from a computer system outage. There has also been a grass fire at Sydney Airport and a Qantas domestic flight returned to Sydney after an engine failure.
The ABF SmartGate outage lasted for 2 hours causing delays in arrivals and departures, with Sydney and Melbourne airports the worst affected. During the outage extra ABF officers were “surged” to manually process passengers between 10am and noon. The cause of the outage is still under investigation. ABF said no flights were impacted.
Local reports state that QF520, a flight from Sydney to Brisbane, was mid take off when passengers heard a loud bang. The plane ended up “circling” over Botany Bay before landing safely with 174 passengers on board.
Around the same time a grass fire started near Sydney’s 3rd runway. Both ARFF and Fire and Rescue New South Wales Fire (FRNSW) attended the fire. It’s not yet known whether the engine failure and fire are related. All flights in and out of Sydney were halted as a result of the fire.
Earlier today a Brisbane-bound flight made an emergency-return to Sydney Airport, landing safely just after 1pm This departure of aircraft coincided with a grass fire along the eastern side of the airport’s parallel runway, which was brought under control by teams from the Aviation Rescue Fire Fighting Service. It’s not clear at this stage if the two incidents are linked and investigations are continuing. With the safe arrival of the aircraft, Sydney Airport’s priority is to conduct a full inspection of its parallel runway and to return it to service as quickly as possible
Sydney Airport spokesperson
One of our flights to Brisbane experienced a suspected engine failure after take-off from Sydney Airport this afternoon. After circling for a short period of time, the aircraft landed safely at Sydney Airport. Our pilots are highly trained to handle situations like this and the aircraft landed safely after the appropriate procedures were conducted. We understand this would have been a distressing experience for customers and we will be contacting all customers this afternoon to provide support. We will also be conducting an investigation into what caused the engine issue
Qantas Chief pilot Richard Tobiano
FRNSW Superintendent Adam Dewberry told local media, “We’ve got a number of fire trucks on scene working to contain or extinguish a grass fire, a pretty large grass fire adjacent to the third runway. Fortunately due to the layout it is contained, it’s not going to go anywhere. But we do need to get this fire out so the airport can resume its operations again.”
A Sydney Airport spokesperson said “Sydney Airport’s main runway is operational, however, passengers should expect some delays and we thank everyone for their patience.”
In a further update, Qantas has confirmed the engine had an contained failure.
Qantas engineers have conducted a preliminary inspection of the engine and confirmed it was a contained engine failure. While customers would have heard a loud bang, there was not an explosion
Qantas spokesperson
