Trans Australia Airlines Flight 538 was a Fokker Friendship turboprop airliner that crashed on approach to Mackay, Queensland on June 10, 1960, causing the deaths of all 29 persons aboard. It is historically significant for leading to the introduction of cockpit voice recorders in commercial airliners.The first Fokker Friendship, tail number VH-TFB, ordered outside of Europe was accepted by TAA in April 1959 and within 14 months, the airliner had 12 of the planes. On June 10, a Friday, it was flying Flight 538 from Brisbane to Mackay with stops at Maryborough and Rockhampton, Cpt. F.C. Pollard and FO G.L. Davis in the cockpit. The initial portion of the flight was uneventful. The plane touched down at Rockingham Airport at 7:12 PM where the crew received a weather forecast for Mackay, predicting scattered wintertime fog patches. It was refuelled with 700 gallons of aviation gasoline, enough range to reach Townsville if the weather precluded a landing in Mackay.
There were nine passengers onboard, after which seven adults and nine schoolboys boarded at Rockinghampton, the latter all students at Rockhampton Grammar School, heading home to Mackay for the Queen's Birthday weekend. Flight 538 took off at 7:52 and climbed to 13,000 feet. At 8:17, the ATC at Mackay reported that the airport was temporarily closed due to fog. A few minutes later, Cpt. Pollard informed the ATC that he would hover over Mackay at 13,000 feet in case visibility improved. They reported being over the airport at 8:30. It was a moonlight winter night with a calm sea and two approaches were aborted due to low clouds on the coastline making it difficult to see the strip on final approach.The fog began to thin by 10:00. ATC Miskell reported this to Flight 538 and Cpt. Pollard said they would begin an approach. Miskell then called the airport fire service for the current temperature reading, which was 13C. He relayed this information to Flight 538, but got no response. Miskell tried again at 10:05 and still nothing. At 10:10, he decided to initiate a search and rescue operation.
The fog began to thin by 10:00. ATC Miskell reported this to Flight 538 and Cpt. Pollard said they would begin an approach. Miskell then called the airport fire service for the current temperature reading, which was 13C. He relayed this information to Flight 538, but got no response. Miskell tried again at 10:05 and still nothing. At 10:10, he decided to initiate a search and rescue operation.At 3:00 AM on the morning of June 11, a searchlight-equipped motor launch spotted passenger seats, clothing items, and cabin furnishings floating on the ocean between Round Top Island and Flat Top Island, about five miles from Mackay Airport. A Royal Australian Navy sloop, HMAS Warrego, was sent to look for debris the next day and found most of the airliner debris in 40 feet of water about four miles southwest of Round Top Island. It took two weeks to recover all the debris.
A Board of Inquiry met from October 4 to November 10 and failed to find any evidence of mechanical failure in the Fokker. It had plunged into the ocean for reasons unknown, so the board suspected the static pressure system or altimeter were malfunctioning and not giving a correct altitude reading. The three point altimeter was also difficult to understand and easy for the pilots to misread, sometimes by a long distance, and so this type of altimeter was later removed from service. If so, the accident could have been caused simply by misreading the altimeter, although it seemed unlikely given that Cpt. Pollard was highly experienced.A brown medicine bottle of unknown origin was found in the cockpit. This lead to the rather imaginative theory that one of the schoolboys had been shown into the cockpit while holding a bottle full of model aircraft fuel, accidentally spilled it, and created a distraction for the crew that resulted in the crash. Another theory was that the crew tried a low flight path hoping to keep the airstrip in sight below the cloud layer, but were unable to properly assess height over a calm sea at night and inadvertently put the left wing tip in the water while during onto the runaway approach. The Board of Inquiry recommended mandatory cockpit voice recorders in all medium and large-sized commercial airliners. Australia became the first country to require cockpit voice recorders, now a standard feature in commercial airliners around the world (the United States did not require them until 1966).Flight 538 ties with the Australian National Airways DC-4 crash a decade earlier for being the two deadliest aviation accidents in Australian history.
>>18736868>Flight 538 ties with the Australian National Airways DC-4 crash a decade earlier for being the two deadliest aviation accidents in Australian history.>biggest ever Aussie plane crash with all of 28 people killed and it was almost 70 years ago>compared with the multitude of disastrous burger airline disasters that have killed thousands in the ensuing decadesReally makes you think.
they would have used an altimeter like this
>>18736836Crikey, m8.
Airline travel is safer today with better weather predictor systems and fewer war vet pilots who take stupid risks.
>>18736878Ok rainman
>>18736968>fewer war vet pilots who take stupid risks.it's less that and more like autopilot now exists to make it easier for pilots to resist the urge to do retarded shit en route
>>18737264as anon said, surely it must also be cultural with American pilots insistence on not following rules. else Australia wouldn't have a vastly better airline safety record if the OP was the biggest airline accident in the country's history and it caused less than 30 fatalities 66 years ago.
>>18736840>It was a moonlight winter night with atechnically speaking late fall in the Southern Hemisphere with the first day of winter being June 21
>>18737274>OP was the biggest airline accident in the country's history and it caused less than 30 fatalities 66 years ago.This is more like a numbers game, since airliners typically have over 200 passengers. It's more like, most domestic flights in Australia for most of its history consisted largely of small pond-hoppers and not larger regional jets until more recently
>>18737276Australia counts seasons by months, so they consider June 1 the first day of winter, not the 21st.
>>18736836>The first Fokker Friendship, tail number VH-TFB, ordered outside of Europe was accepted by TAA in April 1959 andThe Friendships were accepted at the Fokker plant in the Netherlands and flown to their home country. How many refueling stops did that take for a little turboprop plane anyway? That's about as physically distant from Australia as it's possible to be.
>>18737274>a country with the busiest airspace on Earth has more aviation accidents than a backwater with the population of Floridaamazing observation Mr. Darwin
>>18737264the Southern Airways 242 crash in '77 happened when the pilots thought flying through a thunderstorm cell was actually a good idea
>On 6/10/60 (the same day as the TAA crash) a Soviet Il-14 on a domestic passenger flight from Rostov-on-Don to Tblisi, Georgia crashed in the Tkvarcheli district, resulting in the demise of all 31 persons aboard. The crash was a combination of an inexperienced crew flying a difficult route, pilot error, and air traffic control error. The Il-14, a twin-engine propeller plane, crashed into Mt. Rech, broke in half, and tumbled down the mountainside.[8]Getting on a Russian airliner is perilous. There have been major Aeroflot accidents every year of its existence.
>>18736868>Australia became the first country to require cockpit voice recorders, now a standard feature in commercial airliners around the world (the United States did not require them until 1966).correctly speaking, CVRs were mandated on American airliners starting in 1964 with airlines given 2-3 years to fit all their planes with them
>The deadliest civil aviation accident of 1960 happened when United Airlines 826, a DC-8, and TWA 266, a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation collided in mid-air over New York City on December 16. TWA 266 fell in Staten Island while UAL 826 fell in Brooklyn. All 128 persons aboard both planes died and six on the ground. It was the first fatal accident involving the DC-8, which had entered service just one year earlier. UAL 826's right wing collided with TWA 266's fuselage just ahead of the wings, tearing a hole in the side and causing it to plummet to earth. The #4 engine and part of the wing on the DC-8 were torn off. It remained airborne for 90 seconds until crashing at the intersection of 7th Avenue and Sterling Place.>This was one of the earliest civil aviation accidents in which the flight data recorder was used for analysis. The Civil Aeronautics Board ruled that flawed ATC procedures had ultimately been the cause of the disaster. One passenger, 11 year old Steve Baltz, was ejected alive from UAL 826, his clothing on fire, but the blaze was extinguished when he fell into a pile of snow. Baltz sustained severe burns and chemical pneumonia from inhaling fumes, resulting in his death the next day.
>>18737420>The red paint marks found on the No. 4 engine at the compressor inlet were of the same material as the paint used on the TWA Constellation. Human remains and Constellation cabin insulation material were removed from the diffuser case of No. 4.>yfw a passenger on the Constellation was literally ripped out and sucked into the DC-8 engine when the planes collidedOh...god.
>>18737290That's because they don't have real seasons so they can just play pretend
>>18738047it's similar to SoCal where there's a warm, rainless summer and a mild, wet winter
>>18737420Jet airliners were just entering service in 1960 and this accident also demonstrated that jet fuel burns hotter than aviation gas. There wasn't that much of fire in the Constellation wreckage, but the DC-8 was extensively destroyed by fire.
>>18738060All Constellations ever built had been completed and shipped by 1958, the plane was obsolete by '60 as jet liners were coming into use but obviously many of them flew for many years afterward; the US military apparently had some in service into Reagan's first term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_F27_Friendship#Accidents_and_incidentsTAA 538 was the first accident involving a Fokker Friendship. Two accidents involved New Zealand planes. The rest were all Third World airlines.
