Sun 30 Jun Start of a four-day Domestic trip (Sydney-Perth-Melbourne-Perth-Sydney). First Officer a nice bloke I’ve flown with before. I normally give away the International sectors to the F/O however, with none on trips like this I usually ask them which sectors they would like to do—it gives me an indication of how much thought and preparation they have put in for the trip. He indicated he had no preference (no thought) so I opted to do the first two which left him with the remaining two. Very wet in Sydney which led to some delays with a box seat sitting waiting for our take-off clearance at intersection Foxtrot Runway 16R. Some footage of the Qantas 127, an A380 (ugly…) to Hong Kong during its take-off run. The flight was shaping up to be very standard with nothing exciting until about one hour after departure. We received a call from the cabin indicating that one of the cabin crew had found out that a passenger possibly had inadvertently loaded some lithium batteries in to their checked in baggage. The passenger was a photo journalist and had all their camera gear with them which was what prompted the cabin crew member to enquire about the batteries. Lithium batteries are classified a Dangerous Good and there are limitations on their carriage. In particular they are allowed to be carried on ones person in the cabin but aren’t allowed to be packed in luggage. This is because they have a history of possibly causing fires. By now we were abeam Melbourne and heading towards the Great Australian Bight. Some thorough research in our on-board manuals confirmed that they were prohibited from carriage however the references were for larger batteries than the ones we were dealing with. I sent the F/O out to talk directly with the passenger to get information first hand on the type and number of batteries as well as how they were packed. In the meantime, I slowed the aircraft down to minimum speed (from M0.82 to M0.71, a reduction of about 60 knots). There was a possibility we would have to land and I didn’t want to rocket past Melbourne and Adelaide out over a long stretch of very cold water full of big sharks. With the information from the passenger, we contacted our Ops Centre via satellite phone and were connected to the duty dangerous goods specialist. She confirmed that the batteries shouldn’t be in the baggage hold but felt that the risk of a fire was low particularly if they were packed separately. We didn’t have information on how they were packed as the passenger didn’t pack the bag; it was done by a colleague, hmmm… I indicated that even a low risk was not good and that we would be diverting to land if we couldn’t confirm the packing details. The F/O went back to get more info from the passenger whilst in the meantime I prepared for a landing at Adelaide by getting weather and loading the Flight Management Computer with an amended route and destination. We were now 80 miles past Adelaide heading out over water when the F/O came back with some good news, the passenger had shown him the batteries she had which were the same as those packed. The terminals were fully recessed in a plastic housing and had no chance of accidental contact with metal. This reduced the risk dramatically and therefore decided to continue. The whole process took just over an hour and certainly made the day interesting. We submitted an Air safety Incident Report on arrival, as is the requirement for events like this. I also called the flight attendant to the flight deck and thanked them for their professional vigilance and a ‘well done’. He left beaming…
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 03:05:17 +0000
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