6月10日澳航380空中失控急坠10秒
民航消息：6月10日，澳大利亚航空（QANTAS）从洛杉矶飞往墨尔本的QF94航班在太平洋上空遭遇涡流，机上数百名乘客经历了长达十秒钟“俯冲”的惊魂时刻。
据悉，这一戏剧性的危险场面主要是由另一架澳航飞机造成的“尾流湍流”引起的。
乘客Janelle Wilson透露，这架“载客四分之三”的飞机从洛杉矶起飞不到两小时，突然遭遇强烈的湍流，随后失控翻转，猛然向海洋俯冲长达10秒钟。
Wilson形容当时的感觉就像坐过山车一样，乘客瞬间被从座位上抬起来又直直摔下去。“飞机下坠时我感觉胃里翻江倒海，我尖叫着握住邻座女士的手，只能这样等着，一度以为飞机就要坠毁了。那真的太可怕了”
幸运的是，这架核载484人的飞机最终并无人受伤。航班于周二早上8点安全降落墨尔本，比原定时间晚点半小时。
根据SKYbrary飞行安全专家的说法，另一架飞机飞行中产生的尾涡引起了严重湍流，而这这两架澳航航班之间没有留出足够的飞行间隔。
然而，澳航发言人坚称，他们并没有违反飞行间隔标准，这两架A380飞机在1000英尺的飞行高度上相隔有20海里。
Passengers have described the terrifying moment a vortex sent their Qantas flight into a 10-second “nosedive.”
Hundreds of horrified travelers held hands believing they were about to die as the aircraft suddenly dropped over the Pacific Ocean on Sunday.
The dramatic ordeal afflicting passengers on the QF94 from Los Angeles to Melbourne is understood to have been caused by the vortex, or “wake turbulence” caused by another aircraft which took off just two minutes earlier.
QF94 passenger Janelle Wilson told The Australian the “three-quarters-full” plane suddenly entered a “free fall nosedive … a direct decline towards the ocean” for about 10 seconds.
“It was between 1½ and two hours after we left LA and all of a sudden the plane went through a violent turbulence and then completely up-ended and we were nosediving,” Wilson told the newspaper yesterday.
“We were all lifted from our seats immediately and we were in a free fall. It was that feeling like when you are at the top of a rollercoaster and you’ve just gone over the edge of the peak and you start heading down.
“It was an absolute sense of losing your stomach and that we were nosediving. The lady sitting next to me and I screamed and held hands and just waited but thought with absolute certainty that we were going to crash. It was terrifying.”
Thankfully nobody onboard the aircraft, with a seating capacity of 484, was injured.
The QF12 flight took off from Los Angeles at 11:27 p.m. Sunday night, 57 minutes behind schedule. While the QF94 service, which departed at 11:29 p.m., 49 minutes late, landed safely but 30 minutes late in Melbourne at 8 a.m. on Tuesday.
According to flight safety experts at SKYbrary, wake vortexes cause severe turbulence, which is generated by the passage of another aircraft in flight. Basically, there is not sufficient separation between the flights.
However, a Qantas spokeswoman told The Australian there had been no breach of separation standards because the two A380 aircrafts were understood to be apart by 20 nautical miles and 1,000 feet in altitude.