Vietnam’s most serious civil aviation incidents in 2014 In this file photo, passengers get aboard a Vietnam Airlines plane at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City. Tuoi Tre Two near-collisions, a hijacking scare caused by a pilot pressing the wrong button, and loss of contact with air traffic control are among the most prominent incidents Vietnam’s civil aviation sector experienced in 2014. According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV), the sector suffered 311 incidents in total last year, 129 cases more than in 2013, due to a variety of reasons. Tuoi Tre News presents a flashback of six such occurrences. Contact with air traffic control lost On May 14, Vietnam Airlines flight VN1601 left Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City for Buon Ma Thuot in the Central Highlands province of Dak Lak. When preparing to land at Buon Ma Thuot Airport, the crew contacted the local air control station to ask for weather information, but there was no response. The plane, therefore, had to circle above the airport while waiting for contact to resume. Ten minutes later, the pilot was able to contact the station and safely land. A similar incident happened to a Jetstar Pacific plane when it was about to land at Vinh Airport in the central province of Nghe An on July 23. While the plane decreased altitude for landing, the crew contacted air traffic control repeatedly on the emergency frequency but there was no answer. The crew therefore had to climb while waiting to land. Contact was then resumed and the plane landed safely. In both cases the air traffic control staff had made a mistake and lost contact. Planes are seen standing on the tarmac at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre Plane brings passengers to wrong destination Instead of carrying about 200 passengers from Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi to Da Lat in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, a VietJet Air plane flew them to Cam Ranh in the south-central province of Khanh Hoa, upsetting the passengers of Flight VJ 8575 on June 19.   Cam Ranh and Da Lat are about 97km as the crow flies. The flight crew, the flight attendant group, the coordinator of VietJet Air and the section in charge of flight procedures at Noi Bai had failed to comply with the proper flight operation process. This was the first time that such an incident had occurred in the history of the Vietnamese aviation sector. For the incident, the Czech captain and Vietnamese crewmembers of the flight were suspended from duty, according to the CAAV. Passengers are shown getting aboard a VietJet Air aircraft in this file photo. Photo: Tuoi Tre Two near-collisions Incorrect flight instructions were behind a serious incident that took place at Da Nang International Airport in central Vietnam on the afternoon of June 27.   That day an intern air traffic controller named Truong Nguyen Quynh Anh instructed a Jetstar Pacific Airlines plane to take off from a runway on which a Vietnam Airlines airplane coming in from Ho Chi Minh City was still sitting. The pilot of the Vietnam Airlines plane concurrently informed the air traffic control station that his plane was still on the runway. Anh then canceled the take-off order for the Jetstar Pacific Airlines airplane four seconds later when the two aircraft were about 350 meters apart. For her mistake, the intern would not be granted an air control license for at least one year, the CAAV said. Meanwhile, Truong Nho Quang, the chief air traffic controller, who let an intern supervise the runway, had his aviation license and certificate revoked, according to the aviation authority. A similar case happened on October 29 when two Vietnamese aircraft, an Airbus A321 of Vietnam Airlines and a Mi 172/423 helicopter, narrowly avoided colliding with each other over Tan Son Nhat International Airport on October 29. At 11:41 am that day, when the Airbus was at an elevation of 1,000 feet (304.8 meters), the pilot detected a Mi 172/423 helicopter flying horizontally at the same height. A collision did not take place. According to the CAAV, the military air traffic controller had not complied with flight safety procedures and failed to coordinate with the civil traffic air controller at the airport when directing the helicopter’s flight path. A Vietnam Airlines plane about to take off is seen in this file photo. Photo: Tuoi Tre UPS failure causes airport blackout The unprecedented power outage that hit Vietnam’s largest airport – Tan Son Nhat – on November 20 took place because the uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems that power the Ho Chi Minh City Area Control Center (ACC) went offline. The power cut lasted for over an hour, from 11:05 am to 12:19 pm, and disabled the radar system that controls air traffic at the airport. The incident affected 92 flights, of which 54 were within the city’s Flight Information Region (FIR), when it began, according to the CAAV. Some of these flights landed at a nearby airport, while others had to continue circling while waiting to land. Meanwhile, a number of flights scheduled to take off during the outage had to be delayed. Four officials and a staffer considered responsible for the incident were suspended then. Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam chief Lai Xuan Thanh (C) is pictured at a media meeting in Hanoi on November 21, 2014. Photo: Tuoi Tre Pilot presses wrong button, prompting hijacking scare Anti-terrorism measures were deployed at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi on the evening of December 16 after a pilot mistakenly pressed the hijacking code button when asking for permission to make an urgent landing due to a pressure incident on his flight. After detecting that the pressure inside the plane had suddenly dropped, Czech captain Pechanec Marek of Flight VN1266, which was flying from Ho Chi Minh City to Vinh Airport in the central province of Nghe An, decided to make an urgent landing at Noi Bai. But instead of pressing the button for the emergency code (7700), he mistakenly pressed the button for the hijacking code (7500). As a result, units at the airport deployed measures to cope with a situation in which a plane had been hijacked by terrorists. The plane landed safely at the airport at 7:15 pm the same day amid the deployment of the airport’s security forces and facilities. The CAAV launched an investigation into the case, and on December 27, Lai Xuan Thanh, the aviation authority’s head, confirmed to the media that the Czech captain had made the mistake. It has yet to take any action against the captain as the aviation authority has not reached a conclusion on the incident, Thanh said. Passengers on Flight VN1266 are shown wearing oxygen masks when their plane flew to a lower altitude following a sudden drop in cabin pressure on December 16, 2014. Photo: Tuoi Tre Engine failure disrupts flights in Melbourne Flights were disrupted for about 40 minutes at Melbourne Airport in Australia on May 6 after an engine failure hit a Vietnam Airlines plane on the runway. At 10:50 am that day, when flight VN780 was preparing to depart the airport for Ho Chi Minh City, the crew found that the temperature of engine No. 2 was higher than the acceptable level. The pilot immediately suspended the flight and the aircraft was towed back from the runway to its parking area for inspection. All 180 passengers and the 13 crewmembers on board remained safe throughout the incident. Flights at the airport resumed at 11:30 am. TUOITRENEWS