By JOAN LOWY
Associated Press
WASHINGTON – Nobody trains for chaos like this. Out the pilots’ left window, far above the ocean, a jet engine as big as a bus had disintegrated, blasting shrapnel holes in the superjumbo’s wing. And now an overwhelming flood of computer alarms was warning the pilots that critical systems might be failing.
Two weeks after the pilots somehow landed their Qantas jetliner and its 450 passengers, their two-hour cockpit drama was described Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press by the vice president of the Australian and International Pilots Association.
“The amount of failures is unprecedented,” said Richard Woodward, a fellow Qantas A380 pilot who has spoken to all five pilots. “There is probably a one in 100 million chance to have all that go wrong.”