A Qantas Airbus A330 partially ripped up a newly relaid runway at Perth International Airport on Sunday afternoon as it was taking off for Singapore, prompting an emergency diversion for an aircraft that was due to land on the same runway.
A spokesperson for Perth Airport confirmed that the main runway was only partially operational following the incident, although it’s not known how long it might take to get the runway fully up and running again.
The incident occurred at around 12:15 pm as Qantas flight QF71 was powering up its engines to start its takeoff roll for the five-hour flight to Singapore. The moment that the asphalt was torn from the ground was caught on camera by planespotters, who captured the Qantas aircraft taking off.
The 21-year-old Airbus A330 with up to 271 passengers onboard departed as normal and landed in Singapore without incident. The aircraft is already en route back to Perth where it is expected to land at around 12:20 am.
Perth Airport as two runways – the main runway, which is known as 03/21 is 3,444 metres long and is used to accommodate widebody aircraft. The part of the runway that was torn up was at the end of 03.
The other runway, which is known as 06/24 is much shorter at just 2,163 metres long.
A Boeing 747-8 freighter aircraft operated by Silkway was due to land on runway 03 immediately after the Qantas A330 had taken off but with the extent of the damage not immediately clear, the pilots decided to divert the aircraft to Adelaide.
looks like whomever the contractor was that did the job did a very bad job of laying down the new surface – can’t exactly blame the plane for what happened