QF32: The Passenger Experience In The Cabin

On the then 4th 2010, QF-32 was in the air over Singapore just 4 minutes when an explosion rocked the Airbus A380. On the flight deck, 5 pilots, including myself, are piecing together what happened and trying to safely land this flight, but in the cabin there's a mix of fear and confusion. I'm Richard DeCrepney and this is Fly. In this episode, I think those were almost the hardest moments for a lot of people because we were not sure why we couldn't leave the airplane. QF-32 passenger of Wash Bash relives his experience in the cabin that day, documenting the damage and flight crew response and later disfelling myths and rumors while speaking with global media. It was my pleasure today on the Fly podcast to welcome a great friend, Ulf Wash Bash, who was a passenger on flight QF-32. Welcome Ulf and what seat were you in? Thank you so much for having me, it's really great to see you again, Richard. I was in, forgot which number it was, but I was sitting right next to the number 2 engine that exploded. Economic class, lower floor, it must have been real 50 something I suppose, and I was sitting right on that edge where the incident happened. And I was sitting up the front on the left hand side, we both had a left hand view, right. Now can you tell us a bit about yourself? Sure, so my name is Ulf, I'm a very global citizen, I was born and grew up in Germany, my mom's from Turkey, so I was always kind of a person of international background. I did my university in the States, so I lived almost 10 years in California, I did Berkeley for undergrad, Stanford for grad school, got my MBA, worked at a couple of companies that people know from Google to my space. So I've always been in the tech space and product management, and now for the last 15 years I've been living across Asia. So I just moved to Singapore shortly before QF32, worked as a CPO in a company called Sia or Garina over there. What is CPO? A CPO is a chief product officer, so somebody who comes up in new tech product ideas, designs, features, and prioritizes what needs to be built and done. Right, and heavily into communications, right? So yes, and I always been an aviation geek, so that led me to this very Facebook site. Why were you on the flight? So it's interesting. It was my first time going to Australia, so I just moved from the US, grew up in Europe, moved to the US, lived in 10 years, almost my first time in Asia. And I thought, oh my god, I want to go to Australia, I've never been. And this flight in particular was interesting to me, because it would have been my first A380 flight. It was a really good mix as an aviation geek to say, okay, I want to be on this great new airplane and in this great new location that I haven't been to. So I booked a trip to go to Sydney, Melbourne, even over to Auckland, and well, didn't quite make it at that point, but later on I did. Now correct me if I'm wrong, you were taking pictures of the 380 from the terminal, weren't you? I was. Saying you're looking forward to getting on the 380, so you had a high expectations. I had very high expectations, and back then, Twitter was still a thing. So I posted on Twitter that I was very excited. My first time on the A380 and my first time going to Australia, it was a very kind of tweet out of excitement, which later turned into a meme when things didn't quite work out so well. But it's an interesting thing, because it really led to a lot of media attention. And they were looking for passengers on this flight, and it's based on this tweet that I was found by a lot of media outlets. Now can you take us back to the 14th of November 2010, the moment you boarded QF32? What was on your mind before takeoff, were you filming it? I was. It was pure excitement. I was in awe by the sheer size of the A380. Of course I was very excited right at the start when we were lifting off, because as you were very well aware, the airplane has a very, very different takeoff than other smaller airplanes. You barely notice it as a passenger, from a passenger experience that you're into the ear. You barely hear it. So it's a very serene experience, and I wanted to capture it on film. And it was also kind of the time before people were using their cell phones on board, electronic devices got to be off. So I was just using my camera and taking pictures, there was nothing else to do but look outside, and that's what I did. And it's a pleasurable time because we only use as much power as we need, so the engines actually aren't working that hard on the takeoff. And in fact, the minimum climb thrust we would use after takeoff is more than the takeoff thrust. So the engines were quieter on the runway than they would be later on. And in fact, one of the passengers on board that flight thought that when the engine later exploded, he thought we were still on the ground, he thought we'd hit a bottle on the runway. So yes, the expectations are high to smooth takeoff, everything's looking really good. Now, when the explosion occurred, what are your recollections? Oh, that was the weirdest thing and very hard to describe because I was looking outside. I mean, again, it was a time where people were not playing with their phone 24/7. This was few minutes off the lift off, we're still climbing, five minutes out. So I was looking outside, taking in the sides, and I saw this explosion happen right in front of me. I saw pieces fly out of that wings upwards with my own eyes. And Richard, it was the weirdest thing because I didn't actually believe it. I didn't consciously realize this was happening. It felt like in flight entertainment to me at that moment when I saw it. So you were looking outside at the wing when it opened up? Absolutely. I was looking right outside at the wing, because I was sitting right over that wing. I was trying to look outside into the environment. And I just saw it happen right in the very moment while I was looking outside. It was very fast. And I just saw some blurry thing shooting upwards. I can't really describe what it was, but I saw like a blur coming up. Up from that wing, with a short set of flames for just a second, a very brief, very brief moment. And of course, then, then it was this man-sized hole you could actually see in the wing right where I was sitting with the metal bend sideways. And again, it took me at least a minute to realize that this is real and this is actually happening. Because here's the thing, nobody else where I was sitting was looking outside. We heard a little bang. It was a minor shake, but really not something major. A lot of people haven't even realized what happened at that moment. So I was sitting there by myself thinking, "Oh my God, what did I just see? Is this real? Is this happening?" So it took me really a long time to kind of consciously realize what I've just noticed and seen. And you saw what very few people saw, and in fact I, in the front, we never saw it. You saw the flash of flame coming out of the fuel tank. Yes. I guess that must have been India. Because there was a flash of fire in the fuel tank and the fuel tank had 20,000 kilograms of fuel in it. Fire and jet fuel don't go well in a fuel tank. But in fact, what Airbus does is they inject nitrogen into the fuel tank to lean out the mixture of oxygen so it doesn't combust. So there was a flash. It quickly went out. It's very brief. Yes. Very brief. But very few people saw it. But it's certainly not a good feeling. If the fire had persisted, that would have taken us on a very different trajectory. So you were right there, that you were not filming at that time, were you, when they exploded? I was not filming. This was, you know, I filmed just the take-off, which took us two minutes. And then, you know, I stopped filming, I was just looking outside and taking in the sides at that moment. When that as explosions occurred, what was the mood and the people next to you or around you? Nothing. Richard, there was nothing. People were not reacting to it. It was very interesting. You would think people would panic or would be in shock, but barely any notice. Keep in mind, it is a very large airplane. So if you're not sitting on that left side, you have no idea what just happened. If you haven't looked outside, you have no idea what just happened. Unless you later check and happen to be in that area over the wing on either floor. So I think a lot of people only realized after you made a speech that something is actually going wrong or seriously wrong. But yeah, there was no reaction from passengers next to me. Do you remember the cabin crew, what they did, what their reactions were? Yes, cabin crew was very professional. You could not see in their eyes that something really bad has happened. Then we're not showing signs of distress or panic, quite the opposite. Michael came through and he actually talked to several people to calm them down personally, like row by row and explained that everything will be all right and that you guys are working on the cockpit and setting the airplane up for landing. He had a very calm demeanor, which was very, very helpful. A very happy demeanor as well. He was smiling, was calm. I mean, really he played this role beautifully in calming the cabin down, at least the area where I was sitting in. Well, you're probably being so calm because Michael is also a German and he was very confident and he absolutely did a remarkable job. We have interviewed Michael for this podcast. There's another podcast with Michael talking about it and he complements the passengers and you see, we couldn't talk to Michael through the intercom, it was broken. So we just had to trust that Michael knew what he had to do and he did of course. He left us alone. We left him alone. He took care of the cabin crew and they looked after you and the reason I've focused in on this is I really think that in a crisis, the first thing you have to do is to prepare for it. So all the cabin crew were prepared, they weren't expecting the explosion that day but when it happened, they clicked into the required action, they formed their teams and they looked after you. It has to be commented that I'm particularly proud of the cabin crew that day and I hope you are too. I am. I wholeheartedly have to agree with you because the crew had a certain level of seniority to themselves, didn't know how to behave in a situation. They must have trained for it. Like I said, even in junior crew did not show panic, did not show a face of distress or fear, which really helped. I mean, it calmed down everyone around if you have the feeling that, oh, there's professionals in charge and they're okay, so we will be okay. Maybe one quick anecdote that I found funny is Michael actually made an announcement in German through the field as well. So that was very odd for me sitting there thinking I'm flying from Singapore to Sydney on an Australian plane. Why is German being spoken on here? This is weird, but you know, it calmed everyone down even in his native tongue. So that was good. He was speaking it up to five languages that day. It really cannot go uncommitted again, just how incredible Michael was on the flight that day. Was there any time that you thought you wouldn't, weren't going to make it? Yes, but that happened much later. So my thought was, hey, you know, scene something terrible, you guys are going to prepare to land and we'll be all right. After it took about an hour and we were not landing, that feeling set in that there's something more wrong than I'm aware of at that very moment, you know, I wasn't aware of all the hydraulic problems and everything you were facing, I could only see what I saw. And to me, it was like, wow, why are we not landing? This is bad. We should be landing. What are we doing up in the air still? So there was that moment where it set in where I'm not sure I thought I wasn't making it, but I was starting to become worried at that moment that things might be more wrong than I anticipated in the beginning. Well, you pulled out your phone again and you started recording and you recorded a few things. Yeah. Yes. So I have kind of recorded what I saw out that window, you know, the bent metal, we were flying past the clouds and you could see the wing behaving all right, considering everything we went through, but that the scene of the bent metal and the large hole right at my seat. And also some of the announcement that you and your colleagues were making that just happened to come over the PO at that time. That's right. I do remember saying to all the passengers, we'll be landing in 45 minutes. But just before I said that, David said, there's no solution. We can't land. I didn't know how we're going to do it, but I've worked out that between the five pilots we'd be able to work it out. And I told you it would take 45 minutes. And it probably took a bit over an hour more. You know, Richard, I'm just glad you didn't tell us the truth at that very moment that we're not aware how to land this thing. That would have caused a lot of distress back in the cabin, I can tell you. Well, I told the passengers, the Klaus von Rieth, the cabin service manager, because that was a name on the manifest for the airplane. That's his formal name that he would look after the passengers and they must obey him. And when I finished, Michael thought that no, I hadn't done a very good job. People were fierce and so he said, I have to correct a few things. I'm not the cabin service director, I'm the manager. And my name is not Klaus, it's Michael. So he actually had people laughing, I believe, in the cabin, is that right? Yes. I noticed that. I remember it now. Did you mention it? Yes. So really, in terms of the crisis management, he's doing everything right and you'll come. You've got doubts, but you come. And then we get on to the runway and Michael makes an announcement, he's after, he was actually prepared for an evacuation, he had been warned two minutes beforehand that we might run off the runway and there'd be an evacuation. And when we landed, he made a public address that said, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Singapore, the 4th November at 1130, when it wasn't that a nice landing. So was that your perception that all the public address messages were calm and it kept the passengers calm? They did. And this one gave the biggest chuckle to everyone because he made, you know, your typical funny announcement, you just landed in Singapore, the temperature, so on, so whether the local time is. So everybody just had this feeling of, oh God, we made it. We're back on the ground. We're back when we started and everything's going to be all right. We landed on the runway because the engines didn't provide enough power. I don't know if the APU was working or not, but we had a power loss at some point after we've been on the ground. And we're in Singapore. It is getting very hot, it is getting very humid. And you know, people have been in fear, so people needed to go to the bathroom. And it's an anecdote I haven't told before, but the bathroom lights didn't work. People helped each other out. People kept the door ajar a little bit so they could see they might have turned on a light on their cell phone to, you know, to help out people who are inside. It was a very human moment where everybody was kind of in a situation where they needed help and they helped each other out. So it was an interesting experience of, you know, somebody going to the bathroom, somebody else keeping the door a little bit of the jar so they could see what's going on. I think those were almost the hardest moments for a lot of people because we were not sure why we couldn't leave the airplane, why we were taking a longer time to leave the airplane. And to hear the humidity that was creeping up, it didn't help. So I think the atmosphere on board got a little bit worse at that moment. I think you discuss in the humanity when people are in stress is very potent. And it's wonderful that when people were stressed that way that they chose to be polite, courteous and helpful to everyone around them because panic and spread like a virus, but clearly everyone's still doing the right thing on the ground and helping each other. Yes, the auxiliary power unit in the tail had failed. It actually was running, but the generators wouldn't come online and the compress there that would run the air conditioning, all those pipes were broken, so we had no air conditioning. Now we kept the doors closed, which would have stressed you when it was hot inside the aircraft. But if we opened the doors, we wouldn't be able to use the emergency slides to get out if there was a problem. So we kept the doors closed, which made it hot. So that in case there was a fire, we quickly opened the doors, a slide that would come out and we'd get you off the aircraft in about 40 seconds. And the passengers were, they were not happy and they told me because I walked around the cabin and I said, we're looking, we're trying to keep you alive, you're safer here. So I acknowledge it was super hot. You did. I very much remember you're walking through the cabin and actually doing this. So no, it was the right call. I'm just saying from a standpoint of, you know, humanity standpoint and the standpoint that we've always been on this plane for a couple of hours already, people were just getting tired. They were just hoping to get out at that point. Now I remember telling the passengers to be prepared for the media and there was a lot of media outside when you left the terminal, wasn't there? It was an interesting time where the media was still very heavily into investigative journalism. So the media picked up my tweet that I was about to be on this plane because I posted on going to be on this plane for the very first time in Q32. They found me, they called up my employer, they called up my family, they called up my friends just to find out how they can reach me and what my phone number would be. As soon as I was on the ground and I was flying alone, I wasn't flying with anybody else, I had one call after another, just coming in, one after another. And I picked up, it was, you know, here CNN would love to patch you through to a station and Atlanta, if you have a couple of minutes, we're going to do it right away. Here's NBC, here's El Jazeera, here, one after another called. And the reason why I picked up and the reason why I kept telling the story was because I needed a way to process what just happened. I was time zones away from my family, they didn't know what happened. I was, time zones away from my friends in America, they didn't know what happened. This was my way traveling alone to cope with that situation. I was retelling the story 50 times over to various news outlets, none of which I contacted, none of which I met in person, they just called me in that terminal, one after another, in that time that we've been there. It was my own psychological way of dealing with the situation. I felt better retelling that story, which allowed me to process it better. I think if I just sat there by myself for those three hours, I would have struggled more. And remember that time, the TV screens in the lounge where we went to back in the terminal were showing images of an aircraft crashing, people were calling up from the family saying, we thought you were dead, the mood in the terminal was going down. You actually, in transmitting simple facts, I think you appreciated just how important it is to get the facts out and not to let the media go overboard with terrible, terrible things. If it blades at Lades, they would have loved a terrible story. You actually helped take control of that. In a way, I mean inadvertently, but by telling the facts, by telling that we're all right, by telling the story of what happened, but nobody got harmed, nobody died, nobody got injured, I think it really re-framed the earlier stories of what happened when we were in the air, when parts of, then the cell fell onto the island of Batam. There were stories going out that, you know, the plane might have crashed, stock prices were going wild. I mean, it was a lot of hearsay, but not a lot of facts. And I think I brought it a little bit back to reality after we landed, by giving our first hand experience of, you know, what the crew did, what the behavior of the plane was. And you know how the passengers reacted, and they were all okay, and they were all right. And then you became even more busy with all the different investigations they wanted your videos. Yes. You were a hot commodity for many, many months, everyone wanted your videos. They did. And I never, you know, for me, it was just a way of helping out. I never made money off of any of them. It's bad karma, in my opinion, to do so. I just felt good telling the story, sharing the facts, making sure people know and conceive their own eyes, what happened. It was just a way of saying, okay, let's keep it real, something terrible happened. But there was incredible professional behavior from the whole crew, from you guys in the cockpit and in the back, in managing the situation very professional. And that it was a great airframe, I have to say as well. I'm not sure if in a 30 year older model, you would have been, you know, in the same situation that we have been, but it's just very modern airframe. So I really wanted to just tell these facts, and that was important to me. I think if we had lost a few more whys, it could have been a different outcome. But your videos actually were used by the transport safety bureau. They helped. We're getting the facts out. And the transport safety bureau released many facts very quickly. And from the communications perspective, the ATSB, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau released facts as they knew it, and they shut down the innuendo and the rumours and speculation. So you were actually part of a change in the way people report accidents. And you're a great help in that regard. Do you think having those photographs was a coping mechanism after the incident? Did you suffer post-traumatic stress at all? I feared I would. So my way of dealing with it was twofold. One was retelling that story many times over. It really helped me in that very moment, in the first few hours after the incident. And the second one was, I forced myself back onto an A380, because I thought, okay, you're living in Singapore now. It's a little island in the middle of nowhere. If you're not getting on an airplane, you're really screwed, you're not getting anywhere. So I booked an A380 flight, I think it was on Singapore Airlines to Hong Kong at the time. Just, you know, the next one I could find a week later, and hopped on an A380, just so I can tell myself it's going to be all right. This is not an incident that keeps happening over and over. It was one of those things where I thought, okay, go in the same airframe again, try it one more time, and that might help you not become fearful of flying enough, this is specific type, et cetera. So were you afraid on that next take off? In a very moment? Yes. In that very moment, yes, I am not, I'm not a religious person, but I did a little prayer on that first take off just making sure the first few minutes go all right. But no, over time, it was something where I'm not fearful anymore, thankfully. I mean, the statistics work in our favor. We all know there are not as many incidents that people might believe. A bad incidents have a very strong message, and they create fear in people. But if you're looking statistically, and if you're looking at the facts, it's still to see for small to travel. You would be a great person to interview anytime there's an incident in aviation. You know, facts will always lead. Did the experience change how you view risk or resilience in everyday life? Has it changed you? It changed me a little bit in terms of living life today, rather than tomorrow. Even though I didn't fear necessarily that we would not make it out alive, that thought came back later and thought, you know what? After I saw the reports, also read the incident reports, learned how much has actually gone wrong. More than I knew on that very day, I thought, oh my God, yes, this could have actually ended up very differently. So don't just plan for the future, don't just save and hope for a better future, live today as well. Just make everyday count. Do you have any comments off that you'd like to say to the other pilots or the cabin crew or to the emergency services? There were about eight teams, there were eight fire trucks that surrounded us and protected us. Do you have any comments for all those people that you saw that came to help us that day? I think everybody did a magnificent job, honestly. I loved how you didn't have ego in the cockpit. I mean, you were five pilots in the cockpit on that day, right? It's a lot of people, check captains, check in check captains, like there's a lot of folks in there with, I'm sure a lot of egos, with a lot of experience. And yet you didn't let that overcome you. You all worked together very professional. You were in charge, everybody respected that and everybody helped out and did their part. I think this is so crucial and important. If you look at other air disasters that have happened, where this communication broke, where that was not this very clear delineation of who does what and helping out and speaking up and when it needs to be spoken up, that really impressed me in terms of how you guys work together, how you're trained, how quantized operates as a company. So I mean, really cool to us to everybody there. I think one last funny story I had about the incident though was, you know, we left a luggage on board, everybody did and everybody complied with that, thankfully. So our hand luggage was on board. A few hours later, of course, that had to be returned to passengers. And the ground personnel in Singapore, I was sitting right next to that area where they wanted to return those items to passengers and they were struggling for a long, long time of how to do it. I was overhearing them, discussing how we're going to return those items, how are we going to find out who belongs, what belongs to whom, what are we going to do. And I as a passenger was walking up to them and explaining, oh, guys, just put them in a row and then let everyone come in one after another in a queue and we can just pick whatever item is ours and then leave on the other end again. So it was interesting I had to kind of help out a little bit in explaining what the process could be and returning those items. I've written in two books that I regard the passengers as one of the teams that protected the whole operation and the passengers, including you, of course, I think I'm proud of all the passengers the way they behave. They didn't try and take their luggage, they didn't use their phones on the aircraft. They, I'm really proud of them. And in fact, I'm proud of the ground staff because I believe, well, I'm not aware of a single passenger crying when they left the turtle Singapore facing the media. For this black swan event, this terrible event, when the media that wanted to say that "Quantus" allows a airline, Rolls-Royce-Make-A-Lines-A pilots were scared. You and your fellow passengers took control of the media and only gave them a good story. We came out, Quantus came up with a brand stronger after queue of 32 than they had before. And nobody told us to. We didn't get, you know, renumerated for telling a positive story. We really had a very positive experience in a very terrible moment in life. This could have ended up very much worse than it did. It was out of anybody's control, it was not your fault, it was nobody's fault. And I think every passenger realized that. I mean, if anything, I saw happy tears. I didn't see anybody crying, I didn't see anybody shouting, panicking, none of that during that whole incident on the board and even in the holding pen later on when we were on the ground. If you could give one piece of advice to people about facing the unexpected based on your experience on QF32, what would that advice be? Always look at the facts because we're all relying on technology on our daily life. We rely on technology to get us from A to B and these things are not built in a day. They're not designed in a day. This is the work of thousands of people over dozens of years, experience of thousands of people, experience of hundreds of thousands of hours flying on, you know, as captains, but also, you know, the airframe itself, the model itself. So there's a lot of really, really good experience in everything that happened. Look at the facts. Yes, things can go wrong. If I drive a car, it can go wrong. But don't just go out and panic, don't go out and blame. Look at the facts first. Try to understand what happened, why it happened so that in the future we can prevent anything like this happening ever again. Well, of Walshbush, as one of the 440 passengers on QF32 that day in 2010, you had a significant influence on the outcome of the flight. So I thank you very much. I thank you for sharing your experiences today on this podcast about resilience and I wish you the happiest flying experiences in future. And to spend a pleasure, thank you so much for having me on the podcast and for everything you've done on this flight and ever since then. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss future episodes of fly. And if you have a question about aviation or resilience, you can email me at [email protected]