August 21 
A "Discussion Paper" released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau shows the serious decline in light aircraft activity at OZ's secondary aerodromes

Of concern is the 58% drop in activity - less than half the movements of 1993 - at Parafield over a 10 year period up to 2002

Archerfield - whilst not recording as dramatic a fall - remains behind Parafield in movements and at the end of 2002 has the distinction of being last on the list for light aircraft activity

 August 17  (Rehashed from August 5^th Report)
A twin-engine Boeing 737-400 Qantas jet with 138 (126) passengers and crew on board was forced to make an emergency landing at Darwin airport after a bird strike

The captain declared a Mayday and shut down one engine and returned for a landing not long after departing Darwin for Cairns

"As it was climbing up out over the buildings we just heard a great big thumping noise ...there was a bright orange flash from the motor"


Click HERE for report of only 12 days ago

 August 15 
A 2-seat highly modified Australian designed and built Victa Air Tourer of 180hp impacted the ground approaching Camden airport in NSW

It appears from media reports that the aircraft may have had an engine failure on final - the female pilot -the only person on board did not survive

Victa Air Tourers were originally built with 100hp Continental engines which were later upgraded to 115hp Lycomings ...180hp will use twice the avgas consumption of the 100hp model!

 August 18 
Media reports have an Air Algerie Airbus A330 with 271 passengers on board with a nose wheel failure landing at Orly in Paris France

"The nose wheel support partly buckled and the aircraft came to a more sudden halt than it would normally have done, ending up tilting forward at an angle of just less than 10 degrees" - There were no injuries in this unusual incident - except maybe to the captains pride



Light aircraft have similar incidents on more frequent occasions due no doubt to the substantially greater numbers currently flying

Click HERE to view a recent News Desk report