On August 1, a Qantas Boeing 747, flying to Melbourne from Hong Kong, made an emergency landing in Manila after having plunged several thousand feet following a freak accident on board.
A burst oxygen tank had damaged the plane's fuselage, leading to air from the pressurised cabin rushing into the cargo area. The drop in cabin pressure forced the pilots to plunge immediately to 6,000 metres where the atmospheric pressure was more conducive.
India has reason enough to worry, with an increasing number of people now flying, and with the national carrier Air India's fleet being full of Boeings. Ironically, the Qantas incident has only succeeded in reassuring flyers of the airworthiness of the 747s, which have a reputation of being the safest aircraft with only two crashes to date since they were launched in the 1970s.
The reaction among aviation experts is that one freak accident isn't enough to shake the faith in a line of aircraft that has proved its reliability for decades.
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