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A tiny insect that has escaped Australia’s strict biosecurity checks is multiplying and threatening the safety of planes at Brisbane airport, CNN reports.
Coming from Central and South America and the Caribbean, this wasp species caused problems at the airport in 2013, when it forced an Etihad Airways A330 plane bound for Singapore to return to the airport after a few minutes.
Once on the ground, maintenance workers found the pilot’s pitot tube – the instrument outside the plane that measures airspeed – almost completely blocked by mud, according to a report from the Australian Bureau of Transportation Safety. .
For wasps, Pitot tubes are the perfect cavity in which a nest can be built quickly. The Etihad plane was on the runway just two hours before the troubled flight.
Alan House, an ecologist at Eco Logical Australia, worked with experts from Brisbane Airport, Australian airline Qantas and environmental consultancy Ecosure to produce one of the world’s first studies on the impact of wasps on Pitot tubes. Commissioned by Brisbane Airport Corporation, the study was published this week in the journal PLOS ONE.
The researchers say that without proper management, there is a risk of wasps reaching other Australian airports and even neighboring countries with the right semi-tropical conditions for them to thrive.
“When we did some basic research, we realized that this wasn’t just an inconvenience and that this could also lead to serious accidents,” House said.
Mounted in the front of the aircraft, Pitot tubes perform the important task of sending information into the cabin about the speed at which air is moving through them. This shows the speed at which the plane is moving: if it goes too slow and there is a risk of blocking, if it goes too fast, there could be other failures.
When the pitot tubes fail, the A330 automatically switches to manual mode, forcing pilots to take control. This is what happened with the Etihad flight and this led to the return of the pilots to the airport.
There were no serious incidents at Brisbane airport due to the wasps, but other incidents were related to the insect.
For example, Birgenair Flight 301 crashed off the coast of the Dominican Republic in February 1996. 189 passengers and crew members died. The investigation into the incident revealed a “probable cause” of the pitot tube blockage “mud and / or debris from a small insect” that entered the tube while the plane was on the ground.
In 2018, the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) issued a warning to the country’s pilots, airlines and airports about the dangers posed by wasps. Blocking the Pitot tubes could cause total loss of airspeed and altitude gauges, which would be “dangerous,” according to the warning.
CASA advised airlines to cover Pitot tubes while waiting at Brisbane airport. However, it’s not mandatory, which is why freezes still occur. In total, 26 incidents were reported between November 2013 and April 2019, according to the Brisbane Airport study.
Publisher: Monica Bonea
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