QZ8501 might have avoided disaster if equipped with weather radar device, report says

The daily said that the multiscan weather radar, unlike traditional radar which only picked up precipitation, could detect ice and hail – the key mark of thunderstorms.

Qantas became the first airline in 2002 to install the multiscan weather radar, which costs about A$250,000 (RM713,783) each, on its aircraft.

Although the device now comes as standard in most new aircraft including the Qantas fleet, many existing carriers, in particular, budget carriers such as AirAsia, have yet to install it.

Aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas told the Australian that installation of a multiscan radar was likely the difference between a safe manoeuvre and tragedy in last week’s disaster.

“Pilots treat thunderstorms with tremendous respect and they treat their radars with guarded caution,” said Thomas. “Radars are wonderful things, but they are not perfect.”

The multiscan radar negates the need for pilots to tilt radars manually in search of the base of storm fronts, a process that is cumbersome and leaves pilots open to large margins of error.

“The multiscan radar continually scans the base of thunderstorms. It then calculates for the pilot what the intensity and the height of thunderstorms will be, based on the moisture in the base of the thunderstorm,” manufacturer Rockwell Collins told the Australian.

The Australian reported that the QZ8501 crash last Sunday, in which 155 passengers and seven crew members died, was exceptional for two reasons.

It was most likely the result of a thunderstorm and the incident occurred at cruise elevation, at which only 10% of flight accidents occur, according to a study by Boeing published last August.

According to experts, the number of storm-related accidents has plummeted since the 1960s due to technological advances.

The multiscan weather radar can detect storms thousands of metres above the earth’s surface but was not fitted in QZ8501, which some experts believe may have contributed to the accident.

AirAsia chief executive Tan Sri Tony Fernandes has said it would be improper to speculate on the cause of the crash, but indicated it was weather-related.

“We cannot make assumptions about what went wrong,” he said on Tuesday. “All I can say is that the weather in Southeast Asia is bad at the moment.”