An Air Asia Plane Accidently Flew to Melbourne, Instead of Malaysia

Providing further proof that literally no one has any idea what they're doing, it's been revealed that last year, an Air Asia pilot somehow flew from Sydney International Airport to Melbourne, instead of the flight's planned destination—Malaysia.

You'd think the pilot would have realised there was an issue, given a flight from Sydney to Melbourne takes about an hour—whereas a flight from Sydney to Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur takes almost nine. Also—I mean maybe this is being overly picky—but Melbourne is south of Sydney. Kuala Lumpur is north.

As it turns out though, pilots are essentially flying blind—they simply do exactly what the plane's internal navigation system tells them to. In the case of this Air Asia flight, the pilot entered the wrong coordinates into the Airbus 330's system, which meant the scheduled flight to Kuala Lumpur ended up in Victoria because he'd mistakenly programmed the plane to fly in that direction.

Why did this happen? Well, as a detailed report released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) explains, the pilot's headset was malfunctioning so he asked his second-in-command to conduct the pre-flight cockpit inspections and preparation procedures. Needless to say, the copilot did not do a great job at it.

The ATSB says the pilot error "adversely affected the onboard navigation systems however, despite a number of opportunities to identify and correct the error, it was not noticed until after the aircraft became airborne and started tracking in the wrong direction."

Worryingly, the report also found that the Airbus 330 "was not fitted with an upgraded flight management system that would have prevented the data entry error via either automated initialisation or automatic correction of manual errors." So, basically, this could easily happen again on other Air Asia flights.

Apparently realising that they were going in the wrong direction mid-flight, the report describes how the crew "attempted to troubleshoot and rectify the situation while under heavy workload." However, they actually just compounded the problem, because there were no established protocols for turning a plane around. They attempted to go back to Sydney and land the plane there, but bad weather conditions forced the plane to continue to Melbourne.

The report has some handy suggestions for airlines wishing to prevent this sort of thing happening in the future, suggesting equipment upgrades and more intensive pre-flight check procedures. The ATSB also suggested air traffic control get their shit together and provide more "effective monitoring and assistance" to flight crews.

By the way, the 212 passengers did eventually make it to Malaysia—but not before waiting around for three hours on the Sydney Airport tarmac.

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