‘I’M LUCKY TO BE ALIVE
THE ILL-FATED QF72 INJURED 119 PASSENGERS AND ALMOST COST CAROLINE HER LIFE
It is the terrifying worstcase scenario every air traveller fears – a mid-air crisis leading to a potentially deadly outcome. Yet, on October 7, 2008, the now infamous Qantas flight 72 from Singapore to Perth managed to avoid such a tragedy thanks to the expert skills of its captain, Kevin Sullivan.
Speaking to Channel 7’s Sunday Night, he says: “I made the assessment that we were in trouble and I’ve never used those terms in any situation prior to that in my extreme flying career.”
The apparently state-of-theart Airbus was travelling over the Indian ocean when the on-board computer system went, in Kevin’s words, “psycho” and plunged 200 metres in 20 seconds.
Passengers and crew members in the cabin who weren’t strapped into seats crashed into the ceiling, where they remained until the captain levelled the plane. But then the rogue computer system overrode the captain’s controls, causing the plane to violently nosedive again.
Caroline Southcott was on board the ill-fated plane, travelling home from a holiday with her husband Bruce - who worked as a flight services manager for Qantas.
While Bruce was belted in his seat, Caroline had just returned from the toilet when the plane plunged.
“I remember getting hit on the head with the plane and I just went bang and before I could think, bang again and then the third bang I blacked out and I could feel my feet come up from under me,” she tells Sunday Night. “And after the third time that hit me on the head I pretty much was knocked out.”
When the plane levelled, for a few moments Caroline remained in place, dangling with her head trapped in the broken cabin ceiling made of hard, aviation grade plastic. When she finally dropped down, she hit the armrest.
“Then I realised that all my bones were clicking in my back and I realised that there was something terribly wrong, very wrong. I couldn’t get up at all, I couldn’t move my legs at all.”
A fellow passenger picked Caroline up and put her back in her seat where she remained in agonising pain, with a broken back. “I was really worried my bones were going to go through my spinal cord, so I had to hold myself up on the armrest for, I think, it must have been 45-50 minutes,” she recalls on the show.
“Prior to that, I’ve never had pain so it was a matter of life or death, it was a matter of, ‘suck it up princess’.”
She realised her left foot was facing backwards and with incredible bravery, pulled her ankle forward, rotated and clicked it back into place.
“I think there was no choice, it was fight or die,” Caroline tells the TV audience.
With a plane full of critically injured passengers, many like Caroline requiring urgent medical attention, Kevin had to try to land the crippled Airbus A330 entirely by hand, and with the possibility of the computer trying to wrestle back control at any moment.
Incredibly, Kevin managed to land safely at the remote Learmonth airstrip on the north-west coast of Western Australia.
Recalling the moment, Bruce tells Sunday Night: “Everyone clapped. Kevin’s job was outstanding under what I believe would be immense pressure.”
But despite surviving the frightening ordeal, Caroline’s fight to stay alive was far from over as she was airlifted to Perth and rushed into emergency surgery with a broken back.
“You are initially thinking about what’s post-injury going to be like? How is she going to walk – and will she walk?” Bruce said.
But then he was told to prepare for the worst. “They [the doctors] said ‘well, what we’re saying here is her survival is in doubt.’ And that’s when you do freak.”
In hospital, Caroline died six or seven times while on the operating table but somehow, she survived the complex surgery that saved her life. She explains doctors used biological cement and bone from her hip to replace her vertebrae.
“It’s not a 100 per cent, but it’s better than it was,” she says.
More than a decade on from that traumatic experience, Caroline, who now lives with Bruce in Queensland, admits her story is miraculous.
“I’m lucky to be here alive.”