According to CNN, The Civil Aviation Safety Authority required
the Australia’s
national airline to analyze every single oxygen bottle in its fleet of Boeing
747s. The necessity came after investigators asserted that an exploding
cylinder might have made a hole in one of the planes while it was flying on
Friday.
Due to the mid-air blast, the Qantas flight had to make an
emergency landing in the Philippines.
No passenger was injured.
Australian authorities asked the country’s airline to check
oxygen bottles and the brackets that hold them in each of the 30 Boeing 747
that is part of Qantas' fleet. "It will be a visual inspection and it is a
precautionary step," said CASA spokesman Peter Gibson.
As maintained by the Australian Associated Press, the state
news agency believes that the rupture in the jumbo jet was caused by an exploding
oxygen cylinder, because there was no evidence of fire and the container had
been found where the explosion occured.
When the blast took place, the airplane was heading from London to Melbourne,
cruising at 8,800 meters with 346 passengers on board. The jet lost both cabin
pressure and altitude so the crew members brought the plane down from 29,000
feet (8,840 meters) to 10,000 feet (3,048 meters). Afterwards, they diverted
the aircraft to Manila
International Airport,
Philippine, where it landed with no problems.
An A U.S. Transportation Security Administration official told
CNN that a preliminary investigation didn’t discover any link to terrorism. The
National Transportation Safety Board also is sending investigators to determine
what really happened.