Authorities To Investigate Transmissions From Sub Base

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said on Friday that it intends to investigate the possibility that communications signals, originating from Harold E. Holt Naval Communications Base in Western Australia, may have caused interference with flight control systems aboard a Qantas airliner last month.

Calling the idea "highly unlikely," Base Manager Russell Levien said that if signals from the Base were to blame, planes would regularly be affected by them. "We'd have planes down all around us if it was us (who caused the problem)," he said.

The incident occurred about 100 miles from Holt Naval Base, which uses very low frequency signals to communicate with US and Australian submarines in the area, The Weekend Australian said.

After reviewing transmissions on the day of the incident, Levien said he did not find anything unusual. He also checked with similar naval communication bases around the world -- including a US Naval Station at Cutler, ME -- none of which had received any reports of their transmissions interfering with aircraft.

As ANN reported, the Qantas flight was enroute from Singapore to Perth on October 7 when pilots received alarms about "some irregularity with the aircraft's elevator control system", before a 300-foot uncommanded ascent followed by an abrupt 350-foot nosedive occurred, injuring numerous passengers and crew.

Latest reports list 70 people were injured in the incident, 14 of them seriously. Initially blamed on clear air turbulence, a later theory speculated in-flight use of a lap-top computer may have interfered with the plane's flight control systems.

Further research into the cause of the incident is expected to be conducted this week at Northrop Grumman's US facilities, as experts test a component possibly at fault for sending errant signals to the plane's flight control computers.

FMI: www.qantas.com, www.atsb.gov.au