It could have been Australia's worst-ever airline disaster – but it wasn't. When an engine exploded aboard Qantas flight 32 in 2010, its crew were faced with a "black swan" event, one so unthinkable they could not possibly prepare for it.
With critical systems in chaos and hundreds of lives at stake, the A380's crew, led by Captain Richard de Crespigny, had to figure out how to get the plane safely back on the ground … and over the course of several harrowing hours, they succeeded.
Not only did the team save the aircraft with the odds stacked against them, but they got every single soul off the aircraft without even one injury, cementing QF32's place in the aviation history books for all the right reasons.
In this week's Australian Aviation Podcast, Captain de Crespigny tells Jake Nelson the story of QF32, 15 years on – and what it taught him about the value of resilience.