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KC2 Image: Anna Zvereva from Tallinn, Estonia

This is the story of Voyager ZZ333. Voyager ZZ333 was a military flight from RAF brize norton to camp bastion in afghanistan. They were flying a KC2 which is a military version of the Airbus a330. The 8 and a half hour flight had 189 passengers and 9 crew members on board. As the plane taxied out, the A330’s IFF system was having trouble. The IFF or the identification friend or foe is a radio transmitter that helps planes identify other planes. In combat situations you do not want to shoot down a friendly aircraft and the IFF prevents incidents like that. As the plane held short of the runway the crew tried to troubleshoot the problem, they tried resetting the system but that just made things worse. They were about to give up and head back to the stand when the IFF fault cleared. Well this satisfied the crew and they got their takeoff clearance.

With the plane almost at its maximum takeoff weight the Kc2 needed almost all of runway 26 to get airborne. Once airborne the pilots engaged the autopilot and the plane started to climb to its cruising altitude of 33,000 feet. In the cabin there was some light turbulence but the meal service went fine and a movie was put on as everyone on board relaxed.

Once the plane was in cruise everything settled into a routine of sorts. The first officer left the cockpit for a bit and the captain monitored all the systems. As they cruised over turkey the captain felt a strange sense of weightlessness starting to come over his body. He felt his shoulder harness pushing him into his seat as everything else was weightless. The plane was pitching down. In less than ten seconds the plane was nosing down at 15 degrees and it went through 300 knots. The first officer who was in the cabin was lifted off his feet and floated to the ceiling. The report says that the first officer reentered the cockpit while experiencing weightlessness, so how does that work did he float through the cabin and into the cockpit as the plane dove towards the ground at 15,000 feet per minute? That sounds incredibly fun but given the context I doubt that it was anything but fun for all involved.

As the first officer entered the cockpit he was greeted by a sea of flashing lights and confusing alarms. The captain was trying to disengage the autopilot. With his feet on the floor the first officer also tried to disengage the autopilot by pulling back on the sidestick. Horrifyingly that seemed to have no effect the plane was still in the dive. He tried again after getting back in his seat and this time the plane responded as the dive eased. As the first officer coaxed the plane out of the dive the pilots got a dual input warning, letting them know that both pilots were making opposing inputs on their respective sidestick.

But before they could tend to that they had a new problem, during the dive the plane had built up quite a bit of speed and they were pushing up against the maximum design speed of the aircraft. So the pilots pulled the throttles back to idle and the plane began to climb, as it did the plane lost too much speed and they were not at risk of stalling. That was rectified when they commanded max power and got the plane back up to 31,000 feet. The upset had taken its toll in the cabin. A large number of people had been thrown into the ceiling and everything from bags to tea pots were strewn around the cabin.

Once the plane was under control the pilots issued a mayday call they wanted to get this plane on the ground the first chance they got, as they were in turkish airspace, ATC suggested diverting to the turkish city of trabzon. But the problem with trabzon was that it was too close only 60 nm away. That would not give them enough time to descend and after what happened they really didnt want to push the plane too much. So at first they decided to div