The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is investigating an incident when a chartered airbus carrying 120 asylum seekers and Australian officials taxied along a Cocos Island runway with its rear stairs trailing on the tarmac.
Locals and a Perth businessman who were drinking at the Cocos Club watering hole, adjacent to the airway, witnessed the incident on Sunday.
A frantic customs officer managed to run onto the tarmac and flag down the plane before it took-off.
The crew stopped the aircraft and inspected the stairs before retracting them and resuming take-off.
The A319-115 plane was headed to Christmas Island. Cocos Island is a tiny horseshoe-shaped island, 2750 kilometres north-west of Perth and 900 kilometres south-west of Christmas Island.
The crew later reported that the cockpit indications showed the stairs retracted and no Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) warning was received when the crew started the first engine, the bureau website said.
A bureau spokesman said the probe would be a short, factual investigation since it was considered a low scale incident.
A320 planes are short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger jets manufactured by Airbus Industrie. It is not known which airline was responsible, but regional charter company Strategic Airlines has denied any involvement.
A Department of Immigration spokesman said the department was concerned about the incident and had called for a full report from the bureau once it had finished its investigation.
The matter is likely to be examined by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
"The curious thing is that (according to reports) it started to taxi with the stairs down. If that was the case then there would have been some indication in the cockpit that the stairs were down or things were not stowed properly," CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said.
Wow, mit der ausgefahrenen Airstair starten zu wollen.......
Airstair an einer Boeing:
Gibts da keine Meldung auf dem Display??