Date:	Tuesday 25 June 2024
Time:	c. 05:44 LT
Type:	British Aerospace BAe-146-300QT
Owner/operator:	ASL Airlines Australia
Registration:	VH-SAJ
MSN:	E3150
Year of manufacture:	1989
Engine model:	Honeywell ALF502 R-5
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 0 / Occupants: 2
Other fatalities:	0
Aircraft damage:	Minor, repaired
Category:	Serious incident
Location:	Brisbane International Airport, QLD (BNE/YBBN) -   Australia
Phase:	Landing
Nature:	Passenger - Scheduled
Departure airport:	Sydney-Kingsford Smith International Airport, NSW (SYD/YSSY)
Destination airport:	Brisbane International Airport, QLD (BNE/YBBN)
Investigating agency:	ATSB
Confidence Rating:	Accident investigation report completed and information captured

Narrative:
Qantas flight QF7295, a BAe 146-300 operated by ASL Airlines Australia, suffered a tailstrike following during landing at Brisbane Airport (BNE), Australia. There were no injuries.

While on descent into Brisbane, the meteorological conditions worsened with visibility reducing to about 1,000 m in fog. The crew conducted an instrument approach for runway 19L, using the autopilot, and visually identified the high intensity approach lighting at about 220 ft. The first officer disconnected the autopilot at about 110 ft and made control inputs that resulted in an increasing aircraft pitch attitude with decreasing airspeed. The aircraft touched down with a high pitch angle and a vertical acceleration of about 2.4 g. The tail of the aircraft struck the runway, resulting in damage to the tail strike indicator and surrounding panels.

Contributing factors
- The first officer became disoriented after disconnecting the autopilot on short final and likely lost situation awareness. Consequently, they did not identify the increasing aircraft pitch attitude, decreasing airspeed, or low power setting and did not correct the resulting sink rate prior to touchdown.
- The captain became preoccupied with remaining fuel. This combined with an expectation of worsening visibility resulted in a sense of urgency to land off the first approach.
- Repeated communications from the captain regarding the need to land off the first approach likely increased pressure on the first officer to commit to a landing.
- ASL Airlines Australia employed and promoted pilots earlier than the prescribed minimum experience hours without additional controls in place to manage the risk of lower experienced pilots on the flight deck. (Safety issue)
- The captain’s limited command experience in a multi-crew environment likely reduced their capacity to include the first officer in the decision‑making process, consider the need to assume the pilot flying role or command a go-around when the aircraft entered an undesired state during landing

YBBN 241959Z 20007KT 0900 R19L/1400U R19R/P2000N FG OVC001 14/14 Q1021
YBBN 241934Z 20008KT 0400 R19L/P2000N R19R/P2000N FG SCT001 BKN035 14/14 Q1021
YBBN 241930Z 19007KT 0800 R19L/P2000N R19R/P2000N FG FEW002 SCT035 14/14 Q1021

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2024/report/ao-2024-036

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/vh-saj#35d54b5a
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/VHSAJ/history/20240624/1700Z/YSSY/YBBN

Photo: ATSB

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
25-Jun-2024 19:32	Captain Adam	Added
25-Jun-2024 19:34	ASN	Updated [Aircraft type, Location, ]
25-Jun-2024 19:38	ASN	Updated [Operator, Narrative, ]
09-Sep-2025 05:55	ASN	Updated [Total occupants, Narrative, ]
09-Sep-2025 06:03	ASN	Updated [Photo, ]