Malaysia Airlines A330, and Bamboo Airways 787 in near misses at Melbourne airport in 2023. Both aircraft took off only a few metres above runway workers at Melbourne airport.
A failure of flight crews to fully understand take-off conditions almost led to two major accidents at Melbourne Airport in 2023, a safety investigation has found.
A Malaysia Airlines A330 bound for Kuala Lumpur, with 247 people on board, and a Bamboo Airways 787 departing for Ho Chi Minh City, with 212 people on board, both overran a shortened runway during take-off.
Both aircraft lifted off only metres above where night work was being carried out on the runway.
The safety inspector said the separate incidents were “very serious”, and were caused by flight crews’ insufficient understanding of take-off conditions.
“It was by luck in this case that we didn’t have an impact,” the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said.
The runway had been shortened to accommodate resurfacing work and flight crew of both aircraft had been given the necessary take-off instructions, the safety investigator said.
Each aircraft reportedly took off past the limit of a shortened runway, resulting in “jet blast affecting … objects and people in the work area”, the ATSB noted.
The incidents took place within weeks of each other in September 2023.
ATSB said while the two airlines’ flight dispatchers had accounted for the reduced runway length in their calculations, they did not highlight the shortened runway to the flight crews for input into the plane’s flight management computers.
In both cases, flight crews used take-off calculations that expected a full runway length.
The Malaysia Airlines flight cleared the work crew by seven metres, while Vietnam’s Bamboo Airways flight passed over by 4.5 metres.
Reported on 12 November 2025 By Travel Weekly Asia