Qantas Door Opens In Flight, Forces Emergency Landing

[Matt Molnar]

A door on a Qantas 737-800 flying from Adelaide to Melbourne flew open not long after takeoff, forcing an emergency landing back at Adelaide. Details are still sketchy...passengers say the cabin was in chaos as if a cabin door opened, but Qantas makes it sound like a landing gear door.

http://www.skynews.com.au/news/article.aspx?id=253456

[moose135]

If it was a gear door, it would have to be one of the nose gear doors - on the mains, there is no door over the wheel, and I believe the doors that cover the gear leg are attached to the strut:

http://moose135.smugmug.com/photos/246740506_5g2tr-M-1.jpg

[PhilDernerJr]

I'm trying to understnad what caused the "chaos in the cabin". A gear door issue shouldn't create any change in the cabin environment. Maybe the communication by the crew to the pax caused them to become more alarmed than necesary?

[Matt Molnar]

Based on the lack of updates to the story, I'm going to guess this was not actually worthy of being news and only got the attention that it did thanks to the Qantas 747 incident a few days ago.