A Boeing 737-800, registered VH-VOE, was being operated on a scheduled flight between Brisbane and Darwin. The crew conducted a VOR/DME arrival to Runway 29 at Darwin International Airport. The runway had a temporarily displaced threshold. The aircraft touched down an estimated 1016 m from the departure end of the runway, at about 23:35 Central Standard Time. During the landing roll, the aircraft overran the runway and came to a stop approximately 44 m into the 90 m runway end safety area. There were no injuries, and the aircraft was not damaged. Air Traffic Control was not aware that the aircraft had overrun the runway. Consequently, emergency response services were not contacted.
Runway overruns feature prominently in accidents involving western-built transport category jet aircraft. Long and/or fast landings were factors in these occurrences. In this occurrence, a high approach speed led to a long landing and overrun situation. The pilot in command continued with an unstabilised approach and did not go around as required by company standard operating procedures. The copilot did not announce that the approach was unstable and instruct the pilot in command to go around. Throughout the approach, there were various cues available to both crewmembers to indicate that the approach was unstable and that a go-around was required.
Overall, there were a number of safety issues identified during the course of the investigation. Those issues included: a non-precision approach at night that was conducive to illusions; a displaced threshold that limited the landing distance available; crew resource management problems; aircraft handling difficulties; an underdeveloped landing approach risk assessment by the crew and a safety management system that had yet to incorporate the flight data monitoring programmes advocated by the International Civil Aviation Organization and industry associations. As part of the relatively new operator's maturation process, the operator has developed a number of measures that are being implemented over the short, medium and longer terms to improve the training of crews, and the capability of the operator's safety management system.
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