Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, who led the crew that saved all 469 people aboard Qantas Flight 32 in 2010, warns that increasing automation and AI can complicate emergency flying. During that incident the crew faced dozens of failures and deliberately chose when to follow, question, or ignore automated checklists — a judgment call that helped secure a safe landing. He urges pilots to preserve manual skills and treat AI as a tool, while acknowledging autonomous aircraft may first appear in military and cargo roles, with passenger autonomy likely decades away.
He Saved 469 People Midair — Ex‑Captain Warns AI and Automation Could Make Crisis Flying Harder
Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, who led the crew that saved all 469 people aboard Qantas Flight 32 in 2010, warns that increasing automation and AI can complicate emergency flying. During that incident the crew faced dozens of failures and deliberately chose when to follow, question, or ignore automated checklists — a judgment call that helped secure a safe landing. He urges pilots to preserve manual skills and treat AI as a tool, while acknowledging autonomous aircraft may first appear in military and cargo roles, with passenger autonomy likely decades away.
05:08 AM, 11/12/2025Technology
Captain who saved 469 passengers warns automation can complicate crisis flying
When Qantas Flight 32 departed Singapore on November 4, 2010, conditions felt routine: clear skies and a calm morning, remembered Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, the pilot in command. Four minutes after takeoff, two loud bangs rocked the aircraft and dozens of cockpit alarms began to sound.
"The engine number two had exploded, and it created shrapnel like a cluster bomb where 400 pieces of shrapnel hit the aircraft," de Crespigny told Business Insider in an interview for the video series Authorized Account. He led a five‑person flight crew that day.
The crew confronted catastrophic damage and cascading system failures: 21 system failures, roughly 120 computer‑generated checklists, about 650 severed wires, shrapnel holes through the wing, and network systems operating at roughly 50% capacity. Despite the chaos, all 469 people on board survived.
A subsequent investigation traced the root cause to a manufacturing defect in a small stub pipe inside the Airbus A380's Rolls‑Royce engine. But what concerns de Crespigny now is not the faulty pipe — it is the growing reach of automation and artificial intelligence in cockpits.
"Whether we like it or not, automation is here and it's going to control our lives more every day in aircraft," he said. "Automation presents more problems for pilots, not less. We are more of a servant to the box."
De Crespigny emphasizes that automation can complicate emergency response because pilots must be able to identify failed systems, isolate them, and manually fly the aircraft when digital systems are unreliable. After Flight 32's engine explosion, the aircraft's monitoring system flooded the crew's displays with checklists. The team completed some steps, questioned others, and deliberately ignored several — decisions that, he says, helped avoid worsening the situation.
For nearly two tense hours the crew circled above Singapore, methodically testing systems to determine what remained reliable before executing a controlled landing at Singapore Changi Airport.
Since the incident, de Crespigny — a former Royal Australian Air Force pilot — has written two bestselling books about the experience, launched and hosts the FLY! podcast, and speaks internationally on resilience in personal and corporate contexts. He retired from flying in 2020 but remains wary of ceding too much authority to machines.
He urges pilots to treat AI and automation as tools, not replacements, and to commit to lifelong learning so manual flying skills are preserved for crises. While he does not believe today's AI will replace cockpit crews — "AI, as it stands today, is not threatening pilots in the cockpit" — he accepts that autonomous, pilotless aircraft may appear first in military roles and overwater cargo operations. He estimates that fully autonomous passenger aircraft with advanced AI could be decades away, suggesting a timeline on the order of 30 years.