A Qantas plane was just recently flying from Sydney to Melbourne with 120 passengers on board when it was forced to turn around after suffering a tail strike during take off. The Boeing 767-300 was rotating for take off around 5pm when it encountered a gust that lifted the nose of the plane more sharply than usual. This caused the plane to strike the ground on the underside of the tail.

The Qantas crew decided to return to the airport about 15 minutes after departure. The cockpit instruments had notified them of the tail strike. The passengers that were on board the flight were kept on board for almost 10 minutes while the plane was inspected.

A runway inspection did reveal a scrape mark south of the crossing runway. The plane was not damaged in the tail strike apart from the some of the paint being scratched off, of course. The plane was then cleared to fly again.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has been notified of the incident. However, it was noted that the bureau said that they will not be investigating this event.

Although tail strikes are not things that people hear about all the time, experts say that they are quite common in the airplane industry. This one was caused by a strong gust of wind that caused the plane to turn up more sharply than usual. However, there are many things that can cause these tail strikes. Experts went on to say that this event turned out just about as well as a tail strike can turn out. Only a slight delay was caused by the event and people still got to their destination.