Plane headed for Malaysia ends up in Melbourne by mistake

Putting the wrong postcode into the car SatNav system is bad enough – but one AirAsia pilot landed in the wrong country after entering the wrong coordinates in the plane's navigation system.

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The AirAsia X Airbus A330, carrying 212 passengers, took off from Sydney, Australia on March 10, 2015. It was meant to be going to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, but ended up in Melbourne, according to the Express.

A report into the incident by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found that the pilot had incorrectly entered the longitude from a sign outside the cockpit window as 01519.8 instead of 15109.8.

It said: "This resulted in a positional error in excess of 11,000 kilometres (6,835 miles), which adversely affected the aircraft's navigation systems and some alerting systems."

The crew apparently had numerous opportunities to identify and correct the mistake but didn't realise anything was amiss until the plane had taken off.

The report said: "Attempts to troubleshoot and rectify the problem resulted in further degradation of the navigation system, as well as to the aircraft's flight guidance and flight control system."

Once the mistake had been spotted, the pilot attempted to return to Sydney but weather and poor visibility conditions forced him to land in nearby Melbourne instead.

AirAsia has said it has upgraded flight management systems since the incident.

They said in a statement: "AirAsia X would like to stress that we have in place robust management systems to monitor and prevent similar incidents from reoccurring.

"We also wish to reiterate that we have regularly passed safety and security audits conducted by various international regulators.

"We remain committed to ensuring our compliance to all safety and security regulations."