Lunch with Richard de Crespigny: Richard de Crespigny is the cool hero of Qantas flight QF32, but the experience in the air took its toll, writes Robert Upe

THE perfectly cooked beef cheek on creamy mashed potato is coming apart on my fork, a metaphor for flight QF32, which almost fell apart not long after takeoff from Singapore bound for Sydney on November 4, 2010.

The Qantas A380 - the pride of the airline's fleet - was rocked by an engine explosion that ripped the plane's vital operating systems to shreds.

Pieces of the $400 million plane fell on Indonesia and within moments there were misinformed tweets around the world that it had crashed. Although it was still flying, there were holes in a wing, parts of the fuselage had been blown off and fuel was streaming out of ruptured tanks. The passengers could see the damage and the free-flowing fuel on a channel of their entertainment systems that relays views from a tail camera.

In the captain's seat was Richard de Crespigny. ''It started like any other day,'' he recalls. ''I had a simple breakfast of some eggs and juice at the Fairmont Hotel in Singapore about 7.30am, checked out of my room and boarded the crew bus for the airport.

''Before the flight, we [the pilots] went into a briefing room where we analyse things that will affect the flight, such as weather and, on this day, an erupting volcano [Mount Merapi, which killed more than 350]. Volcanic ash doesn't mix with jet engines so I checked the position of the ash cloud and I took on extra fuel in case we had to divert.

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