Furthermore, the attempts by Qantas Engineering staff to blame off-shore maintenance was described as "scurrilious" and that QF off-shore maintenance was conducted by world class facilities. Let's hope the detractors of both the crew and the maintenance say a collective "Sorry". BTW, the aircraft was flown to Sydney overnight.
That statement on AM was by Geoffrey Thomas an aviation journalist who tends to pop up on ABC radio as their aviation guy.
I reckon media watch should have a listen because to claim that you are independent then spend the whole interview blowing smoke up QF and rubbishing the engineering department you would have to seriously question ones motives. Since when had anyone blamed overseas maintenance on this anyway?
Here is part of the transcript from AM Wednesday 15th October
Geoffrey Thomas is the senior editor at Air Transport World.
GEOFFREY THOMAS: The extraordinary thing about this is that there was a similar failure in a Malaysian airlines 777 in August 2005, off coast of Western Australia and in almost identical position, and it similarly caused the pilots enormous problems and they had to bring the aircraft back to Perth and at one stage they almost lost the aircraft.
RICHARD LINDELL: No decision on the future of the aircraft has been made, although it was flown back to Sydney last night suggesting the incident didn't cause structural damage.
Geoffrey Thomas says the A330 has an excellent safety record and passengers shouldn't fear the Airbus nor maintenance standards at Qantas.
GEOFFERY THOMAS: There has been what I would call a scurrilous campaign run by its engineers, supporting a higher pay rise and job security, and I can understand those issues.
But when they talk about and blame offshore maintenance for these woes, it is absolutely totally incorrect because the offshore maintenance done by Qantas is done at some of the most reputable centres in the world, and there is just no question about the quality of the maintenance done overseas.