We knew there must have been a reason all our licences were being checked. Maybe Glen can share a jail cell with Tim.
Qantas sacks fake engineer Ben Schneiders
February 7, 2009
QANTAS has allowed an unqualified employee to undertake critical and specialist maintenance work on its aircraft, The Age can reveal, in the latest blow to the safety reputation of the airline.
Last night the Civil Aviation Safety Authority said it had ordered Qantas to immediately identify all the work done by the employee over the past two years and assess the risk to air safety of each piece of work.
A CASA directive identified the employee as Glen Townsend, and well-placed airline sources said the man had been working as a licensed engineer in Sydney, work he was not qualified to do, on aircraft used for domestic and international flights.
The authority has also ordered an audit of the qualifications of all Qantas licensed engineers — a process that Qantas said it is undertaking.
CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said the issue was serious as licensed engineers are required to have the highest-possible qualifications and sign off and supervise the maintenance work done by others.
He said responsibility for checking qualifications lies with the airline that employs licensed engineers.
The latest case follows the sentencing in December of Timothy McCormack to a minimum of two years' jail after he faked qualifications to work as a licensed engineer at Qantas.
McCormack had been employed as a lower-level maintenance engineer but started wearing the uniform of a licensed engineer and performing more important tasks.
It can often take 10 years training to work as a licensed engineer, with 25 basic exams, a four-year apprenticeship and hundreds of hours learning to work on a particular type of aircraft.
A Qantas spokesman confirmed that the latest case involved an employee who was an aircraft maintenance engineer who was doing work "he was not licensed to do".
The spokesman said the matter was being treated "very seriously" and the man's employment had been terminated. He was qualified to undertake Boeing 767 maintenance work but not to certify the work of other engineers.
"We do not believe there are any flight safety issues," the Qantas spokesman said.
Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association federal secretary Steve Purvinas expressed regret at the latest incident.
"He is not a member of ours but it is very disappointing that people are falsifying records to try and acquire the same qualifications that we studied for many years ourselves to obtain," he said.
Mr Purvinas said CASA was ineffective.
"I don't blame Qantas; they only work within the framework and guidelines set by CASA," he said. "Some organisations are proactive, others with a little less foresight are reactive, but the only word we could use to describe CASA is inactive."
Sources also blamed cut-backs to the Qantas training programs in recent years as part of the problem.
The latest case follows a string of safety problems at Qantas last year including a mid-air drama where a 747 was forced to make an emergency landing after a hole was blown in its side. In another case an aircraft returned from maintenance in Malaysia with problems with its rudder and navigation systems while a flight attendant soon after received two electric shocks in the galley.
Qantas was also involved with the engineers association in a long-running industrial dispute for much of last year that saw, at its peak in May and June, the grounding of scores of planes. The airline estimated about 100,000 passengers were either seriously delayed or had their flights cancelled during those eight weeks.