11 . Union better back its big safety claims against Qantas
Ben Sandilands writes:
Did Qantas allow a Boeing 767 which had experienced severe turbulence before
landing at Cairns last June continue its journey without completing all the
mandatory inspections required before a return to
service is permitted?
And did Qantas subsequently keep that jet in service for several weeks
before completing those checks?
If the answer to the first or both questions is "yes", then the airline and
the safety regulator CASA ought to be in serious trouble.
But if the answer to both is "no", then Steve Purvinas, the federal
secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association who made
these allegations
<
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b921-952554fac056&rid=0bf1072f-a9df-419f-9cf4-e85524197fdc>, is in the hot
seat.
The ALAEA under Purvinas has referred dozens of claims of unsafe practices
at Qantas to CASA in the past 18 months that have been claimed to have gone
without substantive answers.
The ALAEA is the union that broke Qantas management last year by refusing
overtime and eventually winning a substantial pay rise campaign. That
campaign took part within an extended period of obvious neglect of
engineering and maintenance by the Geoff Dixon management team.
Clearly the new management lead by Alan Joyce as Qantas group CEO doesn't
sit well with the ALAEA either, but whatever their differences, it is the
safety claims that need to be thrashed out, and especially the claims that
CASA which is itself under new management continues to fail in its duty to
scrutinise Qantas.
In a note posted on Pprune.org the Professional Pilots Rumour network, Steve
Purvinas, the federal secretary of Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers
Association, says of the Cairns incident:
"The deferred checks included visual inspections of engine mounts, empennage
safety checks for structural security etc... Now I am no award winning
aviation expert but I do think that my 24 years as an aircraft engineer tell
me that a mandatory severe turbulence check cannot be deferred. To defer it
for several weeks until the next a-check for the above reason makes it far
worse."
However Qantas operations chief Lyell Strambi responded this morning that
the inspection requirements are determined by the assessed levels of
turbulence experienced by the aircraft, that this justified its continued
service after the appropriate checks for that level were made and that this
was supported by follow-up inspections.
Strambi has also rebutted the detail of another claim Purvinas has made
elsewhere over engine mounts incorrectly installed overseas and has
suggested a union payback is underway after Qantas sought orders in the
Industrial Commission last week to stymie a threat of illegal action in
another matter.
However beyond the ALAEA versus Qantas and CASA matters is the overriding
issue of safety standards enforcement in Australia. Australia failed
critical elements of an ICAO audit of safety oversight earlier this year,
and has wide ranging remedial action to complete by the end of the year or
risk being consigned to the same failed state status when it comes to
aviation as Indonesia and Yemen.
Last year CASA did a special audit of Qantas which discovered that CASA had
been clueless for years as to what was amiss in the carrier, and both the
airline and the regulator brushed off as trivial a failure to complete
gravely serious mandatory repairs on the pressure bulkheads of aging Boeing
737-400s for five years.
Under these circumstances air travellers have every reason to treat with
caution airline and regulator platitudes about their exemplary safety
standards whether made in reaction to union or public concerns.