Probe after Qantas pumps wrong gas into jets
Matthew Benns
December 16, 2007
POTENTIALLY fatal gas being pumped into passenger jet emergency oxygen tanks in Australia has sparked a worldwide safety investigation.
The Australian Safety Transport Bureau confirmed yesterday that Qantas engineers accidentally put nitrogen into the emergency oxygen tanks of a Boeing 747 passenger jet at Melbourne Airport.
The Australian carrier immediately checked the oxygen supplies of more than 50 of its planes that had been serviced by the mislabelled nitrogen cart at the airport. But an aviation source said: "This could have affected hundreds of planes worldwide. Any international jet that passed through Melbourne and was serviced by Qantas could have had nitrogen pumped into its oxygen tanks."
Health experts warned that in an emergency the effects of nitrogen in the oxygen tanks could have potentially fatal results.
Dr Ian Millar, hyperbaric medicine unit director at The Alfred hospital, said: "If there was an emergency and the pilot took nitrogen instead of oxygen, instead of gaining control of the aircraft he would black out and it would be all over. It's a pretty serious mistake."
Nitrogen, which is non-flammable, is commonly used at airports to fill aircraft tyres. The aviation source said: "Qantas took delivery of the new nitrogen cart 10 months ago. It looked exactly like the old oxygen cart. When the attachments did not fit they went and took them off the old oxygen cart and started using it."
The mistake was eventually spotted by an aircraft engineer. "He was walking around the plane and asked what they were doing. When they said they were topping up the oxygen, he said, 'No you're not, that's a nitrogen cart'," said the source.
The incident was reported to the Civil Aviation Safety Bureau, which confirmed that an investigation detected nitrogen in the crew oxygen tanks on the Boeing 747-300. A bureau spokeswoman said it was a one-off incident.
But the aviation source said: "This has affected at least 175 planes and Qantas has had to tell any other airline that has been serviced in Melbourne to check out its oxygen supplies."
Air New Zealand was told about the problem six weeks ago. "As a result of receiving that letter we did take some precautionary measures," a spokeswoman said. "The oxygen tanks on a small number of planes were removed, checked, reserviced and refilled. No irregularities were found."
A spokeswoman for the Australian Transport Safety Bureau said: "Very clearly they (Qantas) needed to carry out a risk assessment because there was a chance that other aircraft were affected.
"They identified 21 that were at risk because they had had a reasonable amount of oxygen top-up, so there was a reasonable chance they had been contaminated. There were another 30 aircraft at minor risk because they have had minor top ups," said the spokeswoman. The planes were inspected and no positive results found.
She said the airline had turned the error into a learning exercise and informed engineers all over the world about the mistake. "They have talked to thousands of their engineers around Australia and overseas, informing them about this lesson that has been learnt," she said.
Qantas engineering executive general manager David Cox said: "We had a guy using a new rig and he inadvertently serviced the crew oxygen with nitrogen. He realised what he was doing and flagged it."
Mr Cox said that once the mistake had been realised, extensive safety checks were put in place to ensure no other aircraft had been contaminated and that it could never happen again.
"Every aircraft, including customer aircraft, that could have been touched with this rig has been checked," he said after confirming the rig had been in use at the airport for several months. Mr Cox said the airline had been completely open in informing all safety authorities, staff and other airlines about the mistake.
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Probe after Qantas pumps wrong gas into jets - National - theage.com.au
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NITROGEN USED TO FILL AIRCRAFT OXYGEN SYSTEMS
Airlines all over the world are being warned to check to make sure there’s actually oxygen in their aircraft oxygen systems after an embarrassing mix-up by Qantas Airlines at Melbourne International Airport. For ten months, crews have been filling airliner oxygen systems from a nitrogen cart that’s supposed to be used to fill tires. The mistake went unnoticed until a couple of weeks ago when an observant aircraft engineer spotted service workers using the cart. "He was walking around the plane and asked what they were doing. When they said they were topping up the oxygen, he said, 'No you're not, that's a nitrogen cart,'" an unnamed source told The Age. As anyone who works with industrial gases knows, oxygen tanks have different fittings than other gases to prevent exactly this kind of mix-up. However, when the crews discovered the fittings on what they thought was their new oxygen cart didn’t fit, they swapped them for the ones on the old cart they were retiring. Of course, Australian officials are looking into the error and Qantas has been busy notifying other airlines that use its services in Melbourne. Hundreds of aircraft may be affected.
Would've taken some lateral thinking to think through other than the immediate ramifications of this error.