Well no untruths uncovered yet.
A couple of well intentioned posts here wondering if Qantas actions or non actions have anything to do with the 380 engine incident. I say they do or at least could have. If I could use an example. We will create a fantasy airline and call it "Qantas/TAA 1984".
At Qantas/TAA 1984, they prepare well in advance for new aircraft types that are coming into the fleet. Engine experts are sent o'seas to learn about new JT9D's, cmf56's. Tooling is ordered and ready for the first Eng change and then overhaul. Checks are carried out before they are due and workshop Engineers and LAMEs are encouraged to report anything out of the ordinary. Every single engine is overhauled in house and the apprentices who spend two years in these workshops become the LAMEs of tomorrow who carry with them all they have learnt from their time in the shop. In flight shutdowns are extremely rare and the old hands working there cannot recall an uncontained in flight shutdown. The fantasy airline becomes reknowned for its expertise and is seen as a world leader in its field because problems are found prior to takeoff.
Of course we don't live in a fantasy world do we. It is 2010. Managers get rewarded based on how much money they can save. The bonuses are so tempting that judgements sometimes are clouded. So how do the poor managers feed their families whilst still being able to send them to the best private schools and have BMW's delivered in the morning of each childs 18th Birthday? Here are a few ideas -
- Why not close every single in house Engine Maintenance workshop including the RR one this year.
- Shut down Australias biggest HM facitlity (syd), tell the press the work will go to Avalon, send it overseas and ignore your own QA dept that advises after a damning internal report that "continued use of this facility should be seriously reconsidered".
- Take your Avalon workforce that was at 900 and due to increase when work was to be shipped there from Syd and reduce it to 600.
- Accept a managers presentation who claims the new 380 can be maintained by 24 LAMEs only worldwide.
- Stand down 6 LAMEs because they wrote defects into Tech Logs about cockpit doors that were not secure (this should scare the rest off, remember defects cost money).
- Outsource a vast majority of your component maintenance.
- Outsource your entire IFE work because that is not a real airworthiness affair (Swiss Air may disagree).
- Get your QA dept to ammend forms submitted by LAMEs about major defects so that the reports need not be submitted to CASA for more detailed investigation.
- Accept that an aircraft maintained overseas can come home with 95 defects, then send more aircraft to the same facility.
- Reduce your apprentice intake from 400 (combined airline number 1971 with much smaller fleet) to 100 and then tell the press you are doing a great thing for young Australians.
- Promote engineers based on one off interviews, not experience.
- Continue to tell the press that safety is the number one priority.
- Get an aviation expert, who must know everying about aviation because his uncle who worked for an airline in the 70's took him through a plane to support your statements
- Personally attack a union leader who worked on the tools for 21 years, whose father, uncle and cousin spent the best part of their lives in aircraft maintenance, to draw attention away from the issues at hand.
- and get a few cronnies to put posts on a website called Pprune to discredit the doubters.
Yes the 380 engine may or may not have been picked up by the fantasy airline Qantas/TAA 1984. They may have noticed changes to the vib monitoring, replaced some parts earlier, had more time or experienced people to investigate the known issues with the engine prior to Thu or just noticed something out of the blue and felt it their duty to report it.
I would rather be talking publically today using this, along with the growing list of events, as examples of what could happen whilst cost cutting continues. We don't know where the next problem will occur on a Qantas flight or if it could ever have been prevented. Let's hope its picked up on ground, not at 30,000 ft.