Birds and lightning strike damage inspections are now being performed and assessed by pilots at unmanned stations. On what basis are you making these highly technical and safety based decisions?
CaptCloudbuster,
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As a QANTAS Pilot I don't, full stop.
I have been personally stuck in unmanned ports on many occasions waiting for hours or occasionally overnight due to birdstrike, fuel leaks, fume events and even careless baggage handlers who scratch cages along cargo hold doors. One entire PER based 737 crew stayed overnight in the Aircraft at YNWN due no accommodation last year.
When a defect occurs though that is not minor we have a procedure whereby the Capt consults with Maintenance Watch who can authorise him to use an MEL or issue an ATP that does not require maintenance action.
I am very satisfied with the safety of this procedure. As the Fed Sec has stated himself this procedure has been in place quite satisfactorily for years.
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For the sake of all that fly Qantas, including many members of my Family, I hope ALL Qantas Pilots agree with you.
I was personally involved many years ago now, actually decades ago, with an incident with a B737-300 that almost ended as a disaster by Pilots not doing as you do.
We had a B737-300 operate daily BNE-ROK-MKY-ROK-BNE with no Engineers except for BNE.
The aircraft had multiple bird strikes on landing in MKY, the Pilots checked the aircraft over then phoned us in BNE, I wanted to send someone up to MKY but they were adamant that the only damage was to the fan blades on #1 engine and they were happy to return as normal to BNE via ROK.
At TOD into ROK they noticed a full scale deflection on a vibration indicator, shut down #1 engine, declared an emergency and landed on only #2 engine, it was then logged at ROK.
I went up to ROK with an AME and all the spare fan blades we had, after reading the logs we changed the worst of the fan blades on #1 engine, then I had a good look around and found that the fan blades on #2 engine were shingled.
Before deshingling them I decided to carry out a ground run out of curiousity, I did not even get it running, the Traffic Officer on the headset for me, used words I will not repeat here, to tell me how much the aircraft was shaking.
We subsequently confirmed it was actually #2 engine that the vibration reading went off the clock on at TOD, NOT #1 at all, so the Pilots actaully shut down the better engine.
I flew back to BNE the next morning with the same Pilots, who both admitted they did not even know what shingled blades were.