Stopwork at Virgin called off
By Steve Creedy
07mar03
VIRGIN Blue engineers have called off planned industrial action, after the carrier agreed to talks on controversial changes to pre-flight transit checks on newer aircraft.
The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association had planned a stopwork meeting on Monday to discuss safety fears about Virgin's move to have pilots, rather than engineers, do pre-flight transit checks on next-generation 737s.
Union officials said that allowing pilots to conduct the checks would compromise safety. The airline claims it's a demarcation dispute.
The union called off the stopwork meeting after Virgin agreed to talks, and said it was happy for engineers to continue carrying out inspections along with pilots.
The union also agreed to withdraw six "hazard reports" to the Australian Industrial Commission involving pilot checks.
But officials last night refused to back away from the reports, which are disputed by Virgin. They include allegations that pilot inspections missed a blown and cracked landing light, a damaged nose wheel tyre, and an engine damaged by a bird strike.
Union president Mick O'Rance said the parties would meet next week and had agreed not to argue publicly in the meantime.
He said he believed Virgin aircraft would be safe as long as engineers continued to do the pre-flight inspections.
A joint statement issued last night said: "The parties have cleared the air in relation to issues identified, and look forward to engaging in discussion in the future."
The issue first surfaced last week, when The Australian reported the engineers' safety concerns, as well as a Civil Aviation Safety Authority crackdown on Virgin for failing to ensure pilot checks were properly carried out.
Although CASA said there was no evidence the problems resulted in safety incidents or risk, it found pilots had been rushing the checks and cutting corners.
It heightened its surveillance of Virgin, and issued an order for corrective action.
Virgin agreed to write to pilots stressing the need to follow procedures, and give them refresher training.
CASA and manufacturer Boeing say pilot checks are appropriate for newer planes, because they're more reliable and have computers capable of recognising faults.
But former CASA head of maintenance standards Ken Cannane said the checks should be done by engineers.
He said it made no economic sense not to take advantage of using departure checks at manned maintenance ports.
"Why risk lowering safety standards that have kept Australian aviation safe for many generations?" he said.