Its Time Mr.Joyce

[DEFCON4]

Its time for Qantas Management to admit that blunders have been made in regard to the maintenace of the fleet.The first step to fixing a problem is admitting that the problem exists.Managment are in denial.
Fix the problem before your luck runs out and you lose a hull and human lives with it.
Its not a time to save face.
Its time for honesty and action

[Sunfish]

Don't waste your breath. A crowbar or Two will be needed to effect change and that will be after not One but Two hull losses.

[fl610]

QF shares wirth - less?

[BigGun]

I guess if we stripped all the bonus's from all the managers, we would have plenty of finds for engineering

[gordonfvckingramsay]

Rolls Royce shares off nearly 5%! I wonder if they have been cost cutting too......

[beatup]

Forget management, high time for Purvinas to go. The guy just simply cannot be truthful! One fabricated story after another! Anyone hear him on the 7pm Project last night? Why would any media agency ever choose to interview him? Well, it is the media I suppose, Facts? no thanks, eyebrow raising story? You Bet!!

[ALAEA Fed Sec]

Forget management, high time for Purvinas to go. The guy just simply cannot be truthful! One fabricated story after another! Anyone hear him on the 7pm Project last night? Why would any media agency ever choose to interview him? Well, it is the media I suppose, Facts? no thanks, eyebrow raising story? You Bet!!

Well that bloke would be me. Can you elaborate on anything I said that was not the truth?

[ampclamp]

I'm not sure which episode you watched but the one I saw had him answering questions put to him and doing so in a straight forward manner.

He's got a good head for radio but I think for the most part he is doing a good job.

[PPRuNeUser0161]

I'm not sure where this is going, sure issues must exist regarding maintenence, but surely the A380 engine could not have been caused by this??
SN

[LAME2]

Beatup

Don't understand your comments Beatup regarding SP on 7PM Project. I have watched the episode and I cannot fault what was said or call it untruthfull. You may have heard what you wanted to hear. Steve, well done. Your obviously getting under their skin. Keeps the facts coming. You may need to give the interviewers further evidence to support your statements. The message needs to get across.

[ampclamp]

soup nazi I agree this one is likely a material failure not maint related but incidents like this allow the greater scheme of the constant cost cutting in airlines to be put in the public record.

[FCMC]

Forget management, high time for Purvinas to go. The guy just simply cannot be truthful! One fabricated story after another! Anyone hear him on the 7pm Project last night? Why would any media agency ever choose to interview him? Well, it is the media I suppose, Facts? no thanks, eyebrow raising story? You Bet!!

I completely disagree.I think he performed extremely well.He may have deflected some direct answers but never said anything that wasn't the truth. Could you imagine how rampant QF management would become if it wasn't for people and associations like this!!!!!

[indamiddle]

i watched the chick from HR dept. i watched fed sec alea.
only one knew what they were talking about.
one was a complete embarrassment to qf.
any skinnier and at least she would be useful as a dipstick.

[FGD135]

You guys sound like a rabid lynch mob.

The simple reality is that engines fail and aircraft turn back all the time. This happens to all airlines - not only Qantas.

I suggest you are all going off half cocked. The fault in the engine may well turn out to be nothing to do with Qantas.

Will you come back here to retract the lunatic assertions if the fault is found to have been in the engine manufacture? Of course not.

[TIMA9X]

Can you elaborate on anything I said that was not the truth?

You spoke the truth, friends of the bean counters will try to divert the truth. I can't remember when QF have been under this much pressure in my lifetime. I think it's become an issue between "bean counters v flight ops across the board" ie pilots engineering CC's & ground staff. All techies in the various departments (normally conservative by nature) have spoken out at different times over recent years seem to have fused together with the same message, "enough is enough" regarding cost cutting! QF's handling of the media over the past couple of days was abysmal!

It's similar to what the Ralph Norris at the CBA did this week, successfully drew more attention to the corporate greed theme. AJ & his henchmen, like Ralph Norris just could not see it coming. Why? (some corporate Wallies may ask.) In Australia, it is my belief, the guys at the top of today's corporate towers are so immersed in delivering bonuses for themselves and the shareholders they have taken their eyes of the ball that runs their respective businesses.

Unlike bank branches, QF's branches are a/c's which are not firmly fixed to the ground. The operation of their branches are a little more complicated than a banks, simply locking the safe, set the alarm, then the door and going home at 6.00pm with the secure feeling that the transactions will be handled by the computers overnight.

If a banks computer fails it's not going to set the branch crashing to earth but merely an inconvenience for the workers the next day. Airlines branches operate differently, possibly to the surprise of some corporate airline bonus gatherers (managers) who choose to run their business like a bank. Sooner or later it will turn ugly if this style of airline management continues. The last few days may show signs of this ugliness.

[ALAEA Fed Sec]

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.

[skybed]

keep it up

......................

[LAME2]

Stand down 6 LAMEs because they wrote defects into Tech Logs

Well recent history has shown you would not want to be the LAME/Pilot who wrote up a defect Management did not want to know about. I wonder if someone did notice any defects with the said engine on the A380 but felt concerned enough with putting food on the table, not to report it.

[Short_Circuit]

I once worked for an airline that did not approve of hold items being added during a SYD transit, it was against policy to enter a MEL hold item when an A/C was at the hangers, it was not acceptable to make any hold item during an A chk but if it had to be (when much later in career it was possible) needed an ATP to do so, it was all but impossible to release an A/C from heavy with a hold item without a CAA ( CASA) signed Concession.
Now it is acceptable to release an A/C on a Heavy Maint from overseas MRO with 79 odd hold items. Where is worlds best practice or safety in this company, sure it's not from the top. These are sad times for aircraft maintenance.
Keep 'em honest Steve.

[1746]

The TRUTH

Steve, your last post captures the issue in a nutshell.

My experience bears testament to your accuracy!

While the A380 issue may or may not be a RR issue, the facts of the matter are that there is no longer any RPT engine overhaul facility in Australia; and who made those decisions?
Who stands down LAME's for reporting Defects as required by the CARs?
Who demands "world's best practise" and yet pays massive above the odds executive bonuses?
Who stops the apprentices becoming Licensed?
Who stops refresher and simulator training?
Who stops simulator training being a component of a Mechanical course? just to mention a few items?
Well you may ask!
and where is the regulator??????