Its Time Mr.Joyce
 

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

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.

QF shares wirth - less?

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

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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!!!!!

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.

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.

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.

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.

keep it up
 

:D :D :D ......................

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.

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.

The TRUTH
 

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

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??????:ugh::ugh::ugh::ugh:

Great post ALAEA Fed Sec :D

Draws a very clear picture of what's going on and what's wrong whit it :ugh:

Things have to be displayed that way to masses.

And so the holes in the cheese become even closer aligned !
Since Dixon and Joyce started their cost cutting exercise commencing 7 years ago, this is what we have today.
Don't worry, the final chapter is yet to be written. They will lose a complete hull. Tick tock...........

Well beatup in the words of the South African character in Lethal Weapon:

"So who's the d!ckhead now?"

You attacked a bloke who seems pretty transparent to me, who just happens to post regularly here.

Don't see too many of the management types you are defending posting on here with their side of the story? Maybe you can relay for them?

Well put Steve.

Keep fighting the good fight!

Geez I forget about a lot of that Fed Sec and its absolutely,undeniably spot on!
I challenge any QF Manager to deny it. You can't hide the truth!
Unfortunately QF managers are so short lived they don't know what there predecessor has done.

79 hold items are you kidding? When QF for reasons unknown, took pity on me and made me a the oldest shark watcher (S/O) in history, (after 30 years of command, due to 89 but we won't go there) I often got the job from the FE who had more important things to do (like reading playboy) to write out the tech logs. Normally say from HNL to SYD to would be lucky to write 2 pages, normally relating to seat 22a entertainment u/s, drain blocked in galley with coffee beans (every time) airconditioning pac u/s Rat seen in galley, rat seen leaving galley, and every time, reverse thrust stuck in reverse thrust. Oh dear, what innocent times, 79 hold items would have put engineering into a state of shock, never mind one trans qual. How times have changed!

Seen this in another organisation that has been around for awhile too.
They used to be able to pull aircraft and engines apart and put them back together and train there own newbies by showing them how and teaching them.
Then the major shareholder wanted to save some money and outsourced much of the maintenance. Along with the corporate knowledge.
They out sourced the maintenance to the cheapest bidders and companies under their own financial pressures.
That organisation has had fatal accidents and VERY near incidents were maintenance has been a factor.
When a company gives away its corporate knowledge it increases its risk.
As they say, if you think safety is expensive try having an accident.

At least Joyce unlike Dixon has allowed the QF/JQ A330 work to all be done in Australia for the first time.

Hopefully a step in the right direction....

Great post #17, ALAEA Gen Sec

We're having issues of our own here in the UK. I find it sad that a reputable airline such as Qantas treats it's LAMEs with such contempt. Our own NAA, the UKCAA, in league with the failure that is EASA is also following a similar 'stand back & observe' style of regulatory oversight. I feel we have a few upcoming events of our own to mirror yours unfortunately.

Good luck to all those that demand and deserve a return to high standards

BAe

FAA/EASA Avionics LAE
UK ALAE(1981) member

The Alan Joyce Engineering Solution
 

ALAEA Fedsec,

You are playing politics, and playing it reasonably well.

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

Like most politicians, your message is not in what you say but what you imply.

Regarding MRO’s:

“Is only a matter of time before an aircraft serviced in an overseas facility finds itself in the side of a mountain”

Regarding the incorrectly mounted engines:

“When you don’t have your engines mounted correctly that is a likely outcome” (El Al in AMS which was NOT the result of engineering oversight as you implied)

Regarding the 767 flap jam:

“…..certainly had more dire consequences to the Garuda aircraft when most of the …..lost their life” This is NOT the reason for the Garuda accident and you know it my friend.

You sure are gaining industrial mileage from unrelated mishaps.

I'd like to see the questions and answers in context rather than just the topic and then something said in the course of a conversation. Do you have any links there?

Lets get down to tin tacks.

How long has Rolls Royce known about the problem with the IP bearing/coupling arrangement?

My guess (and it is a guess) is at least Six months, AD's usually don't just happen overnight.

Before they issued that AD, they will have seen this condition on one engine, then probably pulled and inspected others with higher times if possible, and found the condition again, put Two and Two together and presto!

Now we come to Qantas.....

Does Qantas have an RR trent 900 specialist in house? Does he watch over every single engine, graphing the vibrations, graphing the SOAP, T's and P's? Poring over every single communication with every other airline running the same engine? Asking RR hard questions?

If Qantas does have this person, were they aware of the AD? Was QF planning additional inspections of its own volition?

...or was the entire question of engine safety and performance management outsourced?

These are the questions CASA should be asking; who knew what and when did they know it, and what did they do about it? What conclusions can be drawn about the safety management of QF's engines?

I'm not holding my breath.

QF is heading for third world status where the companies have no technical brains and rely on what they are told by the manufacturers.


P.S. Well said ALEA Fed. Sec. We are heading back to the technical capability we had prior to WWII - totally dependent on overseas corporations, and it will bite us in the arse again just as it did before.

I have just finished watching a movie that was given to me by a friend, it's called Whisky Romeo Zulu. The movie is based on a true story about an Airline in Argentina called LAPA Airlines. This movie was written, directed and stared in by the actual Captain, Enrique Pineyro. Captain Pineyro documented and voiced his concerns about the Airlines training and Maintenance practices to no avail. He was ostracised by the Airline, his colleagues and the equivalent of the Argentine CASA took his medical on psychological grounds.


Two months after he resigned, the Airline crashed a B737 on Take Off.

On 22 December 2000, in a 1200-page resolution, Judge Literas charged four LAPA officials and three members of the Air Force. The LAPA officials were charged with estrago culposo seguido de muerte (similar to 'catastrophic criminal negligence leading to death') and included:
Gustavo Andrés Deutsch – President.
Ronaldo Patricio Boyd – Director general.
Fabián Chionetti – Operations manager.
Nora Arzeno – Human resources manager.

Likewise, several members of the Air Force were prosecuted for dereliciton of duty in public office:
Brigadier Major Enrique Dutra (retired) – Head of the Command of Aerial Regions.
Commodore Carlos Petersen (retired) – Director of Empowerment and Promotion.
Commodore Diego Lentino (retired) – Director of the National Institute of Aeronautical and Space Medicine.

If I was AJ and any other Senior Exec at QF, and also a Senior Exec of CASA, I would be worried and take the time out to watch this movie, it is very ENLIGHTENING TO SAY THE LEAST!!!!!!!!!!!:=:=:=:=

Valid points SunfishI think there are many questions that need to be posed - formally, once the ATSB has isued the prelim.

Every Pilot and for that matter CC needs to be quite direct with the company in that the aircraft is the workplace.

As a workplace every employee in it has legislative rights to safety & amenity. There are also firm employer obligations in respect of consultation.

Any and every decision made by Qantas that affects the 'workplace' is not just under the authority of the Regulator (CASA), but also is wholly subordinate to the applicable and sometimes differing State OHS&E legislation. (interestingly classified this according to the State in which the person was employed)

Under the Act, any employer, (inc an employee who is a Manager) and the Directors can be personally liable and subject to criminal prosecution in respect of knowingly endangering an employee in the workplace.

Add to Sunfish's questions the WHO, WHEN & WHY's in relation to OQA, the Euro A.D and the decision to run the MEL out to the max allowable. With two other 380's now recieving exchange engines the answers better be more than the arrogant corporate spin and safety cliches that have been served up lately.

This incident is not "...an engine failure that's separate from the plane itself" [Joyce] - - it is in fact a very real sobering demonstration that potentially some of us may not get to go home to the wife & kids simply because someone thought they can pick up a bonus by cutting costs or covering up.

AT

I asked the question on Pprune some time ago, who held the AOC to Qantas mainline.

It was interesting to see that within a week of my statement the AOC holder had been changed to LS.

Why the change?

Actually it's all OK!

Dick Smith said all they need to do is place an advertisement in the newspaper advising how much they spend on safety and all will be good:D

Apparantly the more you pay for a ticket the safer you are, that's why dick travels 1 st class I guess.

He had his little airplane maintained in Singapore once and hey did a good job, so there are no out sourcing of maintenance issues to worry about.

Source = channel 9.

Nothing Will Change
 

Unfortunately when this blows over it will be business as usual.
Nothing will change until there is a hull loss and loss of life.
The bean counters have no doubt factored this in in their cost risk analysis.
The litigation following such an event will lead to a major revamp of the business and a few bodies incarcerated.
Aviation is littered with evidence of cost cutting leading to loss of life.
"It will never happen to us" seems to be the Qantas mantra.
Recent events indicate that it can and will

If any of the posters to this thread were running Qantas they would go broke within weeks.

Running a business REQUIRES, from time to time, aggressive cost cutting and other measures in order to stay competitive.

Qantas is still in business today - and you all still have your jobs with them - because of the actions of management.

The airline business is not what it was 20 years ago. When will you lot wake up to this reality?

It's tommorrow & the day after that employees are concerned about!

That's why there was such a large turnout of pilots to the Syney meeting in August.

There was a unanimous vote of no confidence in the J* CEO at that time.

AJ needs to act & act fast before the same sentiment emerges from mainline.