Qantas recent events

[defiantforce]

G'day all

Hope everyone had an awesome Australian day!

While Qantas has enjoyed a very good flight safety record for a long time and generated a decent reputation to be one of the safest airline in the world, it has attracted quite a bit of attention and spotlight on its maintenance and operation safety in a string of recent incidents.

I fully praise the actions and level of professionalism the aircrew, cabin crew and the company displayed during these incidents. However, do these event signal alarms for concern (not just for Qantas, Australian Commercial aviation overall) that aviation safety has been compromise due to commercial factors? Is Qantas just a bit unlucky recently? Are there a deeper underlaying issues (maintenance outsource, commercial pressure?)? or is it just media hot topic for the moment?

I am an aircraft avionics engineer myself and currently working in an non-commerical aviation job where I have to deal with technical and operational airworthiness daily. IMHO, it is concerning that Australian airline are increasingly turning to overseas sources (maintenance, aircrew, cabin crew etc...) in order to maintain a commercially competitive edge over other airlines. While this does not automatically mean impact (negative or positive) on technical&operational airworthiness of the aircraft, it does cast some concerns over the level of confidence for these overseas sources.

I would like to see some good constructed discussion regarding topic as I am very interested in airworthiness.

Kind regards

Big Kev

 

[simongr]

There are many threads on this topic here with some obvious challenges in terms of the ability of individuals to talk with authority (we have a QF pilot that gives his informed comments regularly). Can I just ask though that we substantiate the following comments:

safest airline in the world, it has attracted quite a bit of attention and spotlight on its maintenance and operation safety in a string of recent incidents.

Do we have any actual statistically valid evidence that QF has had a measurable increase in actual rather than reported incidents and do we have any measures that compares QF to other comparable airlines? I personally don't take the increase in reported events as evidence of an increase in actual events.

IMHO, it is concerning that Australian airline are increasingly turning to overseas sources (maintenance, aircrew, cabin crew etc...) in order to maintain a commercially competitive edge over other airlines. While this does not automatically mean impact (negative or positive) on technical&operational airworthiness of the aircraft, it does cast some concerns over the level of confidence for these overseas sources

Whilst it looks like you are trying to say that we shouldn't jump to conclusions the bolded elements say that we should. The most publicised incident of poor overseas engineering was actually proven to be undertaken in Australia. Do we again have evidence that the overseas providers that are used by QF and supervised by QF engineers are actually any less safe?

 

[milehighclub]

Not a single Qantas pilot is outsourced - they are all based in Australia.

Cabin crew are outsourced in Auckland, Tokyo and London - places that wouldn't make you think twice and they follow the exact same training as those in Australia so isn't an issue either.

A lot maintenance is done in Australia contrary to popular belief and where it is done overseas - they are hardly 3rd world facilitates, like Lufthansa in Frankfurt where the A380 has C checks.

It is simply media hype, and every-time there is a incident at Qantas people start questioning everything - and threads like this start to appear - in fact a thread was started the other day with someone having the same questions as you, so wouldn't be surprised if this thread is closed.

http://www.australianfrequentflyer....t-flyer-program/safety-at-qantas-27821-2.html

 

[NM]

One of the most recent incidents that was highly reported in the media involved the failure of AC packs in a 737-400 aircraft. The aircraft is maintained in Australia by Qantas Australian engineering staff. It was flown by Qantas Australian-based pilots and crewed by Qantas Australian-based cabin crew. Not sure how anyone can draw any conclusion about outsourcing or off-shoring being causal factor in that incident.

In fact, I can't recall any recent (last few years) incidents that could be regarded as caused by the outsourcing or off-shoring of services (i.e. would not have happened if all services were performed by Australian-based Qantas staff).

There has also been discussion about the age of the Qantas feet being a contributing factor. Without knowing the exact nature of the AC failure, its not possible to make judgement on the 737-400 incident ADL-MEL earlier in the week. But the other incident reported this week was a excessive fuel use issue with a 747-400. The aircraft involved was VH-OJT which is just over 11 years old and could not be considered an old aircraft by 747 standards. The most serious (from a passenger risk perspective) incidents in recent years have involved reasonably new aircraft (A330 and A380). So while older aircraft may have niggles and may cause some schedule disruptions due to maintenance requirements, I have not seen anything that implies the age of the Qantas fleet is increasing the risk of an accident. It is possible to argue there is an increased risk of schedule impacts (delayed/cancelled flights), but I don't buy the increased accident risk.

It would be interesting to see how some other airlines would have responded to the unusual fuel consumption issue on a 744. Options available to the crew would have included:

• Return to port for check/repair (the option this Qantas crew chose)
• Shut down the engine or reduce its thrust setting and continue on 3 engines (similar to what BA did LAX-LHR a while back)
• Continue with flight, monitoring fuel use and divert for additional fuel if necessary

Its quite likely that of options 2 or 3 were chosen that it would not have even been reported in the local news media, unless of course the end result of option 2 was similar to what happened with the BA LAX-LHR(MAN) flight. However, the option chosen by the Qantas crew would appear to be the one presenting lowest risk and reflecting the "safety-first" culture that seems to pervade Qantas flight crews.

Anyway, that is my perspective as an (non-aviation) engineer and interested observer who tries to consider and digest the facts of each reported incident and reads the official reports when they are made publicly available.

 

[defiantforce]

"Do we have any actual statistically valid evidence that QF has had a measurable increase in actual rather than reported incidents and do we have any measures that compares QF to other comparable airlines? I personally don't take the increase in reported events as evidence of an increase in actual events."

This is a official ATSB report for aviation safety (including recreational/general/private, excluding Military) between 1999-2999.

http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/1525905/ar2009016(3).pdf

I do agree with you that just because all these Qantas incident get reported by the media there is a corresponding increase in air safety incidents. Most of the time, this is not true. There are many unofficial statics about Qantas safety, but I tend to dis trust those as I am unable to verify the reference/source data.

I have been interested in the airworthiness since I started engineering degree and I have always be interested in aviation safety as it is the cornerstone of what aircraft engineering is about.

I want to focus the discussion on commercial aviation in Australia rather than just Qantas alone (hence I made the statement in the 3rd paragraph). I started this threads in the hopes that the discussion is more frank and not-media-centric.

I do understand that none of the qantas pilot are outsource, and the maintenance facilities overseas still comply with the AUS/NZ and International aviation standard. However, we do have overseas trained pilot working in Australian airline (CPL with additional airline base training). We do have overseas subcontract maintenance crew and personnels working on Australian registered aircraft. What is the level of compliant assurance applied to these situation?

I have worked with US based and EU based aircraft manufacturers before and still do now. IMHO, it does not take a 3rd world facility/contractor/aircrew/training to compromise airworthiness and impact flight safety. It is the organisation culture, procedures, personnel and data that are critical to ensure a level of airworthiness acceptable to the general public. These provide tangible level of compliance to a set standards and competences, rather than just confidence. (Just because a men/women suite-up, it does not make he/she a good business person, it just gives the impress he/she does)

Big Kev