Qantas botched maintenance on 737s, claim engineers

The Australian reports that Qantas engineers say the airline’s staffing problems are coming home to roost after management admitted this week that it failed to complete maintenance designed to prevent cracking in 737 forward pressure bulkheads.

Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association President Paul Cousins said yesterday the work was not done because the airline’s engineering services department had not issued the necessary paperwork.

Mr Cousins blamed the airline’s constant cost-cutting program for “getting rid of personnel who had the necessary experiences to make sure these things get done correctly”.

“Certainly the engineering services department is one of them. It’s feeling the same as we are, and obviously the guys are overworked and have a multitude of stuff to go through,” he said. “Unfortunately, when you don’t have the resources, things get missed.”

Qantas admitted on Wednesday that it had failed to complete a maintenance procedure ordered eight years ago, that was designed to prevent an explosive decompression on six Boeing 737s now grounded until at least next week.

A US Federal Aviation Administration directive was issued in 2000 after the regulator received reports of numerous cracks in critical areas of the forward pressure bulkhead.

The airline voluntarily grounded the planes and informed Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority after an internal audit found problems with maintenance paperwork.

It later admitted that a step in the maintenance — understood to involve the installation of clips to strengthen the bulkhead — had not been completed.

CASA has stepped up an investigation of Qantas maintenance begun after a mid-air explosion blew a hole in the side of of Boeing 747-400 near Manila three weeks ago.

Mr Cousins said the paperwork for this modification was complex and involved multiple engineering instructions and advisories.

There were also different procedures for different planes.

He said staff in engineering services had to sort through the paperwork and decide what went with what particular aircraft.

“And it was during that process that certain things were missed,” he said.

The union has been highlighting problems with engineering for the past 18 months but its concerns had been dismissed as part of a pay campaign. With voting on a new enterprise agreement now under way, Mr Cousins said the airline was no longer able to apply that argument.

“We’ve been trying to highlight over the last couple of years that engineering management that’s come into Qantas over the last five years and then changed again about three years ago, doesn’t really have … a full understanding of what engineering does,” he said.

The airline’s run of problems continued yesterday when it was revealed a Boeing 767 lost its central hydraulic system and primary nosewheel steering as it landed in Sydney on Wednesday night. The pilots had to steer the the aircraft using the rudder pedals and the aircraft was towed to the terminal.

Yesterday Qantas also blamed a computer glitch for a problem that saw it take a jumbo jet out of service on Wednesday to perform missed scheduled maintenance on a horizontal stabiliser jack screw.

A Qantas spokeswoman said the airline had installed a new jack screw on the aircraft last year but the computer problem meant the system failed to recognise the part.

“The call-out for relubrication, therefore, was not automatic and our back-up record checking highlighted the issue,” she said. “It was rectified before flying.”  

A Report by The Mole from The Australian