QANTAS - again

[OceansEdge]

QANTAS had a flight over the Pacific bound for Argentina turn back due to smoke in the cockpit:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010 ... 066623.htm

A Qantas flight from Sydney to Buenos Aires has had to turn back due to technical problems.

Airline spokeswoman Olivia Wirth says the captain on flight QF17 decided to return to Sydney one hour into the flight after smoke entered the cockpit.

She says the plane will be assessed to work out the nature of the problem, thought to be in the plane's electrical system.

I've worked Ops long enough to know that a) sometimes bad a run of bad luck is just that - bad luck and b) sometimes a run of bad luck is indicative of some deeper systemic problem. The last 10 days have been pretty ugly for the big kangaroo. Trying not to jump to conclusions here, but I'm hoping someone is taking a long long hard look at QANTAS's decision to offshore their maintenance.

Either way, the public is starting to get pretty antsy. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010 ... 067045.htm I think it's gonna take more than a little media department 'spin' to make this right.

[moocow]

Looks like RR took some beating in the market as well.



http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/20 ... lence.html

[c170b53]

Considering the GE 115 (much like other new designs) has had numerous issues with no ill effects to GE's stock price (it found another reason to fall), RR misfortunes can be attributed simply as an occurrance on a no other news day.

[plainfixer]

Qantas has got to the point where they have reduced, cut back, diminished their maintenance system back to where their equipment is starting to fail. Qantas has shut down nearly all of their in house maintenance facilities and moved their maintenance requirements offshore because its cheaper.
Qantas will be the world leader in showing every other aviation operator on what happens to you, when you continually cut back all aspects of maintenance, training, hiring standards, etc.
What everyone seems to forget is some of their in flight failures that have occurred since 2003.
Qantas 747 looses ALL navigation systems in flight mid pacific, has to "piggy back" an Air NZ aircraft to australia.
Qantas A330 has elevator control loss over Perth.
Qantas 747 has an oxygen bottle depart aircraft and rupture the hull in flight.
Qantas 747 has its oxygen bottles serviced with nitrogen on departure from Singapore maintenance facility.

There has been a bunch of other incidents(cabin fires, nose wheel stuck side ways, oleo colapse, etc), individually they can be dismissed, but when you step back and take a look at the bigger picture it all starts to look like some thing in their system of maintenance is failing.
I know the Qantas A380 suffered a dramatic in flight engine failure, thats bad, but what concerns me is they lost control of #1 engine. they could not shut it down, so what other systems on that wing did they loose? Time will tell.
Also earlier this year some of the employees within Qantas who are "still engaged" raised concerns about the standards of foreign maintenance being done on Qantas aircraft, they also asked what CASA is doing about it. I believe the FAA is also doing a similar review.

With all of these Qantas aircraft having in flight shut downs, I wonder if someone in the planning department extended the hrs between inspections?
And if anyone is wondering why the maintenance guys and gals are not raising these defects, there are currently 6 Qantas engineers who have been dismissed for raising defects in the tech log for an item that was not in the scope of their inspection. I think there is quite a write up on PPRUNE. Being dismissed is hard enuf, but Qantas is now taking them to court as well!

I'm just wondering how long before they have a hull loss?
Sure they have not had any hull loss in 90years, but that was when they did their maintenance properly, did training to a higher standard than minimum and recruited and retained employees. That was in an environment where safety did not have a price.

[OceansEdge]

Of course QANTAS should have lost VH-OJH

These photographs were taken during the recovery of Qantas VH-OJH B747-400 that ran off the end of the runway at Bangkok.

This is the stuff that QANTAS didn't want the public to see. There was so much damage that the insurers wanted to write-off the aircraft and turn it into spare parts. QANTAS pressured them into letting them repair the aircraft so that they wouldn't have to admit how severe the damage was. If you look at QF1_03.jpg, QF1_19.jpg, QF1_20.jpg, and QF1_31.jpg, you'll see a little angled crease in the fuselage (below the door on both sides). That crease hides the fact that nose-wheel trashed the avionics bay and there was major structural damage in that area.

http://www.anobviousdistraction.com/avi ... ameSet.htm

... and it's still flying today
http://www.airliners.net/photo/Qantas/B ... 0ab7ce6033

It cost QANTAS $100,000 (or so I'm told) to salvage her and avoid the 'hull loss', admirable? or just more 'spin'? Frankly I wouldn't want to buy a car that had had a wreck with that much damage....

Anyway, the never had a hull loss is a bit of a myth, (I've also heard it as never having had a fatal accident) - neither of which is quite true - they have never had a jet written off.

The losses are:
de Havilland DH-9C G-AUED 24 Mar 1927 - 3 died
de Havilland DH-86 VH-USG 15 Nov 1934 - 4 died
de Havilland DH-86 VH-USE 20 Feb 1942 - 9 died
Short S-23 (flying boat) VH-ADU 22 Apr 1943 - 13 died
Lockheed 18 Lodestar VH-CAB 26 Nov 1943 - 15 died
Short S-23 (flying boat) VH-ABB 11 Oct 1944 - 1 died
Lancastrian VH-EAS 07 April 1949 - 0 died
de Havilland Drover II VH-EBQ 16 Jul 1951 - 7 died
Lockheed L1049 VH-EAC 24 August 1960 - 0 died

Anyway - I guess my point is that the outsourcing of maintenance didn't surprise me - it certainly didn't strike me as a change in QANTAS corporate culture. My only surprise is that it's taken this long to catch up to them.

[pika]

...so what other systems on that wing did they loose?

This list is from an email so I can neither confirm nor deny but it seems plausible.

* massive fuel leak in the left mid fuel tank (the beast has 11 tanks, including in the horizontal stabiliser on the tail)
* massive fuel leak in the left inner fuel tank
* a hole on the flap canoe/fairing that you could fit your upper body through
* the aft gallery in the fuel system failed, preventing many fuel transfer functions
* fuel jettison had problems due to the previous problem above
* bloody great hole in the upper wing surface
* partial failure of leading edge slats
* partial failure of speed brakes/ground spoilers
* shrapnel damage to the flaps
* TOTAL loss of all hydraulic fluid in the Green System (beast has 2 x 5,000 PSI systems, Green and Yellow)
* manual extension of landing gear
* loss of 1 generator and associated systems
* loss of brake anti-skid system
* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using normal method after landing due to major damage to systems
* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using the fire switch!!!!!!!!
Therefore, no fire protection was available for that engine after the explosion in #2
* ECAM warnings about major fuel imbalance because of fuel leaks on left side, that were UNABLE to be fixed with cross-feeding
* fuel trapped in Trim Tank (in the tail). Therefore, possible major CofG out-of-balance condition for landing. Yikes!
* and much more to come..........

[c170b53]

This engine problem is typical of new designs and such not foreseen by either operator or manufacturer. So I think twining the two issues together may or may not be accurate. ( I don't know the specifics of Q's ops and this engine).
I'll agree that outsourcing is a huge problem that's been ignored, but its ignored everywhere and has been for some time. As for the various problems, safety mechanisms probably have been put aside, again much like other operators. Governments want it this way, senior management is insulated from it, leaving the workers in the pits to seek their own refuge. Given time, why would anyone expect a different outcome from any airline?
Luck has always been a part of aviation and improvements from the old days to the modern age sought to diminish it's role, now the industry has returned to count on it.

[Apollo]

Qantas 747 has its oxygen bottles serviced with nitrogen on departure from Singapore maintenance facility.

Actually this was at a Qantas facility in Melbourne, not Singapore

[swordfish]

Qantas 747 has its oxygen bottles serviced with nitrogen on departure from Singapore maintenance facility.

Actually this was at a Qantas facility in Melbourne, not Singapore

That would seem fairly serious. How was it discovered?

[boeingboy]

From Avweb:

Airlines all over the world are being warned to check to make sure there’s actually oxygen in their aircraft oxygen systems after an embarrassing mix-up by Qantas Airlines at Melbourne International Airport. For ten months, crews have been filling airliner oxygen systems from a nitrogen cart that’s supposed to be used to fill tires. The mistake went unnoticed until a couple of weeks ago when an observant aircraft engineer spotted service workers using the cart. "He was walking around the plane and asked what they were doing. When they said they were topping up the oxygen, he said, 'No you're not, that's a nitrogen cart,'" an unnamed source told The Age. As anyone who works with industrial gases knows, oxygen tanks have different fittings than other gases to prevent exactly this kind of mix-up. However, when the crews discovered the fittings on what they thought was their new oxygen cart didn’t fit, they swapped them for the ones on the old cart they were retiring. Of course, Australian officials are looking into the error and Qantas has been busy notifying other airlines that use its services in Melbourne. Hundreds of aircraft may be affected.


*** NOTE: THIS IS FROM DEC 2007

[plainfixer]

boeingboy
do you have a link for the Qantas aircraft that had an issue with 3 out of four engines not having their mounting bolts being correctly done?

[~Hollywood~]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-1 ... laced.html

Up to 40 engines on Airbus superjumbos of the type that disintegrated in flight on a Qantas plane will need to be replaced, the Australian airline's chief executive said Thursday.

Three airlines — Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Germany's Lufthansa — fly A380s powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, with a total of 20 planes with four engines each.

On Nov. 4, one of the giant engines on a Qantas superjumbo caught fire and blew apart shortly after takeoff from Singapore, in what experts say was the most serious safety incident for the world's newest and largest passenger plane. The Sydney-bound flight returned safely to Singapore where it made an emergency landing.

All six of Qantas' A380s have been grounded while extensive safety checks and fixes are carried out, and the airline says three Trent 900 engines have been removed. Singapore Airlines, with 11 A380s, and Lufthansa, with three, briefly grounded some of their planes after the Qantas scare but returned almost all of them to service after conducting safety checks.

Joyce was speaking to a small group of reporters on the sidelines of a function in Sydney on Thursday that was unrelated to the A380 issue. Qantas spokesman Simon Rushton confirmed Joyce's comments, but said he was referring to previous information made public by Airbus that up to 40 Trent 900 engines may need to be replaced.

Ouch...

[swordfish]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-1 ... laced.html

Up to 40 engines on Airbus superjumbos of the type that disintegrated in flight on a Qantas plane will need to be replaced......... but said he was referring to previous information made public by Airbus that up to 40 Trent 900 engines may need to be replaced.

Ouch...

The traveling public is having difficulty understanding this is a RR issue, not an Airbus or QANTAS issue. It's a shame people can't get their heads pointed in the right direction sometimes.

[OceansEdge]

Well from a traveling public POV it IS both an Airbus and a QANTAS issue - because the travelling public really doesn't care much about WHY the plane fell out of the sky - they only care that it did.

Thus if Airbus is using the RR engines and they fail - it's an Airbus issue
If QANTAS uses Airbuses with the failing RR engines - it's a QANTAS issue

I'm not saying it's fair, I'm not even saying it's right - but it IS the general public's perception. They don't want a lesson in aircraft mechanics or risk management ... they just want to know the plane they're sending their kids to grandma's house on is gonna be safe.

QANTAS can't afford, nor should they, step back and say "well it's Rolls Royce's problem" - its everyone involved's problem and solutions need to be found

And if it highlights the potential problems of QANTAS's outsourcing of maintenance - well they may very well not be connected - but it still an important thing to be discussing