Qantas continues to be in trouble, grounds 6 Boeing 737-400 aircraft

Qantas Airways, already embattled by a series of technical glitches that led to grounding of about half a dozen aircraft recently, suffered yet another setback when its 6 Boeing 737-400 aircraft were grounded on the night of August 12, 2008, because of irregularities in maintenance records.

Following the latest incident, Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has widened its investigation into the safety procedures of Qantas. The investigation had started in July 2008 after an oxygen tank aboard a Qantas’ Boeing 747 exploded midair, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Manila in the Philippines.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s scope of investigation will now include how a maintenance procedure was missed on a number of its planes.

In a statement, Qantas Airways, the national airline of Australia and the country’s largest airline, said it would remove the 6 Boeing 737-400s from service while it crosschecked maintenance records relating to work carried out at one of its Australian facilities.

According to the newspaper The Australian, the problem stemmed from an “airworthiness directive” released by the United States Federal Aviation Administration advising airlines to check the maintenance on the bulkhead of Boeing 737 aircraft.

Media reports said passengers across the eastern seaboard were experiencing delays and disruptions on August 13 as a result of the removal of the 6 aircraft from service.

A spokeswoman for Qantas said all passengers have been advised about the disruptions, but did not elaborate.

The media quoted David Cox, executive general manager of Qantas Engineering, as explaining the problem: “The paperwork issue was related to procedure and did not have any safety implications. Qantas discovered an irregularity with paperwork for these 6 aircraft during an internal integrity check of maintenance records. In line with our prudent response to any maintenance issue, however minor, we have elected to suspend the operation of the six aircraft while we ensure all our records are 100% accurate and we have advised the Civil Aviation Safety Authority.”

Qantas has been in the limelight recently and also been the target of widespread criticism by the media over a spate of incidents, the most conspicuous of them being an explosion that tore through part of the fuselage of a Boeing 747-400 aircraft. The affected Boeing 747-400, en route from London to Melbourne, had to make an emergency landing in Manila. The incident is believed to have been caused by an exploding oxygen bottle.

On July 28, 2008, a Boeing 737-800 jet of Qantas turned back to Adelaide in Australia after a landing-gear door failed to retract.

Earlier in August 2008, a Boeing 767 plane headed for Manila in the Philippines had to return Sydney in Australia after the jet’s hydraulic fluid was found leaking.

In yet an other incident of mechanical malfunction, a Qantas jet was grounded just a week ago because of noise arising from an airconditioning fault discovered on the plane, which had returned from routine maintenance in Malaysia just 2 months ago with 95 defects.