Qantas conundrum continues: Two flights cancelled due to mechanical malfunction

In the latest in a series of mechanical problems that have been plaguing Qantas Airways, the national airline of Australia, in the last about two months, two flights were cancelled. While one flight cancelled was after fumes were detected on board, passengers on another flight of Qantas Airways were held up overnight because of damage to a wing of their plane.

Qantas Airways, based in Sydney and Australia’s largest airline, cancelled a domestic flight from Melbourne to Sydney on September 5, 2008, after fumes were detected inside the cabin and flight deck when the engines were started. All 220 passengers on board flight QF418 of the Boeing 767 “disembarked and were re-accommodated on later flights,” a spokesman for Qantas said.

The Boeing 767, he added, was taken out of service until engineers identify and resolve the problem. The aircraft’s 3 other flights on September 5 have also been cancelled.

In the second of the latest incidents, a Qantas flight, a Boeing 747-400 plane from Melbourne to London , scheduled to leave Melbourne at 10:50 p.m. local time on September 4, was delayed after an access panel on a wing was damaged. The Flight QF29, with 308 passengers, who spent the night in the airport terminal, left at 6:12 a.m. on September 5, the spokesman said.

It was as recently as on September 1, 2008, that Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), the country’s aviation watchdog, had found in a review that Qantas Airways had deficiencies in the way the airline maintains its planes. The CASA had also ordered Qantas to improve the maintenance of its planes.

The string of mechanical malfunctions to plague Qantas Airways recently included a loss of hydraulic fuel that led to an emergency landing, failure of landing gear, and detached panels.

In the most serious of the earlier incidents of mechanical glitches that was to hit a Qantas plane, a flight from London to Melbourne was forced to make an emergency landing in Manila, the Philippines, on July 25, 2008, after an oxygen tank exploded on board, leaving a wide hole in the fuselage.

Though no one was injured in the in the Manila incident, which happened while the plane was flying at an altitude of 29,000 feet (8,800 metres), questions were raised about the safety of the airline.

It may be noted that Qantas Airways has never lost an aircraft because of an accident.

On August 2, a flight of Qantas was forced to return to Sydney, Australia, immediately after takeoff when a fluid leak was detected in a wing.

On July 28, a domestic Qantas flight on way to Melbourne returned to Adelaide Airport after the doors covering a wheel bay failed to close following takeoff.

In August 2008, Qantas had temporarily pulled 6 planes from service because of irregularities in maintenance records. The airline had, in a press release, described the action as a “record-keeping issue” and that there were no safety implications.