Qantas battles safety issues

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Qantas Airways has been forced to ground six of its Boeing 737s due to irregularities in maintenance records.

The Australian airline came under scrutiny last month after an oxygen tank exploded during a flight from London to Melbourne, forcing the aircraft to make an emergency landing in the Philippines. Though no one was hurt in the blast it caused a large hole in the fuselage and panic amongst passengers.

The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has begun investigations into the carrier’s safety procedures. According to the Australian newspapers, the problems stemmed from confusion over paperwork, meaning the airline couldn’t tell which maintenance procedures had been done.

David Cox, the executive general manager of Qantas engineering, told the UK Times it was a record keeping issue which occurs about once a year and there were no safety implications for the aircraft.

“We’re really looking deeply at Qantas safety systems across the board,” said peter Gibson, CASA spokesman. “We are now trying to rectify the situation and investigating what caused them to miss that step. We’re taking it very seriously but people shouldn’t jump from that to being alarmed It’s not as if they were trying to hide anything, it looks like this is just a genuine mistake,” he added.

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