Editorial: Five times too many for airline

Once is exceptional, twice is unfortunate, a third mishap becomes mildly disturbing, a forth seriously so. A fifth incident in as many months is positively alarming. Something must be seriously amiss in the maintenance division of Air New Zealand. We have said that before, notably after a wing panel fell into the Manukau Harbour on August 30. Six days earlier a panel had come adrift after take-off, falling into a Wiri carpark. A day before that, a Boeing 767 turned back to Perth with an aileron fault.

After the third mishap the airline's engineers assured us they were concerned at the "spate of detachment incidents" and determined to discover the causes. But less than a month later a jet had to turn back on a London-Los Angeles flight with something banging loudly in an engine. This week it happened again. A few minutes after taking off from Brisbane a 767-200 turned back after a bang in an engine and made an emergency landing, having lost part of the engine cover and damaging the leading edge of the wing.

What is going on? It is not enough for the airline to say that passengers were never in danger because the aircraft can be operated on one engine. The passengers who felt the jolt and were instructed to brace themselves for the landing were plainly not as safe as they should be. One or two had their faith in the airline sufficiently shaken that they would not get on an alternative Air NZ flight for their journey to Auckland.

The equipment failures are all the more surprising for the fact they are happening as the company is preparing for a merger with its Australian competitor, Qantas, and one of the benefits Air NZ supposedly can offer a merger is the quality and efficiency of its aircraft engineering services. Even yesterday, apparently undeterred by a fifth mishap since August 23, the airline was dangling the carrot of 200 additional jobs in its engineering services operations as a reason competition authorities should permit the merger.

Evidently the proposal would enable an investment of $100 million in the engineering facilities, enabling the company to tender for more maintenance work for other airlines. At the very least that would give more job security to many engineers who are employed on short-term contracts. The question naturally follows: Is Air NZ scrimping on its own maintenance to lower costs and compete so fiercely for international work? The company denies that, and it does seem improbable. No airline that valued its reputation would take risks with its own safety.

But Air NZ's particular pride in its workshops is a reason it might take more than the usual steps to allay the concern that arises from these "detachment incidents". Too little has been heard from the airline about the inquiries we were assured would be made into those earlier incidents.

The Civil Aviation Authority was said to be investigating the wing panel that came adrift over Wiri on August 24 after it had been affixed with just four screws and marked as under repair. The similar mishap six days later is under examination by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission. The jet involved also came to the attention of the United States National Transportation Safety Board when it landed at Los Angeles. And the latest incident, at Brisbane, has attracted the attention of Australian safety controllers.

Air NZ now contemplates a more comprehensive examination of its engineering operation by an independent foreign agency. It needs something wider than the regular audits by the CAA, the US Federal Aviation Authority and others. Public confidence has to be restored. The airline simply cannot afford to have any more metal fall from its planes.