Soothing words as investigators hunt fault in Air NZ plane

By MATHEW DEARNALEY

Air New Zealand and the Government flew in damage control formation yesterday as investigators tried to find out why a 2m piece of wing flap peeled off a Boeing 747.

The airline's acting chief executive, Andrew Miller, said Air New Zealand shared everyone's concern at a "spate of detachment incidents", and was determined to discover the precise causes.

Transport Minister Paul Swain urged the public to have confidence that investigating agencies independent of the Government were taking the incidents seriously.

Mr Miller denied any suggestion that the airline was scrimping on maintenance, saying a 20 per cent reduction in engineering costs was entirely due to reduced work, particularly after last year's terrorist attacks in the United States.

A recruitment drive for 150 engineers was part of a growth programme rather than any shortage, and he denied that Air New Zealand was diverted or stressed by the large proportion of work it did for other airlines and military fleets.

His chief technical officer, Bill Jacobson, insisted that Flight NZ2, which left Auckland for Los Angeles on Friday night before passengers and crew heard a bang just after takeoff, was "in very little danger".

"The fact that the [flight] deck crew felt no change to the manoevrability of the aircraft on climbout was testament to the fact that this is a very robust aircraft."

The pilots attributed the bump to turbulence and it was only when they extended the wing flaps on approach to Los Angeles that their control panel advised them of a fault.



But Mr Jacobson said any such incident was one too many.

"Our goal is to land with all the parts we take off with."

It was the second time in six days that an Air New Zealand wing part had fallen off a Boeing 747. The first part, a 10kg "non-structural" panel raised ground-safety concerns after it was found in a Wiri carpark.

Fishermen discovered the latest piece afloat in Manukau Harbour on Saturday morning.

Mr Jacobson said it was too early to comment on suggestions that human error played a part in the earlier mishap.

The loss of a piece of wing flap tracking, which fell through a South Auckland warehouse roof in May last year, was caused by a manufacturing defect.

The Civil Aviation Authority is investigating the loss of the wing panel, and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission is inquiring into the latest flap damage.

Commission investigator Ken Matthews is in Auckland waiting for the flap mounting to be returned from Los Angeles, while Air New Zealand is checking whether any more debris can be recovered from Manukau.

The US National Safety Transportation Board has inspected the plane in Los Angeles.

Mr Jacobson disclosed that it was the oldest 747 in the airline's eight-strong fleet of jumbos - 13 years old against a fleet average of eight years.

But he noted that the average age of the world's 747 fleet was 11 years and jumbos were generally considered to have a life of at least 25 years.

Nothing untoward was detected in visual inspections of the rest of Air New Zealand's 747s, but full metallurgical testing would be carried out.

The airline had yet to hear back from Boeing whether any of its 747s had lost similar parts.

Meanwhile, Air New Zealand says there is nothing on its pilots' logs to suggest a part fell off a Boeing 737 on a flight from Wellington to Auckland on Wednesday afternoon, as feared by two travelling companions.

Howick primary school principal Alan McIntyre, a Manukau City Councillor, and his deputy principal believe they overheard another passenger tell a flight attendant something had fallen off the starboard side.

But a senior pilot, who checked the suggestion for the Herald independently of the airline, said he was certain nothing had happened.

Another Air New Zealand passenger, Tungia Baker of Hokitika, wrote to the newspaper concerned that a faulty hydraulic pump on a Boeing 767 caused her and other passengers a 24-hour delay in taking off from Rarotonga last month.

Air New Zealand spokesman Mark Champion suggested any such delay was the mark of a safe airline, and that many other operators probably would have flown on regardless.