No evidence safety slipping at Qantas, says aviation expert

There is no evidence safety is slipping at Qantas despite five incidents in three days, an aviation expert says. Photo / Marty Melville

It's "unusual" for five Qantas planes to encounter problems in three days but there's no evidence of slipping safety standards at Australia's national carrier, an aviation expert says.

In the latest incident Qantas had to pull a plane off a flight from Canberra to Brisbane on Wednesday morning after discovering a problem on board.

Qantas says it's still investigating "an issue with the plane" and all passengers have been put on an alternative flight.

It follows two Qantas flights on Tuesday and two others on Monday that were forced to land after suffering problems.

Issues including dodgy air-conditioning, unusual odours and a faulty warning system have been blamed for the turnarounds.

Geoffrey Thomas, editor of the website airlineratings.com, said it was uncommon for Qantas to experience so many turnbacks in such a short period of time.

"It's quite unusual to have that many," Mr Thomas told AAP.

But he said it was important to put the airline's recent run of problems in context.

"The Qantas Group has approximately 1000 flights a day, we have to get that element in perspective," he said.

"These (problems) come after weeks and weeks and weeks without any turnarounds."

Qantas chief Alan Joyce on Tuesday played down the recent aircraft troubles, saying such events happen all the time.

He has also dismissed claims offshore maintenance was behind the troubles, noting that Qantas still serviced planes in Sydney and Brisbane.

Mr Thomas said social media meant problems like those experienced by Qantas this week were now more likely to gain traction online.

"These sorts of things happened 20 years ago, you just didn't hear about them," Mr Thomas said.

"Social media has turned everybody into a reporter."

He said the "hard numbers" showed Qantas was still a world leader on safety.

"Qantas is unquestionably the world's safest airline," Mr Thomas said.

"Their shutdown rates on their engines is the lowest in the world, their turnback rates on 737s is half the world average.

"The hard numbers do not support the suggestion that things are deteriorating."

- AAP