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CANBERRA - Qantas yesterday promised full co-operation with a review of its operations by Australia's air safety watchdog as another flight was delayed for last-minute repairs.
The latest incident, involving a fault in the hydraulic system that kept a Tokyo-bound Boeing 767-300 for three hours at Sydney Airport, is the fourth in less than two weeks.
Fairfax newspapers also yesterday printed a list of 11 problems affecting Qantas flights since the beginning of the year. These included the explosion that tore a hole in the fuselage of a jumbo on July 25, the loss of main electrical power on another flight out of London in January, an emergency landing in Hawaii caused by an oxygen leak the same month, and another in March when an external window in business class "popped".
But the Civil Aviation Safety Authority has said there was no evidence of declining safety standards, and the airline believes that it has become the subject of intense media attention because of the explosion that forced its Boeing to land at the Philippines capital of Manila.
"Qantas' safety standards are so high and so well-recognised, that when we do have an accident like the other day in Manila, it's big news," David Cox, the executive general manager of Qantas Engineering, told ABC radio.
Casa has appointed a six-member team to review the airline's maintenance, safety systems and recent incidents in an investigation that is expected to be completed within two weeks.
The most serious recent incident was the explosion on QF30 en route from Hong Kong to Melbourne with 365 people aboard, now believed to have been caused by a defective oxygen cylinder.
On Saturday a Boeing 767-300 flying out of Sydney to Manila circled for an hour over the ocean to dump fuel because of a hydraulic leak noticed when the aircraft took off. The flight returned to Sydney without incident, and Casa said that with two other hydraulic systems to back up the leaking unit, safety had not been at risk.
Cox said the turnback was routine, the crew had acted appropriately, there had been no safety issue at any time, and the aircraft was back in service eight hours later.
Issues that required an aircraft to turn back were extremely rare in a group that operated more than 330,000 sectors a year.
Cox said that Qantas' operations were first class and were subject to the scrutiny of Australian and overseas regulators, as well as the airline's own internal audits.
"We have no issue with this latest review, and Casa says it has no evidence to suggest that safety standards at Qantas have fallen," he said.
Cox said Casa regularly audited a range of Qantas operations, with 13 completed at Qantas Engineering last year, as well as the renewed confirmation of the airlines air operator's certificate. Qantas conducted up to 150 internal audits a year, and was subjected to extensive audits by about 75 external regulators, manufacturers and customer airlines.
These included reviews by Casa's equivalents in New Zealand, the United States, the European Union and Japan.
"On any given day Qantas Engineering is working with multiple audit teams, both internal and external, who are forensically scrutinising every part of our operations," he said.
"We always have been, and always will be, fully open to this intense and constant scrutiny in the knowledge that our standards are confirmed every time these auditors renew our approvals."
