Engineering Union Got It Wrong – Qantas
Qantas has reacted angrily to public comments by Steve Purvinas, Federal Secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) following the emergency diversion to Guam of a Jetstar Airbus A330 today.
The flight from Osaka diverted when an electrical fire occurred in the aircraft’s windscreen heating system, and Mr. Purvinas has linked offshore maintenance with the event, and with another in a B747 when a defective oxygen bottle broke loose and tore a hole in the Jumbo’s fuselage. He had told media the Jetstar A330 last underwent major maintenance in Manila in December 2008.
Qantas today strongly refuted the union’s claims. Mr. Lyell Strambi, Group Executive Qantas Airlines Operations, said Mr Purvinas was well known for making inflammatory statements and not letting the facts get in the way of his story:
“The A330-200 aircraft involved in this incident was delivered new by Airbus in 2007,” Mr Strambi said. “It has since undergone a number of routine maintenance checks – most recently by Qantas Engineering in Melbourne in May this year, while its one and only heavy maintenance check was done by Lufthansa Technik in Manila in December 2008.
“We don’t resile from this in any way and Mr Purvinas is deliberately twisting words in suggesting Jetstar has tried to link the issue to Qantas engineers in Australia.”
Mr Strambi said the union also knew that:
· where Qantas Engineering does not have the capacity to do work in Australia, it is done by reputable overseas providers. They are certified by CASA and Qantas and their work is overseen by on-site Qantas engineers; and
· Qantas recently announced that the Group’s A330 heavy maintenance would be undertaken in Brisbane from 2010.
“Qantas always has high levels of oversight in place, so where maintenance takes place is not relevant,” Mr Strambi said.
“Had Mr Purvinas checked his facts and been able to think outside his narrow industrial agenda, as any good engineer would, he would know that the electrical connector that caused the Jetstar incident was not part of the work undertaken in Manila last year.
“There has been no requirement to touch this component since the aircraft was delivered, there is no history of it being an issue with our A330 fleet and there have been no directives from Airbus covering this component.
“And had he checked, he would know that the B747 issue referred to was fully and independently investigated by the ATSB. The issue was known to Boeing, which was developing a modification to address it and the ATSB could not link the issue with any previous heavy maintenance work.
“Qantas is committed to the highest operational and safety standards, and the ALAEA is slandering the hard work of its members when it makes baseless and ill-informed claims regarding our engineering operations.”
