Well thats a far easier problem to sort out than a fuselage failure in itself. Still pretty serious though that the oxygen bottle should fail like that. First one that I personally have heard of. That could have led to a major aircraft breakup as the early Comets did when the fuselage split at a square window corner.

Thank goodness they got away with it.

Les

 

They've been outsourcing maintenance to cheap providers in the far east only to find that you really do get what you pay for. As such they have started bringing some maintenance back in-house only to find the skilled workforce they got rid of is no longer there.
I work as an aircraft engineer for another large airline and am well aware that taking a job with Qantas is akin to career suicide.

They have a cracking safety record having not lost an aircraft or passenger since the 50's but I feel they may have used this as an excuse to do things on the cheap.

Pressure in this business is immense to get the aircraft ready on time and to budget and if you don't have strong characters as your engineers you will end up with sub standard quality work slipping through.

I feel this pressure every working day but the passengers who fly with us pay my wages and I'd rather they went a little late than didn't get to their destination

 

I think the construction is somewhat improved these days. Well, at least they are "supposed" ( ) to be designed so that fractures don't propagate. So when the skin fails, its supposed to only tear out in affected section, localising the failure; Sort of a rip-stop to prevent the whole fueslage being torn apart.

However, its possible that the outrush of air shifted the luggage may have blocked the hole, causing surrouding areas to fail, enlarging the hole.

There is an exception to this case; being the Aloha 737 that had the roof of the fusalage tear off, however this was speculated to being mulitple fatigue fractures across a large area that combined, rather than a single failure point. The main cause was a breakdown of the bonding agent allowing corrosion and overstressing of the riveted joints, causing a very similar issue to what the Comets sufferred: Lots of fractures, propagating, meeting up and causing a very large area to fail.


As with the oxygen cylinder failing thats very worrying; the only point they should fail is the valve or regulator; where it bursts and a controlled safe release of the cylinder's contents occurs. To blow a hole in the side of the plane would require the cylinder itself to explode catastrophically. Not good.

 

But that is absolute rubbish really isn't it, and also union propaganda.

They aren't outsourced to unregulated maintenance shops, they are outsourced to places that are fully supported by Boeing/Airbus and have to pass stringent checks and adhere to stringent procedures. The same places where the likes of Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, Malaysian Airlines etc all go to.

The vast majority of serious events that have occurred on Qantas have been on 747s which have been entirely serviced within Australia.

 

Always suspicious of 'statistics' .

A few years ago, didn't Quantas knacker a 747 in Bangkok, which for anyone else was beyond economic repair, but to keep their 'record' of never losing a hull they rebuilt it?

 

If that's what you're happy to believe so be it

 

p.s. I'd like to make it clear that I am not attributing blame for this incident to those MROs that Qantas use , merely stating the reason that many in the industry don't hold Qantas in such high regard as we used to.

 

Letter to the Times re Radio 4 programme

" A good landing is any landing you walk away from.A great landing is where you can re-use the plane"

 

So I gather you wouldn't fly any Asian airlines based on your opinion?

 

Gather what you like , you're boring me now

 

I'll take that as confirmation you have very little intellect.

 

Well, you clipped a piece of my post above and rubbished what I know to be true. Not being satisfied with my explanation you attempted to draw me into a pointless argument about who I will and won't fly with.

This is despite the fact I never even said I wouldn't fly with Qantas in the first place.

That, my friend, is why you're boring me - the only outcome of further posts will be a downward spiral into internet handbags. I'd rather not go there thank you very much.