A random Weblog

Speak with any Qantas frequent flyer about their experiences with the airline, and soon enough they’ll contribute stories of unusual issues and odd delays they’ve encountered.  To be fair, every airline has its share of gremlins (after all, these highly complex machines), but I have a gut feeling that there’s “trouble at mill” when it comes to Qantas – especially with respect to the aging fleet of 767’s that are the backbone of the major domestic routes.

My own experiences suggest there are two types of issue here – firstly the reasonably benign but all too common kind, and secondly the more worrying, but fortunately rare, type.

Perhaps the high frequency of the first type, the basic type, is something of a canary in the coalmine however? For example, when it comes to the 767 fleet, it feels like there is a 100% fault rate with the in-flight entertainment system (be that failure to play, stopping part-way through, or projectors rendering things so snowy or so diluted of colour that the image is impossible to watch).  Are these projector problems because they’re old, or because they’re poorly maintained? It has to be one of these two issues – but it’s a moot point as it reflects worryingly on the rest of the aircraft in either case.

Then there are the less frequent, but more complex problems.  Here are two examples from within the last four weeks;

On the 18^th my 5pm 767 out of Melbourne had an aborted take-off.  There was an engine fault of some kind, and even though we were accelerating into the take-off roll, the tech crew did the right thing and put safety ahead of schedule.  By powering off and braking hard, the plane soon came to a stop on the runaway.  We then headed back to the terminal, deplaned and waited while engineers worked on the starboard engine – eventually taking off two hours later (although we were never told just what that engine fault was).  Incidentally, a colleague was on the 6pm departure – also a 767.  It left two hours behind schedule after some kind of fault in the cargo hold, so clearly it wasn’t a good evening for Qantas Melbourne on the 18^th.

The plane I was on that evening was “City of Lismore” – an aircraft that is, I believe, 19 years old.  I’d be amongst the first to note that the 767 aircraft type has proved highly reliable for Qantas, but sadly I’m hearing more and more of these kinds of incidents.

December 2^nd – and I’m on another 767 flying Melbourne to Sydney.  At the top of the descent the electrical power failed – lights, air-con and video fail momentarily, then flicker quickly and settle back to normal.  Shortly afterward the pilot came on the PA to say that when he idled back the engines to begin the descent, a small generator faulted, “But everything is OK and the aircraft is flying beautifully.”

I’ve flown well over a thousand times and I’ve never encountered a loss of power at altitude before, so I wouldn’t call this a routine event.  The added reassurance from the cockpit underlined to me that the pilot didn’t think it was routine either (although I did appreciate him saying all was well!)

Even without these safety issues, the Qantas 767’s feel second rate to fly on. It seems that Qantas management (perhaps with no help from unreliable delivery schedules from Airbus and Boeing) have some questions to answer.  How did critically important routes like Sydney – Melbourne get burdened with 767’s that are a turn-off to their image – both as a passenger comfort and potentially as a safety thing?  We’re told that the latest planes burn a lot less fuel; surely the economic argument for a better aircraft type on these high-cycle routes has been won, so why do the sheep-truck 767’s persist?

I’m sure others could relate issues with the Airbus fleet too.  What’s up with A380 number three for example? The third delivered seems to have had more issues than it’s siblings.

If my observations, and those of my friends, are correct – namely that there is an up-spike in 767 safety issues, then Qantas are obviously much more aware of this – they would therefore be doing at least two things right now. The first would be to review each issue and look for patterns (or out-of-patterns for that matter), and the second would be to update and test their disaster planning.

Which gets to my final point. All airlines maintain plans for the handling of a catastrophic incident, and those disaster plans would be regularly workshopped and updated.  It’s good business practise, but I’m betting that Qantas are nervous right now.  In fact I wonder if they’ve resigned themselves to seeing a crash as no longer preventable, but inevitable?  It’s a shocking thought, so I sure hope the answer is no, as their zero fatality record is something I hope they can maintain for a long, long time.

Meantime, my message to Qantas. Retire the 767’s – not just for comforts sake, but for safety sake too…