The ‘discovery’ of another fake licensed engineer at Qantas and rumours of more to come begs the question as to whether CASA does anything useful.
In the previous two years CASA has shown that it can detect serious failings in small regional carriers like the defunct third level carrier Transair, which killed 15 people in the Lockhart River disaster in May 2005. However that tragedy also showed that CASA wouldn’t tell the public what it knew before a plane load of them died, wouldn’t subsequently acknowledge any responsibility to warn the public, and didn’t intervene effectively in the operational conduct of the shoddy little outfit despite what it knew.
Last year CASA launched a special audit into Qantas after several serious incidents. This audit, which was suppressed in full, found that the airline’s standards were slipping, and that itself as the regulator hadn’t picked them up. At the start of that process Qantas abruptly admitted overlooking an absolutely critical airworthiness directive concerning a pressure bulkhead in a sub fleet of Boeing 737s for five years, and rolled out its head of engineering who said it wasn’t a safety issue, while CASA refused to accept any responsibility for tracking and enforcing such compulsory directives. This was a moment that made aviation regulation in Australia look comparable to the failed state status it enjoys in Nigeria. Our flag carrier actually claimed that an airworthiness directive was not about air safety and the Minister and government did nothing.
That episode alone raised grave doubts about the conduct and competency of a CASA, not to mention effective ministerial oversight, since CASA had nearly grounded Ansett in 2000 over a range of issues related to aircraft airworthiness that were as grave as Qantas not completing modifications to a pressure bulkhead in a high cycle airliner.
In between Lockhart River and the Qantas audit, the second stage of which should be close to completion, CASA’s achievments included failing to prosecute REX for illegally flying a full aircraft on a single engine for nearly an hour to Sydney after the other engine failed shortly after takeoff from Wagga Wagga, and letting Jetstar self examine a nearly disastrous and incompetent missed approach to Melbourne Airport in fog. (Jetstar didn’t even know what it had done at the time.)
This process of delusional incompetence was short circuited by two reporters, Doug Nancarrow at Aviation Business, and myself at Crikey, who caused the ATSB to demand the papers and launch an inquiry almost three months after the incident. That inquiry should be close to completion.
Other examples of questionable conduct at CASA include its insistence that it is perfectly safe for jet airliners to self separate on the major trunk routes when AirServices Australia can’t find enough air traffic controllers to provide a service which is a legislated obligation in this country and throughout the first, second and much of the third world as well. (Short of imprisoning the diminished ranks of controllers inside the control centres the supremely well managed AirServices Australia enterprise won’t have enough qualified staff to provide full services for years to come.)
It is dangerously foolish for CASA to promote self separation between airlines as safe when it doesn’t provide complete certainty as to where all of the aircraft close to each other actually are. It is ridiculous for the government to tolerate such a situation. Don’t believe the media on this. Believe the chief pilots and chief executive officers of the main Australian and foreign airlines trying to efficiently use Australian air space and save their a*ses in advance of any sudden requirement for truck loads of body bags.
If CASA’s oversight of Qantas is so abysmal that unqualified engineers can work for years on safety critical procedures on its airliners, what precisely are we getting for our money, and might it not be time for the government’s new enthusiasm for distrusting corporate behaviour to be extended to the relationship between the airlines and the ‘regulator’?
4 Comments
Ben,
While CASA has some responsibility to ensure that only LAMEs certify work done, surely the prime responsibility for this rests with the organization performing the maintenance work. In this case, it is Qantas – and not for the first time. When the first impostor was uncovered, the Qantas Engineering management and its spin-doctors said that a full audit would be conducted etc etc etc. If the audit was conducted, how did the second impostor drop through the cracks? There is something very basic mis-management at Qantas and the sooner these weak links are terminated, fired – call it what you will – the travelling public must be at some risk.
If Qantas Engineering has been home to a couple of impostors, how can we be sure that all of Qantas pilots hold the necessary licences and endorsements?
This sounds like yet another instance of “regulatory capture”, where the supposed regulator ends up far too cozy with the industry it’s supposed to be regulating. There’s another article in today’s Crikey highlighting much the same thing at the TGA.