Jetstar admits to safety oversights

They were doing only half of the required routine maintenance! That could explain a lot

QANTAS'S no-frills subsidiary, Jetstar, has come under the scrutiny of the aviation safety regulator over aircraft maintenance, adding to the sense of crisis in Australian aviation after the grounding of Tiger Airways.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority will check the rigour of Jetstar's maintenance systems and processes, after finding out planes were not fully serviced to schedule. Jetstar hurriedly pulled four Airbus A320s from service on Thursday night to attend to overlooked and overdue maintenance.

Yesterday Jetstar admitted to an "administrative issue" with its aircraft servicing. It had informed the safety regulator of its mistakes. "We have robust safety procedures in place and as part of this identified some routine maintenance tasks that should have been completed within specific time limits," a spokeswoman, Andrea Wait, said. "As soon as the administrative issue was identified it was rectified and none of the tasks were safety significant [sic]. "There was no risk to the safety of the aircraft."

The belated service items included testing emergency light batteries, sampling hydraulic fluid and lubrication of door switches, she said.

Separately, the Herald has been reliably told that there is one Jetstar Airbus on the tarmac in Christchurch that will be tested for volcanic ash contamination after a white powdery substance was found on leading edges of engine compressor fan blades.

On the maintenance front, the Herald has been told Jetstar's computer tracks aircraft components in two distinct ways: components that need servicing by flying hours, and those that need servicing by date intervals. But airline staff only realised late on Thursday afternoon that they had only been looking at the service items by flying hours, and had overlooked those by date intervals. It is not known how long this had gone on.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority will now examine Jetstar's system. "We will look carefully at what they've done and to make sure their systems are robust and operating correctly," a spokesman for the authority, Peter Gibson, said.

The vice-president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, Richard Woodward, said he hoped the lapse was "not a genuine oversight regarding engineering of an aeroplane". "We cannot afford that - the risk is too high," he said.

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