The perils of outsourcing maintenance

[Maverick]

 

Budget airline Tigerair Australia grounded one of its jets for three weeks last month after it flew back to Australia from maintenance work in the Philippines with serious undetected faults.

The incident has prompted parent company Virgin Australia to end all maintenance work at the facility owned by Singapore Airlines - which owns 20 per cent of Virgin - and has raised questions about Tigerair's and the air safety regulator's oversight of offshore maintenance work.

Tigerair discovered the fault when the plane landed back in Melbourne. 

Photo: James Morgan 

Tigerair flew one of its three Boeing 737s to Clark International Airport near the Filipino city of Angeles on July 17 to undergo heavy maintenance work.

The jet returned to Melbourne with only crew on board two weeks later, on July 31, and Tigerair engineers discovered that a modification to the plane's cargo bay smoke evacuation system had been installed incorrectly.

The work was akin to the skills of a "home handyman", according to Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association federal secretary Steve Purvinas, with unsecured components and wires connected to the wrong terminals.

The fault required extensive repair work followed by testing, which meant the jet was sitting idle in Melbourne for three weeks and forced the airline - which only has 15 planes - to cancel some services.

Another fault was discovered before the plane's first service flight on August 22, when crew found a flight attendant's seatbelt was not properly bolted to the seat.

The airline said 

Photo: Supplied

"What concerns us most is other latent defects, hidden now, but waiting to resurface at 30,000 feet," Mr Purvinas said. "They didn’t know about the seatbelts - what else don’t they know?"

Tigerair's head of engineering Rob Furber said the company had conducted an "extensive review" of the work done in the Philippines both before and after the aircraft returned to service.

"Tigerair has stringent safety management and standard operating procedures in place," Mr Furber said.

The faulty workmanship was done by Singapore Airlines, which owns 20 per cent of Virgin Australia. 

"The safety of our aircraft, passengers and crew is always our highest priority and will never be compromised."

The plane did not take any passengers before the fault was discovered and fixed, the airline said.

Tigerair found out about the smoke extractor defect when it was investigating a fault in the cockpit flight recording system, which led engineers to discover the botched wiring.Add to shortlist

Tigerair's two other 737s have undergone work at Singapore Airlines' Philippines facility since June, and the Virgin Group has been using the facility for close to two years, but that relationship has been ended after the deficient work carried out on the aircraft.

Aviation analysts and consultant Neil Hansford said the incident raised questions about Tigerair's oversight of its offshore maintenance.

“If there was an [Tiger] engineer there, he should lose his licence," he said.

“This is the sort of stuff that would cause CASA, if it had balls, to review the engineering approvals of the airline.”

Overseas maintenance providers need to be certified by Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority, and the regulator told Fairfax Media it was aware of the "maintenance matters" at Tigerair.

Add CASA was working with the airline and the provider, SIA Engineering Philippines (SIAEP), to "ensure that the high standards of Australian aviation safety are maintained", a spokeswoman said.

The SIAEP facility was due to be audited by CASA this year, and the authority has conducted three on-site audits there since 2014, she said.

But Mr Purvinas, from the engineers' union, said CASA had recently moved to a new system that used a computer algorithm to determine when a provider should be audited, which had resulted in fewer checks.

CASA said it was on track to deliver an overall annual increase of surveillance and associated oversight activities this year.

A spokeswoman for SIAEP said the company was "working closely with Tigerair Australia to understand the issues reported on one of their Boeing 737 aircraft".

"SIAEC has performed 10 maintenance checks this year on other Tigerair Australia aircraft at our Philippines facilities, all of which have been completed to the highest standards," she said.

In 2011, before Virgin bought the airline from its Singaporean owners, CASA grounded the entire Tiger Airways fleet for more then five weeks over lax safety standards.

It is common for airlines to send their aircraft offshore or to third parties for maintenance. Qantas, for instance, does some of its wide-body heavy maintenance at its own facility in Los Angeles, and at a third-party facility in Hong Kong.

The Virgin Group has been loss-making for six consecutive years and its Tigerair division has been particularly challenged, running at a $24 million loss last year.

Tigerair is in the process of converting its 15-strong fleet from Airbus to Boeing aircraft.

patrick.hatch@fairfaxmedia.com.au

 

 

https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/tigerair-australia-grounded-plane-over-botched-maintenance-work-20180911-p502zm.html

[boestar]

unfortunately, as the pool of experienced adn trained engineers drains and the inexperience and untrained begin to fill the ranks this kind of issue will be more widespread.  Its already starting.