Tech & Biz

Qantas suffers third emergency landing in a week

by Rob Peters | August 5, 2008 at 08:56 am

384 views | 10 Recommendations | 2 comments

In baseball three strikes has dire consequences, but whether the same holds true for airlines is still up in the air--or not, actually, judging by all the grounded planes. Australia's national airline has initiated its third emergency landing in a week, raising serious concerns about the company's safety record.

Luckily there have been no injuries so far--just aborted flights and emergency landings--but Australia's airline safety authority has formed a special task force to look into the problem.

Not surpisingly, the CEO for Qantas insists the airline is "probably the safest" in the world.

Check out NowPublic's ample coverage on the issue here.

A third emergency landing in a week has placed Australia's national airline under intense pressure from air safety experts, unions and the travelling public.

The latest incident involved a Qantas 767 which had to abort a flight from Sydney to the Philippines over the weekend because of an hydraulic fuel leak.

Last Monday a 737-800 was forced to return to Adelaide after a landing gear door failed to retract. And just over a week ago a scheduled flight from London to Melbourne via Hong Kong had to make an emergency landing in Manila, when an exploding oxygen cylinder blew a large hole in the fuselage.

Now Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority has formed a special team to find out if the airline's safety standards are slipping.

Business as usual, I guess?

Mr Dixon [the company's CEO] said having three incidents in just over a week was not necessarily "an extraordinary situation", and around the world on any day airlines would be found having turnbacks.

"We're a very, very conservative company – we turn back on just about everything and so we should, that's the way we've operated over so many years," he said.

"And, by the way, that is why we do have such a good record and that record is still very, very good."