Qantas jet in second landing gear alert

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Qantas jet in second landing gear alert

By TANIA EWING Sunday 28 May 2000 A Qantas 747 at Rome airport after its undercarriage collapsed.

Pilots of a Qantas jet were warned of undercarriage problems on descent into Hamilton Island on May 21, just a month after suffering a similar problem.

A warning light on the Qantas flight, with the call sign NJZ, indicated problems with the undercarriage. The aircraft landed safely and the airline investigated the malfunction.

Three weeks earlier, on April 28, the same aircraft was flying from Brisbane to Canberra when pilots were warned that there were undercarriage problems. A Qantas spokesman said that after the first incident the technical fault had been fixed and that, on the Hamilton Island approach, the problem was again a wiring fault and not a problem with the plane's undercarriage. The incidents were reported to the Air Transport and Safety Bureau.

Six days before the problem with the aircraft NJZ, in April, the undercarriage of Qantas flight QF16 collapsed at Rome Airport.

The body of the plane was 14 years old, the undercarriage was more than a decade older and the strut, which is believed to have caused the collapse, is believed to have been used on at least five other planes before being used on QF16.

The executive general manager of operations for Qantas, David Forsyth, said the use of reconditioned parts is standard practice in the airline industry.

Qantas has been experiencing a range of problems since a Boeing 747-300 slewed off the runway at Bangkok airport in September last year. The plane was given a $100million overhaul in China only to return twice to Hong Kong with a generator fault on Australia-bound flights earlier this month.

Questions have also been raised over Qantas' maintenance operations after United States regulators withdrew approval for the airline to conduct repairs on US aircraft. The suspension applied to its bearing and seal shop, which did not meet US standards during a routine audit.

Democrat Senator John Woodley said the incidents involving the Qantas aircraft NJZ add to evidence that a full-scale inquiry should be conducted into the maintenance and safety of our major airlines.

He is a member of the Senate committee investigating an incident during which pilots and crew of a BAe146 aircraft experienced nausea and vomiting during a flight

http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000528/A22025-2000May27.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), May 27, 2000


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