Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [104]
Under the new management, not imbued with the caution of people who came up through the ranks as pilots and engineers, the overriding imperative appeared to be the public relations coup associated with being the first to get a shiny new plane. The wisdom of that decision was amply illustrated by QF32 out of Singapore. British Airways, Etihad, Virgin and many others with A380s still on order must have been very relieved that their $332 million A380s would be delivered with any teething problems cured.
The same buying strategy also put Qantas in the jump seat for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Indeed, just six days after the A380 incident, a fire on a test flight of the Dreamliner forced an emergency landing in Laredo, Texas. The long-awaited Boeing was already three years overdue and the electrical fire guaranteed more delays. Ironically, the plane had already been delayed by the failure of another Rolls-Royce engine, a Trent 1000, which had blown apart during ground-testing in England. Qantas had 50 of the jets on order which, coupled with the 20 A380s it was still waiting for from Airbus, represented a sizeable part of its future fleet.
Now, high-profile incidents with tired, ageing jets that should have been in retirement in the Arizona desert long before continued to mount up. There had been a string of incidents before the A380 incident. In March 2010, a Singapore-bound 747 had been forced to return to Sydney because of engine trouble. In April, an air leak on the door of a flight from Los Angeles to Sydney had been resolved by innovative cabin crew jamming a wet towel against it until the jet landed. In September, a Qantas Boeing 747 was forced to make an emergency landing in San Francisco after the engine exploded after take-off. Passenger Kirk Willcox from Rand-wick in Sydney said the plane dropped in altitude. ‘The girl I was sitting next to said, “The engine is on fire,” and I looked out and saw what looked like a giant Roman candlestick. It varied in intensity and was quite extraordinary.’16 Television reports showed footage taken by a passenger from the window of flight QF74 with bright orange sparks pouring out of the engine. Two weeks before the engine exploded, Rolls-Royce had issued an airworthiness directive warning of the possibility of uncontained engine failure because of cracks originating from rear cooling air holes in the RB211 engines. Qantas stated it was fully compliant with the airworthiness directive, which only called for the engine to be inspected for the fault when it was next in the hanger for maintenance.
The public relations disasters continued. Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman and country crooner husband Keith Urban, flying home to Nashville from Sydney for Christmas, had to disembark from their scheduled Qantas flight and wait an extra day, after the captain found vibration in one of the Boeing 747 engines. And when Qantas was chartered to fly people out of Egypt during the riots there in early 2011, one of the old planes again destroyed what should have been a public relations gift. Australian passengers were left stranded in Cairo Airport for an extra night because the Qantas 747 was grounded in Frankfurt with a mechanical problem. A spare part had to be flown over from Britain. Qantas even lost its role as the AFL’s official airline and partner – a deal estimated to be worth $8 million to the airline – to Virgin Blue. And just days after the A380 incident, the old cargo cartel scandal reared its ugly head again. Qantas was fined $12.1 million by the European Commission for its part in price fixing cargo rates with 10 other airlines. Class actions in Australia and the US were still pending on the issue and Qantas had been forced to put away $31 million for potential penalties in Europe, New Zealand and