Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [55]
In fact, the authorities do not appear to know about many of the instances of toxic fumes leaking into the cabin. On many affected flights an Air Safety Incident Report was not sent to the ATSB because the captain filling out the report did not tick the box at the bottom marked ‘ATSB Reportable’. No tick and it goes into the bottom drawer at Qantas HQ, never to be seen again. No paper trail. No CASA or ATSB involvement. It is simply monitored by the Qantas safety team. No problem. When challenged, Qantas said: ‘It is both the law, under the Transportation Safety Investigation Act, and Qantas policy for any employee, including our pilots, to report safety occurrences via the well-established Air Safety Incident Report (ASIR) system. In fact, our internal reporting system goes beyond the requirements of the Act. If a pilot “ticks the box” on an ASIR, it is automatically forwarded to the ATSB. If a pilot does not “tick the box” when we know of an incident, we will still notify the ATSB. Following the QF26 event referred to, the ASIR was forwarded to the ATSB.’7 So, definitely no problem then.
Except something is going wrong in the system, because many of these instances do not appear on the ATSB website, which records the progress of all incident investigations. The problem is a lot worse than Qantas maintained in its disingenuous statement when it said that instances such as this are ‘extremely rare’, after the QF26 event was exposed in the Australian media. It might also explain why it can happily maintain there is no evidence to suggest air quality is an issue on any of its aircraft.
Qantas keeps an internal Fumes Event Register, on which crews can file an Accident/Injury Reporting System (AIRS) Injury-to-Personnel Report if they are concerned they have been exposed to fumes and might need to make a workers compensation claim at a later date. The register from July 2007 to July 2008 itemises a shocking 31 separate AIRS incident notifications on 13 different jets for exposure to toxic fumes by Qantas crew, starting with QF26 out of Los Angeles. On 8 November one notification was filed when fumes were smelled in the cabin of a Boeing 737 registered VH-VYH during take-off and descent. Two notifications were filed on 7 December after fumes were detected when Boeing 737 registered VH-VXF was locked down for five minutes during a thunderstorm. On Christmas Day one notification was filed after fumes were detected and Boeing 747-300 VH-EBY was pushed back to the blocks. Two months later, on 25 February, three more were filed when the cockpit of the same plane, VH-EBY, filled with fumes and the flight crew had to put on their oxygen masks. One was filed when fumes were detected on Boeing 747-400 VH-OEG on 2 January and two on 18 February when fumes were smelled on Boeing 747-300 VH-EBV. An engine wash on Boeing 737 VH-VYD led to fumes during the take-off roll on 28 February. There were three incident notifications on 7 April from crew on Boeing 747-400 VH-OJC and one on 8 June from Boeing 767 VH-OGN. On 15 June three crew filed notifications after inhaling smoke in the cabin of Boeing 747-400 VH-OGS and two after breathing a ‘slight haze’ on boarding Boeing 737 VH-VXC on 4 July. On 17 June Boeing 767 VH-OGR had two notifications filed and the same plane had one case medically treated on 1 July.
The worst offender was Boeing 737 VH-TJZ. It appeared no less than three times on the Fumes Event Register. On 23 November one crew member filed a notification for breathing in toxic fumes, on 9 January two people filed notifications for breathing fumes during take-off, and two more crew members filed notifications for the same thing on 16 January. The technical log for VH-TJZ is even more damning. It first reports a complaint of an oil smell in the cockpit and cabin on 20 November 2007. On 23 November the APU was found to be leaking oil into the air conditioning system and was changed. On 16 January, when two crew members