Unlucky?

The QF32 incident threw a disk in the works, so to speak, in more ways than one. It has been clear that since Joyce took the reins as CEO two years ago that restoring Qantas’s brand and image was a high priority, after the horror run of 2008 when high profile incidents such as the QF72 air upset and the QF30 exploding oxygen bottle combined with industrial action by engineers to see Qantas’s on time performance belted and its premium image dented. You could see progress being made – on time performance had turned around dramatically, and investments in areas like cabin product, inflight entertainment, airport lounges, the Next Gen airport check-in project and iPhone apps were starting to burnish Qantas’s credentials as a premium, tech savvy airline.

But all that has been seemingly blown away like Trent 900 engine fragments showering on the Indonesian island Batam. The A380 is clearly the poster child of the Qantas fleet – a brand new, state-of-theart aircraft with its premium four class product offering, an aircraft for which Qantas could charge a fare premium over the older 747, and increasingly the key aircraft used to service the airline’s London and Los Angeles routes. So to see bits of engine cowling wearing the Qantas logo being collected by Indonesian police, and Singapore airport fire service crews dousing down QF32 after its emergency landing, must have been a bitter thing for Qantas management to witness, once the relief of there being no fatalities – after erroneous early reports that the aircraft had in fact crashed – had worn off.

That TV imagery was probably the most damaging to the airline’s brand since the QF1 runway overrun at Bangkok over a decade ago – and all likely caused by a design or manufacturing fault outside of Qantas’s control. That a second engine failure, this time contained, on a Qantas 747-400, occurred just a day later only added salt to the wounds.

Having to ground the A380 fleet then was a huge blow to the airline’s prestige, no matter where responsibility for the incident lay.

To be sure, the airline has worked mostly effectively to minimise the damage. Stranded and delayed passengers were being accommodated and compensated, and CEO Joyce regularly fronted the media to get the airline on the front foot in the saturation media coverage of the event, while the fulsome praise by QF32 passengers of Captain Richard De Crespigny and his crew was invaluable PR.

But with Qantas at 90, where does the brand sit in the national psyche, at a time when its flagship was temporarily grounded, its maintenance engineers’ union uses an air safety incident to wage a PR war against offshoring and outsourcing, and old footage of past events such as QF72 and QF30 are replayed to convey an image of a mishap prone airline? No doubt the brand damage will fade in time, but the airline can ill afford more bad luck along the lines of a QF32.

Interestingly, QF32 also served to highlight the issue of pilot skills. By all accounts, the crew on QF32, led by pilot in command Captain De Crespigny supported by his copilot First Officer Matt Hicks in the right hand seat, and no fewer than two check captains watching on in jump seats, performed admirably, drawing on their skills, training, experience and professionalism. That their skills and training had to be called upon in an emergency event also served to highlight the Senate inquiry into pilot training and aviation safety standards underway while these words were written.

As you would expect for an A380 captain, De Crespigny is highly experienced, a 35 year career pilot who began his flying career in the Air Force – in stark contrast to the 200 hour CPL pilots who as graduates of Jetstar’s cadet pilot program will soon be flying as copilots on the airline’s A320s. There’s certainly no doubt that high quality training is more valuable than routine flying hours flown for the sake of building flying hours – witness the Air Force turning out high quality ‘wings’ graduate pilots at the 200 hour mark. But many in the industry have very real concerns about line captains ‘baby-sitting’ newly minted cadet scheme graduate first officers. So the question becomes ‘how much experience, and what kind of experience’ is appropriate? Senator Nick Xenophon is to be congratulated on raising the profile of this issue – it is a worthwhile debate. As QF32 has shown, luck is no accident when experienced flightcrews are at the controls.

Thanks Et

Finally, this issue we farewell Ellis Taylor, who for nearly three years has written a consistently high standard of articles for Australian Aviation.

Ellis will continue to contribute to AA as a freelancer, but we wish him well in his new career