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In what seems to just be a running joke, Qantas has had yet another turnaround, marking its seventh incident in a week.
The past week has seen Qantas passengers flipping coins on whether their flight would make it to its destination or turn back midway through.
Capping off a week of mid-air woe is flight QF887, which on its journey from Adelaide to Perth turned back after 45 minutes in the air.
Unlike the rest of the Qantas planes that have made headlines this week, the Airbus A330-202 registered as VH-EBA had no mechanical or technical faults.
However, issues regarding compliance paperwork not having been finalised meant the plane had to go back.
After landing back at Adelaide airport, paperwork was finalised and signed off by engineers, allowing VH-EBA to take off for Perth once again, four hours after it was set to touch down.
@7NewsAdelaide Qantas flight Adelaide to Perth has just returned to Adelaide QF887 pic.twitter.com/xD3NP7YcvX
— Ian Chirnside (@IanChirnside) January 23, 2023
The Qantas curse began on January 18 with a flight from Auckland to Sydney issuing a mayday call due to engine failure. After the call was quickly downgraded to a PAN (possible assistance needed), the Boeing 737-800 landed safely in Sydney.
The following day, a flight destined for Fiji had to return to Sydney, whilst three more aircraft had to turn around on the Friday.
Qantas then enjoyed a weekend break from mishaps on Saturday before returning to recent form on Sunday when fumes within the aircraft’s cabin caused flight QF102 to Sydney to return to Nadi Airport in Fiji.
Despite the issues, investors aren’t worried about share prices being affected. Chief investment officer Steve Johnson at Forager Funds Management has said that Qantas shouldn’t be worried about the recent flurry of issues, but should be if they continue.
“As an investor you need to be really careful to work out what’s going to have an impact on the company’s future profitability as opposed to some short-lived media excitement,” he said.
“I think any impact from recent events will be fairly modest but I don’t think anyone would want these things to go on for months.”
However, customers aren’t so happy with the recent issues. In regard to the most recent flight, one passenger took to Twitter to complain about the service.
Mmm @Qantas Adelaide to Perth just landed back in Adelaide. Turned around about halfway due to some “compliance” issue, according to a passenger. Meant to back at work in Perth tomorrow, but Joyce and shareholders are OK, so no biggie
— Iris Gladigau (@Irris55) January 23, 2023
Speaking about the recent mishaps, Qantas domestic and international CEO, Andrew David, took to 2GB on Monday to provide reassurance.
“Let me start by assuring everybody that there are absolutely no issues at Qantas,” he said.
“If you look around the world, the global aviation industry would average about 10,000 diversions or air turnbacks per year. We average about 60 per year.
“Yes we have had four or five in the last week or so but our pilots are trained to err on the side of caution for any issue.”
Only weeks ago, Qantas was crowned the safest airline in the world.
The Flying Kangaroo has said each event is being investigated.
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says:I would have expected better from an Aviation magazine. VH-EBA was not the aircraft involved it flew Melbourne to Perth. As per Flightradar24 the aircraft that operated QF887 was a B737 VH-VXF
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says:Ignore my last post I was looking at the wrong date my apologies
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says:Seriously, I find it amazing that in a purely Oz domestic aviation situation we had this incident out of ADL- sure it does no favours for QF and certainly attracts negative attention for other participants. As is reported, “compliance paperwork issues” were responsible for this turn back! No doubt QF will perform a major investigation and I trust that the report will be published in full but as it stands today the cause/s could only have been, a/ a genuine human error, (lack of supervision) b/ undue pressure to maintain sked c/ industrial action. Since the operating crew would not have accepted an unserviceable aircraft and commenced what was proven to be an uneventful journey I seriously question the decision to recall the flight, there is a huge difference between, in this case, paperwork compliance and the safe operation of a scheduled service. Something is not right here.