UK planes ‘flying with defects’
30.07.08
Airlines across Europe are flying planes with known defects because pilots routinely fail to report faults when they find them, preferring to fly back to their base airport before making their airlines aware of the issues, the Belfast Telegraph reports that an investigation has revealed.
A survey of aircraft maintenance engineers, whose work covered flights to and from the UK, found many pilots only report faults such as brake fluid leaks and loss of cabin pressure after their homebound flight or even after the day's flights. The delay allowed airlines to fix faults at a more convenient time, avoiding extra expense.
On average, between 80% - 90% of faults were reported after a pilot had made a homebound flight or after the end of the day's flying schedule, with the picture consistent across major and budget airlines.
Aircraft Engineers International (AEI), the organisation behind the investigation, said that the Helios airliner crash in 2005, when a Boeing 737 crashed into a Greek hillside, killing all 121 on board, was partly caused by a failure to report a fault. In the run-up to the crash the pilots failed to record an error in resetting a crucial air-conditioning switch. Soon after the airliner took off from Cyprus, the crew and passengers passed out because of a lack of oxygen.
AEI hopes its survey will prompt Europe's aviation regulators to carry out their own random checks of logbooks to stamp out late reporting. However, the UK's aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), told the newspaper that it carried out inspections of logbooks and was satisfied with its safety measures.
Richard Taylor, a spokesman, said: ‘The AEI have been making these claims for some time, but they have so far failed to provide us with specific examples. If they do have any documentary evidence that anyone is failing to report faults, they have a duty to pass on this information to us. Information can be passed to us in complete confidence.’
The budget airline Ryanair said it had not seen the pattern of reporting AEI alleged but that it was ‘aware that it was a problem for other airlines’. Virgin Atlantic said that, as a long-haul carrier, pilots reported after each flight because crews were replaced after each trip. BA said that its own safety inspectors had not found that faults were disproportionately being reported at convenient times - and that its safety checks were in accordance with EU regulations.
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