Rust 'found months ago' on Qantas jet

Published on Saturday 26 July 2008 20:05

INVESTIGATORS were last night looking into claims a Qantas jumbo jet that made an emergency landing in the Philippines with a giant hole in its fuselage had "serious corrosion issues" identified as long ago as March.

Australian investigators yesterday began examining the hole in the plane's fuselage amid an allegation on an online planespotters' forum earlier this year when participants referred to the detection of corrosion in the 17-year-old Boeing 747-438 Longreach during a maintenance check at Avalon Airport in Melbourne more than four months ago.

One participant wrote: "Sources tell me the launch date has further slipped once to 5th of March. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope OJK (the plane involved in the mid-air drama] recovers from her plastic surgery."

Aviation experts say corrosion could have been enough to have caused the 2.5-3 metre hole in the fuselage.

The London to Melbourne flight, with 346 passengers on board, was one hour south of its stop-over, Hong Kong, and flying at 29,000ft when the pilots had to execute an emergency descent and divert to Manila in the Philippines.

Other possible causes could include accidental external damage to the plane on the ground, or an object inside the plane which had not been properly secured and slammed into the fuselage.

Investigators will want to rule out the presence of explosives but there has so far been no evidence that the damage was caused by a terrorist attack.

A Qantas spokeswoman confirmed yesterday the plane did go through maintenance checks at Avalon Airport but "nothing out of the ordinary was detected. The most recent maintenance checks on this aircraft were for a 'D' (most thorough] check in Qantas' Sydney facility in 2004 and two 'C' (regular] checks in Qantas' facility in 2006 and 2008," she said.

Investigators, including four officers from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, would also closely examine the maintenance regime of the aircraft, which was registered in 1991, Qantas said. They would also focus on what happened at Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Airport, it added.

The Boeing 747-400 was at cruising altitude when it was shaken by what passengers described as an explosion.

There were no injuries.

Qantas chief executive officer Geoff Dixon said he was "horrified" after seeing pictures of the aircraft's gaping hole.

"There are thousands of aircraft flying around the world today – things happen. Something has happened here and we cannot speculate any more about what did happen," Dixon said.

Peter Gibson, spokesman for Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority, said: "It's clearly an extremely rare and unusual event that a hole opens up in the fuselage. I know there's a number of theories around, but at this stage, they're just theories. We don't have the solid facts."

A Boeing spokeswoman said the company was providing technical assistance.

Aviation expert Chris Yates said the air accident investigators would be examining closely the fracture points to determine whether metal fatigue or manufacturing defect caused the hole.

"This is not an uncommon occurrence, every year there are reports of panels being lost from aircraft in flight and these instances are rarely, if ever, fatal," he added.