Australia raises safety fears for older 767s

A Boeing 767 model which required tail inspections last year

In this story: No rules broken Horror run for Ansett RELATED SITES

By Grant Holloway
CNN

SYDNEY, Australia (CNN) -- Australia's Civil Aviation Safety (CASA) says it will raise concerns over the safety of the Boeing 767-200 passenger jet with the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).

This comes after Australian airline Ansett grounded three of its 767s after airline inspectors found cracks in the mountings that connect the plane's engines to its wings.

U.S.-based aircraft manufacturer Boeing recommended in March last year that airlines carry out maintenance checks for this type of stress damage, but neither it nor the FAA made the inspections mandatory.

But the airline did not begin doing its checks until nine days ago, because Boeing did not say that the recommendation was mandatory.

An Ansett spokesperson told the Australian newspaper The Age that the planes are not expected to fly again until they have been fixed and tested. Repairing each aircraft is expected to take at least two days.

CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said his office is planning to ask the FAA why it had not made the maintenance check mandatory, especially in the light of Ansett's recent findings.

No rules broken

Gibson stressed that Ansett had not broken any rules in not undertaking the maintenance check until now, but said the matter was of considerable concern.

He said cracking in the engine pylons was not unheard of, but in the past the fault "had been the cause of some fairly horrendous crashes, so it has to be taken seriously".

He said the investigation could take up to a month or more to complete.

Ansett spokesman Geoff Lynch has promised that Ansett would co-operate fully with any inquiry into the matter.

Horror run for Ansett

This aircraft grounding is the latest in a growing series of safety concerns for Ansett, Australia's number two airline after Qantas.

In December last year, Ansett was forced to ground seven 767-200 planes for safety inspections after cracks were found in the plane's tails.

The Age newspaper quotes a CASA official as saying the same planes were affected this time, but the recent cracks are much more serious than the ones that were found a few months ago.

A CASA spokesman described the section at issue as one that "didn't have a fail-safe component."

"If it fails, it fails, and there is no back up," he said.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau is now looking into the matter.

In January this year, Ansett engineers found a crack in the horizontal stabilizer and four cracks in the tail of another 767. In the same month another 767 was discovered to have flown between Sydney and Hong Kong for a week with an incorrect part fitted to its wing.

In February, the airline safety authority asked Ansett to improve its procedures regarding aircraft maintenance, something Gibson said the airline had begun to address.

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