Shocking footage has captured a Qantas plane missing three bolts and a seal on one of its engine parts raising concerns about the airline’s standards of maintenance.
Journalist Michael West tweeted a video that shows three out of the four bolts that hold an engine air duct in place missing as well as the seal.
West said the video was supplied by a Qantas pilot and that the missing pieces had fallen off into the 737’s cowl.
West told 2GB host Ben Fordham on Monday that although he originally tweeted the plane’s maintenance had been done in the Middle East, Qantas had told him it was ‘a local stuff up’ performed in Brisbane.
‘It’s lucky that airplanes have more engines, the consequences of this, three bolts of four missing in the air duct is that apparently a fire could have started onboard,’ West said.
Independent journalist has tweeted video, he says leaked by a Qantas pilot, that shows an engine part missing three of the four bolts that keep it in place and also a seal
West admitted that ‘to say that the plane could have crashed would be too alarmist’.
He said because of outsourcing and cost cutting by Qantas, which made almost $2.5billion in profit last financial year, there was a ‘lot of concern’ from engineers about the unreasonable demands being made on them.
‘You’ve got these problems and they are mounting and there are a lot of them due to outsourcing and cost cutting,’ West said, citing unnamed Qantas sources.
Qantas told Daily Mail Australia that ‘safety is always our top priority’ and they are conducting an investigation into how the defects occurred.
‘The issue with the air duct was identified by engineers on Saturday and the aircraft was inspected before returning to service,’ a spokesman said.
‘The air duct takes air away from the engine and has no impact on the operation of the engine.’
The air duct issue emerged on a Qantas 737 (pictured) that had been maintained in Brisbane
West said that regulators, such as watchdog ATSB, inspect Qantas planes before they take off.
‘A plane generally won’t go in the sky if it’s is something wrong with it,’ he said.
However, he said Qantas was successfully keeping some issues out of the spotlight including a recent incident where one of their planes took off from the wrong runway at Los Angeles international airport LAX.
This led to two pilots being stood down, West said.
West also raised the issue of the watchdog ACCC’s investigation into Qantas selling tickets for 8000 flights that had already been cancelled.
He said former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce sold 17million shares in the airline ‘in early June this year when the investigation was in full swing’ but hadn’t been publicly announced.
The value of those shares have dropped by almost 14 percent since the ACCC investigation was announced.
‘It’s possible that Alan didn’t know the ACCC was dealing with the Qantas lawyers but you would think that if the competition regulator is investigating you, you would think that the board and the chief executive would know about it,’ West said.
He also pointed out that Mr Joyce sold his shares during a Qantas buyback.
West called on corporate watchdog to launch an investigation into whether Mr Joyce knew of the ACCC investigation and its possible effect on the price of Qantas shares.
‘If he did know, an insider trading prosecution is plausible, indeed warranted’ West wrote on his website.
Insider trading is when someone has access to confidential information that they use for their benefit giving them an unfair advantage over all who don’t know.
West said if there was investigation ‘the perception that politicians and regulators are “under Qantas’ thumb” can only deepen; indeed, that there is one rule for the rich and powerful and entirely another for the rest of us’.
Former Qantas CEO (pictured right with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese) made the shock decision to quit two months early amid a deluge of bad publicity for the airline
West also called on the Qantas board to resign, as he alleged the airline used the $2.7billion in Covid subsidies given it by the federal government to buy back shares inflating their price, which the CEO was also able to personally benefit from.
‘It is a very bad look,’ West writes of Joyce’s stock offloading.
‘Presumably Joyce told the board in advance of the sale (we don’t know this either), which is now equally culpable for this tacky decision, yet the Qantas directors were docile and let it pass.’
Amid a storm of bad publicity Mr Joyce made the shock decision to retire as Qantas CEO last week, which was two months earlier than previously announced.
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