Ansett plays blame game in hunt for scapegoat

Friday 20th April 2001

SAFETY CATCH: Almost the worst thing that can happen to an airline

International finger-pointing over who's responsible for the Ansett debacle is not over, JOCK ANDERSON reports

Accusations flew between Australia and the UK this week as former Ansett Australia chairman Rod Eddington yesterday sidestepped the blame for the beleaguered airline's flawed maintenance record.

Pressure was on the fledgling chief executive of British Airways, and Qantas board member, to defend claims by Air New Zealand chief executive Gary Toomey and an engineering union that his management regime was to blame for the maintenance crisis that resulted in the pre-Easter grounding of Ansett's 10 old Boeing B767-200 aircraft.

Australia's troubled civil aviation safety authority (Casa), whose director, Mick Toller, grounded the aircraft but said he was not afraid to fly in them himself, also questioned Ansett's long-term maintenance procedures.

There were predictions some aircraft could be cleared today to fly again.

Through a British Airways spokesman in London Mr Eddington hit back at his maintenance critics, saying during his time Ansett had always passed Casa's annual safety review with flying colours.

Mr Eddington said it would be "unhelpful" for him to comment publicly on Ansett's woes other than to say the issue was not so much about cracks in aircraft as how the airline responded.

Through British Airways public relations spokesman Nick Claydon, Mr Eddington suggested that during an "uncertain" nine months last year when Ansett was without a chief executive after he left, "things may have been missed."

Mr Eddington suggested there may also have been a breakdown in relations between Ansett and Casa coupled with some union agitation, hanging over from what Mr Eddington identified as unnecessarily high engineering manning levels.

He referred to a specific issue with the engineering union which demanded that two licensed engineers oversee aircraft pushback - when an aircraft is manoeuvred around the tarmac - when most world airlines used only one engineer and some none.

There was union resentment when Mr Eddington cut the overseeing engineers from two to one.

Increasingly painted as the bad guy on the other side of the world, Mr Eddington - who was brought into Ansett in 1997 to push the airline into shape - would not be drawn on the record about Mr Toomey's assertions that:

Ansett's problems stretched back five years;
there were long-standing systemic problems involving maintenance and operational problems; and
Ansett was starved of capital investment while previous owner News Corp sought to bail out of its 50% stake.

Under Mr Eddington (51) - who took the top job at British Airways last May on a £500,000 salary - Ansett sold its catering, travel insurance, door-to-door freight operations and interests in Diners Club Australia.

Mr Eddington - a West Australian outback boy who once lectured in nuclear physics and sports a PhD from Oxford - wanted Ansett and Air New Zealand to share Ansett's engineering and maintenance systems, but the rationalisation plan was not realised at that time.

Today the airlines jointly operate Ansett Air New Zealand Engineering Services, a strong growth division looking for significant outside work from around the world.

Mr Eddington offered no explanation for a claim by Mr Toomey that Ansett's maintenance systems were so poor that a mandatory airworthiness directive from Boeing dating to 1997 had not been actioned.

He was silent on claims by Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) metals division organiser Victor Jose that Air New Zealand inherited problems when it bought the airline for an eventual figure of nearly $1 billion.

According to Mr Jose - whose unions' members have a vested interest in job retention - Mr Eddington's management cut staff and resources from Ansett's maintenance section over a four- to five-year period, compromising standards.

But a top-level aircraft engineering source, who declined to be named, was adamant the grounded aircraft were safe.

Between 15 and 17 years old and from the first 100 built by Boeing they are believed to be the oldest 767s still in operation anywhere in the world.

The source backed the views of Air New Zealand and the AMWU, asserting what Mr Toomey said was correct - that the problems went back to the Eddington management regime.

He said the whole issue also had complex union implications - "very different to New Zealand. It's more of a political issue than an aircraft issue."

He said the due diligence process that Air New Zealand, as a part owner, would have gone through before buying all of Ansett would not necessarily have shown up any maintenance problems - they would have shown up later.

Although Casa's Mr Toller said on the eve of grounding Ansett's 767 fleet he would have no concerns himself about flying in the planes, a senior aviation commentator described the airline's maintenance record - particularly flying with inoperative emergency slides - as "criminal."

Managing editor and publisher of authoritative Canberra-based Australian Aviation magazine Jim Thorn said apart from having a bad accident with loss of life and CNN footage for the next six months the Ansett situation was the worst thing that could happen to an airline.

"In some ways it's more damning because it has been shown they are defective in their maintenance - it's like a TV personality or a sports star being picked up for drunk driving - the embarrassment is devastating," Mr Thorn said.

Mr Thorn said Mr Eddington had not finished the job he started when Air New Zealand became more involved and there was a clash of personalities.

"When he left the place was left rudderless for months and went down hill," he said.

Former Qantas executive Gary Toomey, he said, was turning it around. "In a couple of months this will be behind them and Ansett will be going forward."

Mr Thorn said there was a union push involved and talk that some people inside Ansett - "there's a lot of upset people there" - leaked to "get something going."

"Ansett have been whingeing about their planes being grounded but it is an airline's responsibility to make sure their planes are airworthy and Ansett's ability to do that, historically, is pathetic," he said.

"I don't think there is anything wrong with the planes - they'll get back in the air - but things that were supposed to be done were not. We already know of some things that were not done. It's up to Casa - who are supposed to be overzealous - to find anything else."

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