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Qantas says proposed changes to procedures for opening and closing aircraft doors will improve safety despite union pushback.
The Flying Kangaroo is looking to have a single workgroup take responsibility for both moving stairs and opening and closing doors, which it says will lower risk and improve control. It comes after a Jetstar plane earlier this month was seen taxiing for takeoff with its cargo doors open.
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According to the carrier, several near misses have been attributed in part to two different groups being responsible for stairs and doors – ground service providers and customer service agents, respectively – and it is consulting with Health and Safety representatives on the proposed changes.
In a statement, a Qantas spokesperson said the potential move will “make our operations more safe, not less”.
“We recently conducted a review which found that having the same team responsible for both tasks reduces risk and is in line with industry best practice. There’s no impact to customer service agent hours as a result of this proposed change,” the spokesperson said.
The Australian Services Union (ASU) accused Qantas of trying to take responsibility for vital safety functions away from in-house staff to outsourced ground-handling companies.
“For Qantas to claim this is about reducing risk is cynical and misleading. This is about wanting to shift their responsibility for staff and passenger safety to a third-party, and it comes only one week after we see the consequences of such decisions,” said ASU assistant national secretary Scott Cowen.
“Our members do vital work each day, to get Aussies where they need to go and they do it safely and securely. Shifting their responsibility to keep people safe is not the way to go.”
Scrutiny this month was placed on Swissport, which provides ground handling services for Jetstar, after a Jetstar plane in Sydney was allowed to taxi with an open cargo door.
In a statement following the incident, the Qantas Group subsidiary said it was “currently investigating how this could have happened and is working with our ground handler to ensure it does not happen again”.
“A rear cargo door was left open after the door was unlocked to add a piece of oversized luggage to the hold,” the airline said.
“After the aircraft pushed back for departure, our pilots received a notification that the cargo door was open and returned to the bay.
“There was no safety risk at any stage, multiple system safeguards ensure an aircraft cannot take off with a cargo door open.”
According to Cowen, the Jetstar incident is “a flashing red light, warning of the potential consequences of these measures”.
“Highly-trained, directly-employed Qantas staff provide a layer of safety that cannot be replicated by an external, under-resourced model,” he said.
“This function must remain in-house because it delivers better safety outcomes.”
Qantas says that no outsourcing will take place around these changes, which would bring its domestic services in line with Qantas flights at overseas ports, QantasLink, Jetstar, and other global airlines.
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says:The fact that a cargo door was left open on departure is a matter for the team leader, union delegate and shift Supv. concerned to explain however, on the surface, clearly there was a stuff up, in addition, we have an AME/LAME doing a walk around prior to departure, donning his headset in order to talk to the flight deck, soon to monitor the actual pushback and then give the all clear thumbs up to the flight crew prior to taxi, door still wide open and finally we have to ask,does that model A320 have door/master warning lights in the flt dk.??
In recent history, we have had problems with Pitot covers being left in place and now, do we have a door problem? As one who knows, this is an attitude problem which we don’t want in what is a very serious operation. No point in changing the procedure if the attitude remains the same.