Engineers say 33 planes should be grounded after US aviation regulator asks airlines worldwide to check 737NG fleets for cracking in ‘pickle fork’

This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

Australia’s aircraft engineers association has called on Qantas to ground all of its Boeing 737 aircraft after cracks were discovered in one of its planes.

Steve Purvinas, the federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA), said the fleet of 33 should be “grounded until such time that Qantas can establish which aircraft are safe and which aircraft aren’t”.

According to Purvinas, the crack was discovered in a part of the plane known as the “pickle fork”, which is part of the landing gear.

“It is a primary structure which takes the load off the wing,” he told the ABC on Thursday. “This could cause loss of control of an aircraft, and Qantas shouldn’t be flying them.”

“The first [crack] found on a Qantas aircraft was about an inch long, it’s very small. But these things do propagate very quickly when they’re under load…It’s when that grows, and that grows very quickly, that you have problems.”

He told the ABC on Thursday that another crack had been found in a second plane overnight.

On Thursday morning, Qantas announced it would bechecking more than 30 of its Boeing 737 aircraft after cracking was discovered in one plane during a maintenance check.

But Purvinas said the airline should go further and ground the fleet.

Earlier this year, the US Federal Aviation Administration ordered global airlines to check any 737s that had completed 30,000 flights for cracks.

The Qantas plane involved had completed fewer than 30,000 cycles.

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“None of Qantas’ 737s have reached the 30,000 cycle mark. However, out of an abundance of caution, we will have inspected 33 aircraft with more than 22,600 cycles by the end of the week rather than the seven months required,” the carrier told the ABC on Thursday.

“Qantas would never operate an aircraft unless it was completely safe to do so.

“Detailed analysis by Boeing shows that even when a crack is present, it does not immediately compromise the safety of the aircraft, as indicated by the timeframe given by regulators to perform the checks.”

The problem came to light after Boeing said that it had found cracking in a part of the 737NG (the model before the troubled 737 Max) called the “pickle fork” on jets being overhauled in China.

Nearly 5% of 810 inspections subsequently conducted have found cracks in the part, which attaches the plane’s fuselage to the wing.

Purvinas told the ABC that repairs on this kind of crack take “months to fix” and require a special Boeing team.