A Qantas plane packed with passengers flew to the US and back before a work light mistakenly left in the wing of the aircraft was found, the aviation watchdog has revealed.
Maintenance was conducted on the A380’s air conditioning system at Sydney Airport on January 7, where crews did not find the light during their foreign object clearance inspections.
A licensed aircraft maintenance engineer issued a certificate of release to service, despite the work light being unaccounted for.
The aircraft flew to Dallas and returned to Sydney, where crews came across the shock discovery two days later.
While the light did not cause any damage to the wing, foreign objects posed a ‘significant risk to the safe operation of an aircraft’, an Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) report into the maintenance blunder has ruled.
The investigation concluded that the incident was the result of a breakdown in foreign object control and tool accountability processes.
‘Even well-established processes can be vulnerable when they rely solely on consistent human performance, particularly during maintenance tasks which are often conducted in challenging environments and under operational pressures,’ ATSB chief commissioner Angus Mitchell said in a statement.
‘Tool control systems and procedures must account for this variability, with safeguards to detect and recover from errors.
A work light mistakenly inside the wing of a Qantas aircraft went unnoticed for two days
‘Contributing to this, the operator’s maintenance information system did not provide a prompt or control to alert the certifier to the unreturned tool, or the unactioned unreturned tool report.’
Central Queensland University aviation expert and associate professor Steven Leib warned any unaccounted-for object found inside an aircraft is ‘a real safety concern’.
‘It may not seem like a big deal, leaving a light or leaving a tool, but these are things that could move around during flight, which could jeopardise the safety of the flight,’ he told the ABC.
It is the second incident within three years involving one of Qantas’s super jumbos.
In December 2023, a Qantas A380 flew multiple international trips between Australia and the US before a 1.25m-long nylon turning tool was discovered in one of the outboard engines.
However, Dr Leib would not go far to say that Qantas had a systemic problem.
‘The discovery of the lost object was made by the accountability system,’ he said.
‘They were able to trace when it was last used, when it was meant to have been returned and what work was being carried out.’
While no damage was caused, the light posed ‘significant risk to the safe operation of an aircraft’. Pictured is a Qantas A380
The latest incident prompted Qantas to improve its tooling control processes and introduce a mandatory pre-clearance check after maintenance.
A spokesperson said that the airline voluntarily reported the incident to the ATSB, adding that the light had no impact on the operation of the aircraft.
