QANTAS last week suffered yet another safety scare as the two experienced pilots forgot to lower the wheels for landing into Sydney from Melbourne. In another incident this week a Jet Star flight temporary lost control due to “over icing” as it flew from Tokyo to the Gold Coast.

This latest chapter in Qantas’ safety record follows a spate of recent problems the airline has faced. These incidents have raised several questions regarding the airline’s safety integrity and its cost-cutting measures by shifting a majority of their maintenance offshore.

Although none of these incidents have been fatal, the number of incidents and the potential for them to have been fatal is of concern.

In July 2008 a Qantas plane suffered a dramatic loss in cabin pressure mid-flight due to an explosion in the cargo bay of a large oxygen cylinder.  The flight with 350 people on board managed to make an emergency landing in Manila but was not without injuries. In October 2008 a Qantas Airbus made an emergency landing at Exmouth in Western Australia following a sudden drop in altitude as a result of a computer malfunction. Several people were also injured in this incident. This year in June a similar incident occurred when a plane identical to the Air France Airbus, which crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, suffered from severe turbulence. The list of Qantas incidents in recent years goes on and on…

According to a poll conducted by AAP, 67 per cent of Australian-based Qantas maintenance workers said they have had to frequently re-do work completed on the Qantas fleet by offshore maintenance teams.

“The poll was also scathing of management, with just 29 per cent of the workers indicating they had “faith in Qantas” management to understand issues relating to safety and staffing”, AAP reported.

These recent incidents have cast doubt on Qantas’ ability to maintain properly serviced aircrafts.  Can Qantas guarantee the safety of its staff and passengers especially when the airline is suffering from a decreasing share price and travellers are opting for cheaper, more reliable airlines?

“Qantas yesterday released its latest monthly figures, which show yields – the key guide to an airline’s profitability – from international flights fell by 24 per cent in the first three months of this financial year, compared with the same period in 2008-09,” Matt O’Sulivan from The Age wrote this week.

Crikey blogger Ben Sandilands argues the recent spate of Qantas incidents is due to a number of causes such as the airline’s decision to base their maintenance overseas and Qantas’ very strong relationship with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA).

Last year, following an investigation by CASA, damning evidence was leaked highlighting that Qantas had failed to “complete a compulsory airworthiness directive on the forward pressure bulkhead of the six Boeing 737-400s mainly deployed on Canberra routes for five years”. In what Sandilands suggests was a deal between CASA and Qantas, CASA sought to suppress the damning evidence following it being leaked to Channel 7’s Today Tonight programme.

“The critical issue that arises from CASA’s resistance to releasing all documents concerning defects in Qantas airliners and overseas maintenance processes is ‘why?’”, Sandilands wrote.

The recent spate of incidents involving Qantas is alarming. Whether these mishaps are due to poor maintenance carried out by overseas workers or due to the airline’s inability to juggle both financial and safety requirements, both factors are subject to investigation. Following the recent incident at Sydney Airport, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has launched an investigation into the cause of the near-fatal mistake.

As I board a Qantas flight to LA next month, is it unreasonable for me to feel slightly apprehensive considering the alarming number of closely related problems with the Qantas and Jetstar fleet in recent weeks or should I only begin to worry when a Qantas plane inevitably crashes?