A Qantas aircraft to Sydney has returned to Fiji as a precaution amid reports of smells in the cabin – days after a service from Auckland called a mayday due to an engine failure.
Sunday evening’s event is the airline’s fifth turnback in the previous week.
Sunday, the pilots of Boeing 737 flight QF102 from Nadi, Fiji, to Sydney, Australia, requested a priority – not emergency – landing, and the aircraft landed normally.
Initial indicators were oven-related odors in the aircraft galley.
Upon receiving a report of odours in the cabin, Qantas flight QF102 from Nadi, Fiji to Sydney turned around.
They vanished rapidly and had no effect on anyone.
The aircraft will be assessed by engineers.
Qantas was working as soon as possible to accommodate customers and thanked them for their patience.
The incident occurred a week after a similar occurrence.
Thursday, Qantas said that QF101, a Boeing 737 destined for Nadi, returned to Sydney due to a probable mechanical issue indicated by an onboard “fault indicator.”
A Qantas spokeswoman told AAP that the aircraft landed normally in Sydney after the pilots followed customary protocols.
According to Qantas, the jet returned without an emergency or priority landing, and the fault indication did not indicate a problem with the engine.
Friday also saw the diversion of three Qantas flights: a QantasLink flight from Melbourne to Canberra, a Boeing 737-800 flight from Melbourne to Sydney, and a flight from Adelaide to Melbourne.
The pilot of QF144, a Boeing 737, flying from Auckland to Sydney on Wednesday shut down an engine and issued a mayday call over the Pacific Ocean before landing safely at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport about 3:45 p.m.
The turnback (pictured) was triggered when an onboard “fault indicator” indicated a possible mechanical issue; it is the fifth turnback for the airline this week.
After the engine failure, transport safety inspectors stated they would examine the cockpit voice recorder and flight data from QF144.
All 145 passengers disembarked normally, according to Qantas, and pilots are taught to handle shutdowns carefully.
The Qantas Group averages under sixty air turnbacks each year, compared to over 10,000 for the entire industry.
Andrew David, the domestic chief executive of Qantas, has emphasized that mechanical failures are prevalent throughout the complex aviation sector, and that individual faults must be evaluated in context.
“Aircraft are complex machines with millions of moving parts, and it is not uncommon for one of them to malfunction,” he explained.
Importantly, aircraft are designed with this in mind and have a great deal of built-in redundancy, and our crew is trained to handle these scenarios in order to land safely.
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority stated on Friday that it had confidence in Qantas’s safety management systems and its safe operations.
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