Another QANTAS incident

A QANTAS jet was grounded in Melbourne, bringing up the number of newsworthy flight incidents to 4 in 11 days for the beleagured airline, The Australian reports.

The 737, registered as VH-TJU, is the same aircraft on which Qantas engineers found 95 defects that had been missed during contract maintenance work by Malaysian Airlines in Kuala Lumpur.

Are safety standards being lowered? The QANTAS chief pilot, Captain Manning, had this to say:

Australia’s high aviation safety standards are not being lowered to minimum world standards. But standards were being “harmonised” with the rest of the world

In other words, we are doomed.

Update 15-Aug-2008: Another small panel falls off a QANTAS plane.