The great imposter

The Australian

QANTAS has moved to plug loopholes that allowed an aircraft maintenance engineer to work for about a year using forged qualifications.

The airline has checked its remaining aircraft maintenance engineers to make sure their licences are valid after the engineer allegedly faked some of his qualifications.

It has also checked and revalidated the work he signed off on without finding any problems.

The engineer has left the airline and is now the subject of an Australian Federal Police investigation.

He was employed by the airline as a fourth-year apprentice in 2002 as part of an intake of ex-Ansett employees following that carrier’s crash. He had worked for Ansett regional subsidiary Kendell Airlines.

The man completed his apprenticeship to become an aircraft maintenance engineer, but had not passed the tests required to go to the next grade and become a licensed engineer qualified to check and certify work done on aircraft.

It is understood the issue surfaced during a routine licence check for a pay rise.

“He did not walk in off the street,” said Qantas head of engineering David Cox.

“Certainly, what he did was not appropriate. We’re very concerned about it and we’re working through to make sure any loopholes in the system will be closed.”

Mr Cox said the airline was still investigating how the engineer had slipped through the net. He said the engineer had made no further contact with the company and he was assumed to have abandoned his post.

Qantas was co-operating with the AFP.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority said it was satisfied the incident was a one-off and there were no safety problems with the engineer’s work.

The Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association said it was concerned that the Qantas system had allowed the fraud to go on for so long.