A Qantas A380 was cleared to fly passengers return from Sydney to Dallas with a large maintenance light accidentally left inside its wing. It follows a 2023 incident in which a large tool was left inside a Qantas A380 engine and was not recovered until multiple international trips had been completed.
An Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) investigation found the 33 centimetre light was left behind after maintenance on the aircraft's air conditioning system in Sydney on January 7. The aircraft then flew to Dallas-Fort Worth and back before maintenance staff realised the light was missing and recovered it from the wing two days later.
The ATSB's final report into the incident found that although the light did not cause any damage to the wing, foreign objects posed a "significant risk to the safe operation of an aircraft". ATSB chief commissioner Angus Mitchell said the incident was due to a breakdown in 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," he said. "Tool control systems and procedures must account for this variability with safeguards to detect and recover from errors."
The report said Qantas issued a safety directive to address changes to its tooling control processes and procedures and had also formed a "tooling working group". Qantas said the light had no impact on the operation of the aircraft and it had voluntarily reported the incident to the ATSB.
"Since the event, we have strengthened our tool-control procedures, including introducing a mandatory pre-clearance check to confirm all tooling is accounted for following maintenance," a spokesperson said.
Second tool left inside Qantas A380
It is the second incident involving a tool being left in one of the airline's super jumbos. In December 2023, a Qantas A380 flew multiple international trips before a 1.25 metre nylon turning tool was discovered in one of the plane's engines. An ATSB report found maintenance staff "lost" the "turning tool" in an A380's outboard engine, and it was only discovered after it had been cleared for service, flying multiple trips between Australia and the US.
Last week, Qantas passengers in South Africa were left stranded in Johannesberg for three days after a problem with the nose wheel of an A380 saw their flight to Sydney cancelled. Qantas sent another flight to bring the stranded passengers home.
CQUniversity aviation expert and associate professor Steven Leib said any unaccounted-for objects found inside an aircraft were "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," Dr Leib said.
However, he said the two incidents were not enough to suggest 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."
