Tigerair Australia will no longer send aircraft to a Philippines-based maintenance facility operated by Singapore's SIA Engineering after discovering a problem that grounded one of its Boeing 737s for three weeks.
The aircraft, VH-VUB, was ferried home from scheduled heavy maintenance with a known defect with its cockpit voice recorder and plans to repair it in Australia.
However, a subsequent inspection in Australia also discovered an issue with the cargo smoke evacuation system.
Repairs to the difficult to access cargo system and an extensive review of all work done on the aircraft left the plane grounded for three weeks in Australia and meant Tigerair, which has a small fleet of 15 aircraft, was forced to cancel services.
The 737 was cleared to return to service on August 22 and the airline says it has flown since without any further issues
Tigerair had been using the SIA Engineering Company (SIAEC) facility for two years without an issue and the facility was approved by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. SIAEC is subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, which owns more than 20 percent of Tigerair owner Virgin Australia.
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Tigerair head of engineering Rob Furber said the airline had stringent safety management and standard operating procedures in place to ensure its aircraft complied with regulations and safety standards.
“Tigerair and Virgin Tech have conducted an extensive review of the heavy maintenance carried out both before and after the aircraft returned to service and this aircraft continues to operate safely and without incident,’’ Furber said in a statement. “Tigerair did not operate any Regular Public Transport flights with VH-VUB while any fault was detected.
“While some flights were canceled as a result of the additional inspections required, we will always put safety above all else and we apologize to the customers who were impacted.”
SIAEC said it was committed to carrying out maintenance to the strictest quality assurance and aircraft safety was its highest priority.
“We have been working closely with Tigerair Australia to understand the issues reported on one of their Boeing 737 aircraft which was maintained at our Philippines facilities earlier this year,’’ it said.
“At no point were there any safety concerns in relation to the cockpit voice recorder defect, which was deferred for rectification in Melbourne as permissible in accordance with aircraft maintenance procedures.
“The rectification has since been performed prior to the aircraft being released for operations."
CASA confirmed it was aware of the maintenance matters and said they had been appropriately reported by Tigerair.
It said and it ontinue to work with Tigerair and SIAEC ”to ensure that the high standards of Australian aviation safety are maintained”.
“Any maintenance provider—including overseas maintenance organisations—who perform work on Australian registered aircraft of this class must be certified by CASA under Part 145 of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998,’’ it said.
Tigerair is progressively switching its fleet from Airbus A320s to Boeing 737s.
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