You gotta feel sorry for Qantas! It's run of bad luck continued this week when a 747 en route to Sydney returned to Johannesburg, after bird strike caused minor damage to an engine. That same jet earlier this week had to abandon a Sydney-Buenos Aires flight after a blown fuse sent smoke into the cockpit. They'll be calling that one "jinxed" soon...
That makes No.5 on Qantas's "air turn backs" list in two weeks! You'll recall a Qantas A380 superjumbo made an emergency landing in Singapore after one of its engines broke up and damaged the wing, undercarriage, fuselage and hydraulic system.
Qantas grounded it's six A380s since then. And yesterday an Alice Springs-Darwin Qantas flight had its tail damaged by lightning.Of course, these problems haven't gone unnoticed on the stock exchange, with Qantas shares losing nearly 7% in a fortnight.
Qantas has not suffered a fatal accident in the jet age (as attested to by Dustin Hoffman's autistic savant character Raymond Babbitt in the movie Rain Man!) and jealously guards its reputation as one of the world’s safest airlines.
But the joke going around now is that, because Qantas has had so many returned flights lately, they'll be changing their 'flying kangaroo' tail logo...to a boomerang!
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