Menzies Aviation staff did not consistently carry out the required arrival and pre-departure aircraft checks of Malaysia Airlines aircraft, and Menzies Aviation audit processes were not effective at evaluating compliance with these requirements.
The ongoing oversight of audit activities will help ensure that audits are effective in maintaining adherence to required dispatch coordination tasks.
Menzies Aviation issued a notice to all business unit managers to ensure ‘that all questions being asked within the [audit] question set are relevant to the contracted services being offered by Menzies.’
In addition, Menzies Aviation advised that it would also complete ‘a review of all staff that have been completing the inspections’ including the following steps:
Stage 1:
1. Risk Manager will re-run all staff through an inspection and talk them through it, outlining the importance of being sure of each answer being given to each question – Target date: end of Jan
2. Encourage the managers to complete more covert audits – Target date – immediate.
Stage 2:
3. At the completion of stage 1, Risk Manager and Business managers will identify flights that the staff will inspect. These will then be printed, and a more covert inspection aligned to the actual questions being asked which will then assist in ensuring a QA [quality assurance] process is completed [that is, a higher level manager carrying out checks of random audits]. Feedback will be provided to the Manager and individual where required. Target date – to be completed over 3 - 6 months.
We will roll this out with immediate effect in BNE [Brisbane] and share this with the rest of the safety managers in each state.
Upon completion of the covert review and the feedback from the group we can look to implement a more regular review as per point 3.
