A mechanic left a work light in the wing of a Qantas jet. It flew for two days before anyone found it | CNN
A passenger jet flew for two days and carried hundreds of people after a mechanic’s work light was accidentally left inside of its wing, Australian investigators reported Monday.
The Qantas Airways Airbus A380 underwent air-conditioning maintenance on January 7 before flying from Sydney to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, the Australian Transportation Safety Board said. It was only after the aircraft returned to Sydney, two days later, the 13-inch-tall work light was discovered.
“The maintainers did not identify that a work light had remained in the left wing during their foreign object clearance inspections,” the ATSB said in the report. “In addition, while returning the tools, the maintainer did not identify that the work light had not been returned and the unreturned tool check at the end of the shift also did not identify the unreturned light.”
At the start of the work, a maintenance engineer signed out the light, along with other tools, by scanning its bar code, according to investigators. When two workers were changing an air conditioning sensor, they placed the battery-operated light inside the wing and eventually turned it off but forgot to retrieve it. Another engineer inspected the work and later did a foreign object search but didn’t see the light was left behind, the report said.
After the plane had returned from Dallas, an employee reviewing an “unreturned tool report” discovered it was missing.
“They identified that two days earlier, a work light had been signed out against (the plane) and had not been returned,” the report said. The maintenance engineer who checked it out “could not confirm if the work light had been returned and raised the possibility that it remained in the aircraft wing.”
The light had no impact on the flights, Qantas said, and the incident was voluntarily reported to investigators.
“Qantas reported this event to the ATSB and since the event, have strengthened our tool control procedures, including introducing a mandatory pre-clearance check to confirm all tooling is accounted for following maintenance,” an airline spokesperson said in a statement.
In December of 2023, a tool was left inside an engine on a Qantas A380 after it underwent three days of maintenance at Los Angeles International Airport, the ATSB said. In that case, the plane flew 34 flights over nearly a month before the tool was found.
A lost tool can cause significant damage. In 2020, a one-inch-long removable screwdriver tip that had been lost more than 100 flights before caused substantial damage to the engine of a Jetstar Airlines Airbus A320 as it was taking off. No passengers were injured.