The Civil Aviation Safety Authority has confirmed it has no current issues with the safety of REX aircraft.
This follows intensive work over the last month reviewing allegations made about short comings in REX maintenance.
CASA conducted a two-day audit of the REX Wagga maintenance facility as part of a safety assurance review.
This focussed on REX’s safety management system – in particular error reporting rates and processes for managing those in accordance with ‘just culture’ principles.
REX management and staff were cooperative and responsive to the audit team’s requests and questions.
REX maintenance engineering staff were randomly selected by CASA and interviewed.
All of them said that they felt confident in reporting maintenance errors or defects and they indicated REX operated according to ‘just culture’ principles.
CASA will carefully assess the information obtained in the course of the audit against the requirements of the applicable civil aviation legislation.
Although it normally takes up to 21 days to finalise an audit report of this kind, CASA is expediting the completion of this report.
REX has also provided CASA with a full briefing on the facts and circumstances related to VH-RXN, the aircraft that featured in a video.
On the basis of an assessment of information provided by REX, CASA has no current concerns about the airworthiness of that aircraft.
CASA would take immediate action if there was any evidence of serious safety issues at REX, or with any unaddressed airworthiness concerns in relation to a particular aircraft.
As part of its core safety-related functions, CASA conducts ongoing oversight of all Australian airlines. This involves a combination of planned safety audits, campaign surveillance audits focussing on industry-wide emerging safety risks and response surveillance audits to particular incidents or reports of safety issues.
On 4 and 5 July 2019, CASA conducted a response audit of REX maintenance at Wagga.
