(From the Dominion Post NZ) 58 aircraft 'incidents' hushed up 06 September 2002 By DAVID MCLOUGHLIN Big passenger aircraft were involved in 58 safety incidents around New Zealand in the three months to June, but Civil Aviation will not say what the incidents were, or what airlines or what type of planes were involved. It has emerged that the public probably learned promptly about three Air New Zealand jets losing wing parts only because the parts fell in places around Auckland airport where people found them and alerted police and the media. Airlines and other operators are required by law to report all safety incidents, but the Civil Aviation Authority does not publicise those involving big passenger planes so as not to identify the airline concerned. It publishes regular summaries of incidents involving light aircraft and helicopters, saying their operators could not be identified from the summaries because there are so many similar aircraft. But if it published details of a Boeing 747 incident, people would think it was Air New Zealand. CAA spokesman Bill Sommer agreed that had the parts from the aircraft in the news this week fallen where they were not seen, it was unlikely the CAA would have made any announcement. That is why it became public only this week that an Air New Zealand Boeing 767 lost an engine pylon access panel over a remote Canterbury farm in May and a Boeing 737 with stuck flaps made an emergency landing at Christchurch in August last year, despite the airline reporting them to the CAA at the time. A passenger on the 737 and a relative of the farmer who found the 767 panel contacted The Dominion Post after news that a 747-400 lost a flap while taking off from Auckland last Friday. That was a week before another lost a wing panel. The flap fell into Manukau Harbour and was found by fishermen. The wing panel fell into a car park near the airport. In May last year a flap guide fell from the wing of a 767 through the roof of a warehouse near the airport. The 58 incidents in the three months to June involved aircraft with a weight greater than 13.6 tonnes, meaning anything from a medium-size propeller plane to a 747 weighing more than 300 tonnes. Mr Sommer said information about incidents involving such aircraft was not publicised in order to encourage airlines to report every incident to help the CAA build a safety database. It did not want to blame anyone for incidents, it wanted to find their cause to prevent future ones. He said the CAA would confirm an incident if the media asked about it, but would consider giving details only after a formal Official Information Act request. "We were talking about it just today. If we got a request, we would only give details if we thought it was in the public interest. We are not trying to hide anything, but we want to keep up that flow of safety information."