Qantas' impeccable safety record crashes

Sydney - Qantas, Australia's national air carrier, may never have had an accident but that doesn't mean that it has not permitted pilots 'wanting to crash planes' from flying.

Arguably, the movie "Rainman" has encouraged untold thousands of airline passengers to seek its flights because of the impeccable air safety record savant Raymond Babbit assures his brother that it has in the film:

Charlie: Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another, that doesn't mean that they are not safe.

Raymond: QANTAS. QANTAS never crashed.

Charlie: QANTAS?

Raymond: Never crashed.

Charlie: Oh that's gonna do me a lot of good because QANTAS doesn't fly to Los Angeles out of Cincinnati, you have to get to Melbourne! Melbourne, Australia in order to get the plane that flies to Los Angeles!

However, passengers of the airline may have been given reason to think again by a recent case before the New South Wales Workers Compensation Commission. Bryan Arthur Griffin, a pilot,Sydney resigned from Qantas in 1982 because of severe obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and depression. The Commission heard that between 1979 and 1982 he had battled against an overwhelming urge to switch off his plane's engines. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, "the commission heard that Mr. Griffin's disorder worsened over the ensuing months, including an urge to scream and cry, ignoring instructions, repeatedly missing radio and altitude calls, and repeated urges to crash the aircraft." The presidential member of the commission who heard the claim, Bill Roche, ordered Qantas to pay Griffins legal and medical expenses as well as 160,000 Australian dollars and concluded that he should have been pulled from the air:

The evidence is overwhelmingly to the effect that Mr Griffin's obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety spectrum symptoms deteriorated between November 1979 and November 1981 and that that deterioration occurred because he continued to perform flying duties for Qantas.