Tigerair Australia to shift maintenance after problems with Philippine check: source

Tigerair Australia, the budget arm of Virgin Australia Holdings, plans to move its heavy maintenance work from the Philippines after it was forced to ground a jet for three weeks for repairs upon return from a regular check, a source said. Jet maintenance work has increasingly been moving to lower-cost bases such as the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia over the past few years in Asia, away from countries like Singapore and Australia. And reports of problems have so far been rare. The maintenance check on a Tigerair Australia Boeing 737 jet was done at SIA Engineering Philippines - a joint venture controlled by SIA Engineering Co Ltd, the engineering offshoot of Singapore Airlines, three sources said. But problems involving the cockpit voice recorder and the cargo smoke evacuation system were discovered after the jet’s flight from the Philippines to Melbourne on July 31, one of the sources said. There were no passengers on board that flight. Tigerair Australia has been using the Philippines facility for jet maintenance for two years without incident before the recent event, but it will now look to move to SIA Engineering’s Singapore base or another provider, the source said.<br/>