When a fake engineer certified 30 Boeing 747s, no system caught him. A pay dispute did. In 2007, Timothy McCormack was working as a supervising engineer at Sydney Airport — signing off maintenance on Qantas 747s, certifying aircraft carrying thousands of passengers as airworthy. He had no licence. No qualifications. Forged documents from start to finish. 42 criminal charges. 3 years 5 months in prison. The uncomfortable truth for every aviation maintenance organisation: the v

Qantas is performing again. Leaner. Faster. More profitable. But there’s a trade-off in aviation that doesn’t show up on a balance sheet— and it only becomes visible when things go wrong.

Bonza was not just a funding story, or a victim of the incumbents. It was an execution and resilience problem in a market that punishes weak airlines very quickly indeed.