The embattled airline Qantas has been dealt another embarrassing blow after the Australian company was forced to ground six of its Boeing 737 planes because of issues over crucial safety checks.

As a result, the Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has expanded its investigation into the safety procedures of the airline, which began last month after an oxygen tank on board a Qantas plane exploded mid-air, forcing the 747 to make an emergency landing in Manilla.

The latest incident occurred when Qantas realised there were irregularities in its maintenance records, forcing it to ground six Boeing 737-400s and cancel three domestic flights within Australia. Many domestic flights today have reportedly been delayed as a result of the situation.

According to The Australian newspaper, the problem stemmed from an “airworthiness directive” released by the US Federal Aviation Administration advising airlines to check the maintenance on the bulkhead of Boeing 737s.

Confusion over paperwork meant the airline could not determine whether the maintenance had actually been performed.

Grounding six of its ageing 737 fleet, the airline said the planes would be removed from service while the airline cross-checked maintenance records relating to work carried out at one of its Australian facilities.

David Cox, the executive general manager of Qantas engineering, said it was a record keeping issue which occurs about once a year and there were no safety implications for the aircraft.

CASA spokesman Peter Gibson said that the safety body was expanding the investigation into Qantas safety procedures which it had launched after the explosion last month, to include how the airline records and deals with maintenance procedures.

He said that any problem with record-keeping and the documentation of aircraft maintenance was a concern because it directly underpinned the safety of planes.

“We’re really looking deeply at Qantas safety systems across the board,” Mr Gibson told Times Online. “We are now trying to rectify the situation and investigating what caused them to miss that step.”

However he said while Qantas had been the subject of a series of safety problems recently, passengers should not be too worried.

“Certainly we’re taking it very seriously but people shouldn’t jump from that to being alarmed," Mr Gibson said. "It’s not as if they were trying to hide anything, it looks like this is just a genuine mistake.”

It is the latest in a series of problems for the airline, long been rated among the safest in the world, which began when the oxygen tank exploded on the troubled flight from London to Melbourne on July 25.

No-one was injured in the incident but the explosion ripped a massive hole in the fuselage of the jet and caused widespread concern.

The following week a plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Adelaide because of a problem with its landing gear and a Boeing 767 returned to Sydney soon after takeoff when air traffic controllers saw fluid streaming from a wing.

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