Air Transport

A former Qantas Airways maintenance employee has been sentenced to more than three years in prison for carrying out work on aircraft without being properly qualified.

Timothy McCormack was today sentenced to three years and five months in prison by a judge in Sydney. According to reports from the courthouse he will not be eligible for parole for at least two years.

McCormack, 27, had earlier pled guilty to several dozen charges, including performing unauthorised maintenance work on aircraft, forging a licence and falsifying Civil Aviation Safety Authority exam results.

In addition, he was found to have produced fake character references to the court after making his guilty plea in an attempt to secure a lighter sentence.

McCormack was originally employed by Qantas in 2004 as a junior aircraft maintenance engineer but in 2006 he produced fake documents to his superiors that led to his promotion to licensed aircraft maintenance engineer.

As a supervisor this allowed him to oversee and sign off on maintenance work on Qantas' Boeing 747-400s. His fake credentials were not discovered until mid-2007.