Civil Aviation Safety Authority boss John McCormick denies accusations of misbehaviour on flight

AUSTRALIA's head of air safety has denied accusations he berated a flight attendant and wrongly claimed the pilot made an unsafe landing on a domestic flight.

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AUSTRALIA's head of air safety has denied accusations he berated a flight attendant and wrongly claimed the pilot made an unsafe landing on a domestic flight last month.

An internal Qantas safety report claims Civil Aviation Safety Authority boss John McCormick had allegedly approached the senior flight attendant when the Friday afternoon Qantas flight from Canberra landed in Brisbane, in late May.

The report claims Mr McCormick told the flight attendant, a Melbourne mother, there was no reason for such a heavy landing and that up to eight passengers had been injured.

The attendant claims the safety chief said he was forced, in his capacity as a CASA officer, to follow it up with further action.

When the flight attendant replied she thought the landing had been positive, he allegedly replied: "Rubbish, I have never heard of such a thing."

The crew member lodged an air safety incident report with Qantas.

But a CASA spokesman said that Qantas had not raised the incident with Mr McCormick. "Mr McCormick strongly denies that the alleged conversation as reported took place," he said.

"No contact has been made with Mr McCormick by Qantas about any matter relating to any flight on which Mr McCormick was a passenger."

A Qantas spokesman would not comment on the incident. "Qantas doesn't comment on individual passengers on individual flights," he said.

Qantas engineers inspected the plane and found the landing was measured at 1.1G - well below the 2.1G threshold for a heavy landing.

No passengers reported injuries and an Australian Transport Safety Bureau spokeswoman confirmed that it had not received any incident reports for the flight and had not launched an investigation.

The alleged incident came a week after the release of a Senate committee's damning findings into CASA's handling of the Pel Air disaster.