Sydney - Another day, another safety scare for Australia's Qantas Airways Ltd.

Engineers at Singapore's Changi Airport discovered a body panel had fallen off a Qantas jumbo flying between Melbourne and the island republic, a spokeswoman said Friday.

"It had absolutely no flight safety implications," the spokeswoman said.

But there were implications for the passengers from Wednesday's mishap: a six-hour delay before the flight proceeded to London.

On Wednesday, a Qantas Boeing 767 left a trail of hydraulic fluid on the tarmac at Sydney Airport after it touched down on a flight from Melbourne. The hydraulic failure meant the pilot had to steer the plane with the rudder rather than the front wheel.

Australia's aviation safety watchdog, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), is investigating the maintenance of the Qantas fleet and the airline's response to its run of maintenance issues.

On July 25, an exploding oxygen tank in the cargo bay punched a 3- metre hole in the fuselage of a Qantas 747-400 carrying 346 passengers from Hong Kong to Melbourne. The pilot descended from 29,000 feet to 10,000 feet in about five minutes and made an emergency landing in Manila without the benefit of the full suite of instrument landing systems.

A week later, a domestic flight was forced to return to Adelaide after a wheel-bay door on a Boeing 767 failed to close properly.

Just days after that, a flight bound for Manila returned to Sydney, after the pilot declared an emergency and dumped fuel because of a leak in the hydraulics operating a wing flap.

Since its establishment in 1920, Australia's national carrier has yet to lose a jet to an accident. Qantas engineering chief David Cox has welcomed the CASA review, expressing full confidence that the airline's maintenance and safety procedures would not be faulted.

"We have no issue with this latest review, and CASA says it has no evidence to suggest that safety standards at Qantas have fallen," Cox said in a statement. (dpa)