Qantas grounds its A380s Topic: qantas, airline security, bbc ne
Nov 4th 2010, 17:21
by A.B. for the BBC's and The Economist's Biodun Iginla
AN EXPLOSION on an Airbus A380 this morning has had a dramatic effect on the fortunes of three airlines. Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa have all reacted to the significant failure of one of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines on a Qantas flight from Singapore to Sydney this morning, which forced the plane to make an emergency returnto Changi airport. Debris was found underneath the flight path on the Indonesian island of Batam
Qantas immediately grounded all six of its A380s. Alan Joyce, the company's boss, said Qantas would not be using any of the planes until it is “comfortable” that it has “sufficient information” about what happened on the flight and that safety requirements have been met. And Singapore, which also uses Trent 900 engines on its 11 A380s, envisages delays following advice from Airbus and Rolls-Royce to run a series of precautionary tests before returning the giant planes to the skies. Lufthansa says it will also be running checks advised by Rolls-Royce, but it expects to conduct them overnight with no impact on the operation of its three planes.
Air France-KLM and Emirates, the only other carriers currently flying A380s, have not reacted, as the engines on their craft are made jointly by General Electric and Pratt & Whitney.
The Trent 900 is not used on any plane other than the A380. Shares in Rolls-Royce dropped on Thursday to as much as 5.5% below their overnight price.
The Australian airline Qantas has grounded its six-strong fleet of Airbus A380 airliners after one of the superjumbos made an emergency landing.
Qantas flight QF32 experienced engine trouble shortly after taking off from Singapore on its way to Sydney.
One of the engines "exploded with a loud bang" and the plane started shaking, a passenger told the BBC.
Pieces of debris probably from the aircraft were found on the nearby Indonesian island of Batam.
Qantas said the plane, with 433 passengers and 26 crew on board, experienced an "engine issue" over western Indonesia shortly after taking off from Singapore time at about 1000 (0200 GMT).
"It's a significant engine failure," Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said at a news conference.
"We do take our safety reputation and our safety standards unbelievably seriously. And we're not going to take any risks with passenger safety - and as a precaution, we're suspending the flights of the A380 aircraft until we're comfortable that we understand the reasons for this."
No-one was injured during the incident, which ended at Singapore's Changi airport.
Smoke billowed from the aircraft, which aviation experts say is capable of flying on two engines.
One of the engines was blackened and its rear casing was missing.
A team of air crash investigators are being sent to Singapore from France, where Airbus is based, to assist in the investigation. A spokesman for Rolls-Royce, the British firm which made the plane's Trent 900 engines, said it would work with Qantas to identify what the problem was.
'Big scare'
"I was on the plane right next to engine two, which exploded with a loud bang within the first 10-15 minutes of take-off," Lars Sandberg - a DJ who was travelling to Sydney to begin a music tour of Australia - told the BBC.
"I thought that something had fallen down in cargo underneath the plane, but the plane started shaking... I'm a little bit shaken up. I travel a lot and this is the first big scare I've had.
Qantas boss Alan Joyce announced the grounding of its six A380s
"The captain did a good job though in reassuring us, making announcements every few minutes."
One eyewitness quoted by AFP news agency spoke of seeing a "little bit of fire" coming from the stricken engine. Others have spoken of seeing one of the wings "broken", or with a hole in it, but this has not been confirmed.
Passengers said the pilot spent at least an hour and a half circling and discharging fuel ahead of the emergency landing.
"When we got off and saw the engine itself and the back casing burnt off, that was pretty scary," Mr Sandberg said.
"I'm just happy to be alive and safe in the terminal building."
On the Indonesian island of Batam, witnesses said they heard an explosion as the plane flew overhead.
"There were metal shards coming down from the sky into an industrial area in Batam," eyewitness Noor Kanwa told the AFP agency.
The BBC's Nick Bryant in Sydney says aviation experts have identified the debris as part of a Qantas engine casing.
The grounding will mean inconvenience for thousands of passengers who had been scheduled to fly on the aircraft - while those aboard the stricken aircraft may also have a significant wait ahead to get to their destinations as there are so many of them to find alternative flights for, correspondents say.
Other A380 operators Singapore Airlines, Air France-KLM, Lufthansa and Emirates reportedly said they had no plans to ground their fleets. Many use A380s equipped with jet engines built by a consortium Engine Alliance, unlike the Rolls-Royce motors used on Qantas A380s.
Qantas had no immediate comment on whether the incident might be related to eruptions of Indonesia's Mount Merapi over the past 10 days - which have prompted some flights above the volcano to be suspended.
This incident is a worrying development for Qantas, an airline which prides itself on an exemplary safety record.
For the European manufacturer Airbus the timing of this incident could hardly have come at a worse time, reports the BBC's Christian Fraser in Paris, as the Chinese President Hu Jintao is in Paris to complete negotiations for a new order of Airbus A350 and A330 passenger planes.
The closest the airliner has come to a similar incident was in September 2009, when a Singapore Airlines A380 turned around in mid-flight and returned to Paris after one of its four engines failed.
The A380, which made its maiden flight in 2007, is the flagship of the European aviation giant's fleet.
The result of a long and costly research programme, it made its first commercial flight in 2007. It is the world's largest passenger airliner, a double-decker which can carry up to 800 people - though Qantas A380s are set up to carry about 450.
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by A.B. for the BBC's and The Economist's Biodun Iginla
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