Qantas grounds its A380's after engine incident

jasc15

jasc15

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Quantas Airlines grounded its Airbus A380 planes (it owns six) following a near disaster today in Singapore. One of the engines caught fire and pilots made an emergency landing. There were 459 aboard and nobody got hurt. Quantas says there was no explosion; passengers and witnesses on the ground saw fire and heard explosions. French investigators say an engine had a 'serious fault'. The A380 is still featured on the Quantas website.
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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/11/04/131060514/quantas-grounds-planes-after-emergency
 
lots of interest about this at work today. it was pointed out that Rolls also had an uncontained failure with the Trent 1000 (B-787) engine on the test stand not too long ago.

definitely not a good thing.
 
I love how they have to dumb it down for the reporters. ;-)

The explosion rained debris on a downtown area of Batam but no one on the plane or on the ground was injured.

"What we know for the moment is that the engine lost its rear housing. It's a fault on the rear part of the jet motor that led to a serious damage," said a BEA spokeswoman in Paris.

"It's a serious incident. It's obvious that normally the housing should not fall off mid-flight," said Jean-Paul Troadec, director of the BEA.
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http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-new...y-fault-at-rear-of-engine-20101104-17fme.html
 
Here's the NY Times read on the story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/world/asia/05qantas.html?hp

In general, I find the Times to be better than most at reporting aviation-related stories.

Incidentally, I used to have a friend in the neighborhood who worked for Quantas (he's since been sent back home to Australia). His job was to inspect the airline's operations at JFK after Quantas suffered a stinging rebuke by the Australian counterpart to our NTSB, subsequent to an embarrassing incident in Thailand in (I think) 1999.

Apparently Quantas was deeply troubled by the rebuke, and they made all-out efforts to identify and fix anything that might be broken. The guy I knew was an old-school Quantas maintenance supervisor, and he seemed absolutely thrilled to be part of the effort to restore the airline's reputation. He really seemed to love the company.

Other than knowing him while he was here, however, I have no experience at all with Quantas.

-Rich
 
I couldn't find an article from anywhere more reputable than npr when I searched earlier. I originally saw the story on BBC, and looked for an online article. The NY Times is more complete on the issue.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Big engine go boom.
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You're almost at the level of the average reporter. Now you just need to break down what an engine is.

Big spinny thing hanging off the long thin bit on the side of tube go boom.
 
Oh, bugger. We have seats on Qantas to go to Australia on the 22nd, and yes, it's scheduled as an A380. Hope this gets resolved quickly.
 
Ron Levy said:
Oh, bugger. We have seats on Qantas to go to Australia on the 22nd, and yes, it's scheduled as an A380. Hope this gets resolved quickly.
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They grounded all the A380's. What plane are they using on that route now? It might be safer.
 
I cannot imagine anything inherently wrong in the airplane's design which might cause this; are these engines new enough for this to be a concern?

Bet you get there just fine, Ron.

Where in Aussie are you going? Gonna visit a 'Varks while you're there?
 
Ron Levy said:
Oh, bugger. We have seats on Qantas to go to Australia on the 22nd, and yes, it's scheduled as an A380. Hope this gets resolved quickly.
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This reminds me how I bought tickets to Australia on Fiji Air and Fijieans had a coup d'etat.
-- Pete
 
Ron Levy said:
Sydney, Brisbane, points in between, and up north towards the Reef. On advice of locals, not going to Ayers Rock or Alice Springs, and not enough time to get to the West Coast.
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We went to Sydney for my wife's business, then flew north to Cairns and rented a car and continued north for as far as the paved road went. Turned around and found our way to Bedarra Island, a bucks-up paradise for what we decided would be our honeymoon trip. Back to Sydney and then flew on Air Tahiti Nui from Sydney - Tahiti - nonstop to JFK on an Airbus 340. I dislike that plane but the food was the best I have ever had over 30,000 feet. I agree that the middle of Australia is ... well ... like Kansas. Not worth the time to visit. (ducking and running!!!) :goofy:

-Skip
 
Flew Q NY to Brisbane then home Sydney to NY with the stop in LAX..excellent service, they will replace the 380 with the good old 747-400's that have always flown the routes.
You will love Australia...don't forget the wine country outside of Sydney in the Blue Mountains, do the Australia Zoo in Beerwah outside of Moloolaba, eat at the various surf clubs along the beaches, and be sure to snorkel on the Barrier Reef. I could go on and on...great place to visit.
 
DutchessFlier said:
don't forget the wine country outside of Sydney in the Blue Mountains,
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We're planning to spend a week going from Sydney to Brisbane -- by train, stopping at each winery town we can (nice deal on a 1-month rail pass).

do the Australia Zoo in Beerwah outside of Moloolaba, eat at the various surf clubs along the beaches, and be sure to snorkel on the Barrier Reef. I could go on and on...great place to visit.
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We'll keep that all in mind.
 
It's what is referred to in manufacturing circles as early life failure. It's not like it was the only engine. There's 3 more.
Are we going to find used A380s on eBay?
 
Not all 380's have the same engine. I heard another airline was using different engines and they were not grounding them.
 
Breaking news -- the Qantas 747 ferrying the incident crew home from Singapore this morning had an engine problem and had to turn back. Are these guys snake-bit or what?
 
Ron Levy said:
Breaking news -- the Qantas 747 ferrying the incident crew home from Singapore this morning had an engine problem and had to turn back. Are these guys snake-bit or what?
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Hmmmm... strange coincidence. Sabotage? Terror attempts? Far-fetched, but the coincidence raised my eyebrow. I wonder if anyone's looking into those possibilities.

-Rich
 
RJM62 said:
Hmmmm... strange coincidence. Sabotage? Terror attempts? Far-fetched, but the coincidence raised my eyebrow. I wonder if anyone's looking into those possibilities.
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Yes -- as soon as they get done at the grassy knoll.
 
Ron Levy said:
Breaking news -- the Qantas 747 ferrying the incident crew home from Singapore this morning had an engine problem and had to turn back. Are these guys snake-bit or what?
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The van carrying the mechanics to fix up the Gimli Glider and get it airborne again ran out of gas...
 
Holy crap - Talk about cascading failures:

AvWeb said:
The Qantas crew whose A380 suffered an uncontained engine failure earlier this month had their hands full in getting the super jumbo back to Singapore. Shrapnel from the engine disabled one of two main hydraulic systems, hampered the fuel transfer system, punched a hole in the forward wing spar and caused a major fuel leak. The cascading nature of such failures meant the pilots couldn't dump enough fuel to bring the aircraft down to its maximum landing weight and the fuel left in the airplane was unbalanced. Flaps, slats and spoilers couldn't be fully deployed and the gear had to be dropped manually. Once it was on the ground, the anti-lock brakes didn't work and, since the damaged engine was an inboard one, there was only one left for reverse thrust (the outboard engines of A380s don't have reversers because they often overhang the grass and might be FOD damaged). The heavy, significantly disabled aircraft needed virtually all of the 13,123 feet of available runway. The whole wing might have to be replaced and the aircraft is expected to be out of commission for months.
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We all know that uncontained engine failures are bad, but the number of things this affected - Wow.
 
Kinda sounds like some of the lessons learned from UAL232 were not incorporated all that well into the design of the A380 wing and systems...
 
i'm pretty sure it is impossible to design against an uncontained engine failure. you can't predict which parts are going to become uncontained and where they are going to go. I'm pretty sure that after 232, redundant control systems are not allowed to be routed together but i could be wrong.
 
tonycondon said:
i'm pretty sure it is impossible to design against an uncontained engine failure. you can't predict which parts are going to become uncontained and where they are going to go. I'm pretty sure that after 232, redundant control systems are not allowed to be routed together but i could be wrong.
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Please pardon my ignorance. What is an uncontained engine failure? What would a contained engine failure be?
 
uncontained means parts of the engine go flying and become very dangerous shrapnel. a contained failure would mean all the parts stay inside the engine
 
Just a shot in the dark here, but any failure of the internal rotating assembly which then exits the outter most casing would constitute an 'uncontained' failure no?

Side note, I recall watching a documentary (want to say Discovery channel) where the RR engineers purposley detonated a charge to induce a failure of the fan blades, the failure was infact contained, but i'm guessing whatever design parameters used to contain fan blade failures do not apply to the turbine section? Are hot side failures not as common or is this just a fluke (uncontained nauture of the Quantas T900)?
 
I am most distressed by the fact that it is reported that two separate hydraulic systems were taken out by the ejection. The pilots were left with severely diminished controllability; their professionalism is to be commended.
 
SCCutler said:
I am most distressed by the fact that it is reported that two separate hydraulic systems were taken out by the ejection. The pilots were left with severely diminished controllability; their professionalism is to be commended.
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yea that is worrisome, i agree. but very likely could've been pure (bad) luck that created the dual failure. who knows how many and in what direction blades and other shrapnel flew. the two hydraulic systems could've been widely separated.
 
Engine components (small, though obviously high velocity) punching a hole all the way through the wing spar (which I'd think is pretty large in an A380) is also worrisome to me.

Qantas has had a bad month - Emergency landings with this A380 and now on TWO 747's.
 
engine components are generally much stronger than wing structure. they live in a much much more violent environment.

if a tornado can embed a vinyl record in a telephone pole its not too far fetched to imagine a fan blade slicing through aluminum
 
SCCutler said:
I am most distressed by the fact that it is reported that two separate hydraulic systems were taken out by the ejection.
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That's why there are three independent systems and some means to automatically isolate at least one from any engine debris.
 
Now imagine if some of those uncontained engine parts had gone out SIDEWAYS and had come through the fuselage.....
I realize that with it being a low wing and the engines being beneath the wing, the chances are slim.....but ya never know.
 
An airline captain friend e-mailed this to me:
Here are just some of the problems the QANTAS guys had in Singapore last week aboard QF32 in addition to the engine failure

* Massive fuel leak in the left mid fuel tank (it has 11 tanks, including the horizontal stab trim tank)
* Massive fuel leak in the left inner fuel tank
* A hole on the flap canoe/fairing that you could fit your upper body through.
* The aft gallery in the fuel system failed, preventing many fuel transfer functions
* Fuel jettison system had problems due to the previous problem above
* Large hole in the upper wing surface
* Partial failure of leading edge slats
* Failure of speed brakes/ground spoilers
* Shrapnel damage to the flaps
* TOTAL loss of all hydraulic fluid in the Green System (it has 2 x 5,000 PSI systems; Green and Yellow)
* Manual extension of landing gear
* Loss of 1 generator and associated systems
* Loss of brake anti-skid system
* Unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using normal method after landing due to major damage to systems
* Unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using using the fire PB (Therefore, no fire protection was available for that engine after the explosion in #2)
* ECAM warnings regarding major fuel imbalance due to fuel leaks on left side. UNABLE to cross-feed
* Fuel trapped in Trim Tank - possible C/G out-of-balance condition for landing.

​
Almost sounds like combat damage! :eek:

The more I learn about Airbeese the more I appreciate my Cub.
smile.gif
 
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Cascading failures can be nasty. A Tu-154 went down near Irkutsk in the 90s after the crew took off with the "Dangerous RPMs of Starter" indicator illuminated (most likely something jammed the starter's intake cover and it was spooled up by the oncoming flow). The starter turbine exploded and its disk went sideways through engine #2 at about combustion chamber plane. Resulting fire caused leaks in all hydraulic systems and eventually a complete loss of control. Jet landed into an industrial cow barn and reportedly the remains of animals made identification of human remains difficult. The A380 seems pretty robust by comparison, at least one hydraulic system remained operational.
 
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