Qantas A380 makes a successful emergency landing

[BigBird]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/artic...jectid=10685347

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/11...-indonesia.html

[ZK-MAT]

Is the above a case of "get the news out asap even if it's wrong"?

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/asia/4308968/...hutdown-mid-air

(on the part of the Herald I meant, not Bigbird )

[BigBird]

We all know what the media are like.

Have just heard that it was a Qantas A380. However, it didn't crash. It made an emergency landing safely (thank God!), but there was some debris that fell from the aircraft.

Edit: Have now heard it was due to one of the engines failing. Must've exploded by the sounds of it.

Waiting... waiting... waiting...

[BigBird]

*Herald article has been updated*

[deeknow]

Excellent news that they returned safely, not excellent news for shareholders of Qantas briefly after however, how was this bit...

QUOTE

"Qantas shares slumped 15 cents, or 3 per cent, to $2.82 on initial reports of a crash but soon recovered and were recently trading at $2.92. "[/quote]

[GlennAV8R]

Could we perhaps change the title of this post??

[Ian Warren]

Biggist Grinnist to the 'HERALD ' they done it again , Hmmm Airbus tho what is not wrong with these thing s .. cannot someone fix em properly .. hehehehe i'll be pleased when the entire ANZ domestic fleet gets it Airbus 320s and dumps the trusty 737 WHOOPS what did i say !

QUOTE (GlennAV8R @ Nov 4 2010, 08:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Could we perhaps change the title of this post??

Thats the News for ya

[deaneb]

You just have to love idiotic reporting - "One of the engines on the left wing looks blown off. It is black and has jagged edges."

Really - if it had blown off, there wouldn't be an engine to have jagged edges !!

[Ian Warren]

Another Herald story, has some interesting photos with it showing engine cowling missing, scorch marks, jagged bits, all that jazz ...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/artic...jectid=10685443

QUOTE (Granny Herald)

Qantas grounds A380s after explosion

Qantas has grounded all its Airbus A380 superjumbo jets after a mid-air engine explosion forced a jet carrying 459 people to make a dramatic emergency landing in Singapore.

The explosion tore through the aircraft's second engine shortly after the Sydney-bound QF32 plane took off from Singapore's Changi Airport this morning.

The explosion rained debris on a downtown area of the Indonesian island of Batam. No one on the plane or on the ground was injured.

The Qantas pilots immediately sought clearance to return to Singapore and the double-decker superjumbo, trailing smoke, touched down safely at about 11.45am local time (1445 AEDT).

Six fire engines swarmed to the plane, carrying 433 passengers and 26 crew, as soon is it landed on the tarmac.

Just hours later the carrier's chief executive, Alan Joyce, announced all its A380s had been grounded.

"We have decided that we will suspend all A380 take-offs until we are fully comfortable that sufficient information has been obtained about QF32," Mr Joyce told media.

"We will suspend those A380 services until we are completely confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met."

Passenger Ulf Waschbusch said there had been a loud bang shortly after the plane took off.

"We heard the boom, I looked outside and saw a little bit of fire," the German man told Agence France-Presse after he disembarked.

"Something ruptured the left wing, it was a small rupture."

The captain quickly announced they were going to dump fuel before making an emergency landing.

"We were circling for almost two hours dumping fuel," Mr Waschbusch said.

"Everyone was surprisingly calm on the plane. We are not going crazy at all.

"The crew helped tremendously. I felt in good hands. Qantas did a great job in keeping us safe."

Mr Joyce confirmed there would be some disruptions for passengers as an investigation took place.

Two flights due to depart Los Angeles and a flight due to depart Sydney later today had been suspended, he said.

"We will be accommodating passengers in hotels, making sure they're looked after appropriately and we will be using the rest of our fleets to accommodate passengers on appropriate flights going forward."

Mr Joyce said the investigation would "take as long as we need to take until we are comfortable".

"It looks like it's an uncontained engine failure but it's too early to speculate and will involve us doing a detailed investigation with the manufacturer Airbus and the manufacturer of the engine Rolls Royce."

Airbus, based in the French city of Toulouse, said the incident was "significant" but covered by procedures.

"We are not playing down the incident, but it is covered in the certification procedures," a spokesman told AFP.

The explosion initially sparked widespread online rumours the plane had crashed but they were quickly proved wrong.

Witnesses on Batam said they heard the explosion and looked up to see the plane on fire and shards of metal falling out of the sky.

"Before the parts started falling I heard a very loud explosion," one witness, Devi, told the local Antara news agency.

"It sounded like a bomb."

The A380 is the largest passenger jet in operation. Its first commercial flight was operated by Singapore Airlines on the same Singapore-Sydney route in October 2007.

Since then, fuel and computer glitches have grounded several A380s and at least one Air France flight was forced to turn around and land in New York after problems with its navigation system in November 2009.

In April, a Qantas A380 superjumbo damaged tyres on landing from Singapore in Sydney, showering sparks and scaring passengers.

Qantas has never suffered a fatal jetliner crash and prides itself on being one of the world's safest airlines.

- AAP[/quote]

[BigBird]

[Chairman]

From this mornings snoozepapers it seems that enquiring eyes are being turned towards Rolls Royce instead of QANTAS, that makes a nice change !

Also for those that missed it QANTAS have grounded their A380 fleet until they know what happened.

Gary

[BigBird]

Trying to work out what that is sticking up on the top of the wing...

[Chairman]

There's a better picture of it in page 2 of this thread on PPrune

I've only had time to read the first 2 pages but speculation that far is that it's a piece of engine that came up from underneath, somehow (and very scarily) threading the needle through all the fuel tanks and most of plumbing.

There's also a photo there which shows fire crews dousing number one engine which also seems to have some scorch marks and was apparently unable to be shut down after landing - it was number 2 that failed, speculation is that the controls to number 1 were affected.

Must have been an interesting few minutes up front after it happened - sure nobody was injured but I bet clean undies were suddenly on the endangered species list !

Gary

[Ian Warren]

Guess it was damn fortunate from PPrune photos , looking at the top off the wing it did not puncture fuel tanks .

[IslandBoy77]

QUOTE (Chairman @ Nov 5 2010, 12:07 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... but I bet clean undies were suddenly on the endangered species list !

Nice one, Gary - never a truer word spoken...

[Chairman]

Here is a really hi res copy of the picture of whatever it is poking through the wing.

The concensus among the rumours so far (I'm up to page 14) is that it was a disc failure, and the fuel tanks are in the area behind the gray strip along the wing which is not where the engine part is sticking out, although something does seem to have punched right through the fuel tank if that is the case.

Something that seems to be a bit more solid than the rumours is that #1 engine could not be shut down after landing. It seems that the way airbuses are built is that if an engine stops hearing from FADEC it will just carry on doing what it was last told to do until it runs out of fuel (it has happened ...) This would normally be a desirable thing, e.g. if FADEC went haywire just after VR on takeoff, but every silver lining has to have a cloud and in this case it that FADEC went tits up at more of less max power during the climb.

I guess that and the hole punched through the fuel tank (that *is* just rumour) all helped with the fuel dumping ......

[Ian Warren]

Gary , Thanx for Investigating , one hell off a photo !

[mechaneer]

I went for a site visit to the Christchurch Engine Centre a couple of weeks ago and remember the engineering manager mentioning something about one of the requirements for the PW V2500 is that the engine casing contains a broken fan blade until it exits axially. I can't remember if this requirement applied to the compressor and turbine blades as well, but I assume not by the look of those pictures.

Even though it looks like one of the turbine disks has failed, anything that goes through the compressor stage is going to end up in the turbine stage. So there are a lot of things that could cause the failure of a disk.

[Chairman]

If it was just a blade then there [probably] wouldn't have been a problem containing it, but it seems to have been a disc.

Here is a Trent 900 engine - it's one of the discs at the back of the engine that seems to have failed, in fact the one right at the back which is the biggest and therefore the one with the most momentum (inertia ?) - apparently the engine casing would have to be several inches thick to keep one of these contained. If you look at the pictures of the people standing next to the plane after it landed the front of the engine (where the blades are) is intact although scorched, it's the back half that has gone wrong ...

[deaneb]

QUOTE (Chairman @ Nov 5 2010, 02:39 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Something that seems to be a bit more solid than the rumours is that #1 engine could not be shut down after landing. It seems that the way airbuses are built is that if an engine stops hearing from FADEC it will just carry on doing what it was last told to do until it runs out of fuel (it has happened ...) This would normally be a desirable thing, e.g. if FADEC went haywire just after VR on takeoff, but every silver lining has to have a cloud and in this case it that FADEC went tits up at more of less max power during the climb.

The fact that the FADEC holds its current setting certainly makes sense from a design point of view, there are many systems and parts on aircraft designed to fail in ways that ensure you get the lesser of two evils in the event of failure. However, not being able to shut down the engine is odd. I would have thought there would be a clear way of stopping the fuel supply to the engine via normal shut off valves or emergency shutdown systems. You'd be a bit stuffed trying to land with an outboard engine running if it was stuck on full power !!