Positive news from Qantas this morning with an announcement that:
“Overnight, Qantas engineers with Airbus and Rolls-Royce engineers have been working around the clock trying to identify what are the potential root causes to the problem on QF32”
“As a consequence of that work we’ve agreed with Airbus and Rolls-Royce a regime of checks that are going to take place on the engines. Those checks will involve eight hours for each engine to be undertaken as part of the check regime that they’re recommending.
“We are having a team of Rolls-Royce engineers come here to Sydney and a team of Qantas and Rolls-Royce engineers going to Los Angeles to conduct those checks. We believe then over the next 24-48 hours those checks will be complete on all of the A380s, and if we don’t have any adverse findings out of those checks the aircraft will resume operations,”
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce
More information of the incident has been released showing the crew were unable to shut down the engine that had the issue, and that some of the tires bursted on landing due to the aircraft being “overweight on landing”, but this was to be expected and no significant to the issue.
What is of concern is that parts of the engines ended up in the wing of the aircraft (and the marvel of backup systems that allowed that plane to land safely with no injuries or casualties), further pointing to a significant uncontained engine failure.
Subject to all aircraft returning to service, this will bring the active fleet to 4 aircraft, with a 5th currently elsewhere being serviced. No doubt this aircraft will also have a full going over before being let back into traffic.
Short term, Qantas A330’s are being substituted for some regional journeys (Melbourne in particular), and where needed, rerouting is being used with other carriers capacity.
