Well it’s taken long enough, but Qantas has annoucned that it’s slowly completing it’s safetey checks and are planing for their A380 aircraft to reenter service.
Services will commence on the 27th November – over 3 weeks since the engine on QF32 decided to uncontain itself and had to return to Singapore, grounding the fleet.
Qantas will be restricting the use of the fleet as aircraft come back into service into what it calls “routes that requires the use of maximum engine thrust” – on their own orders, not those of Airbus or Rolls Royce.
To quote
“The decision to restore A380 services follows an intensive Trent 900 engine inspection programme carried out in close consultation with Rolls-Royce and Airbus. Together with the engine and aircraft manufacturers and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), Qantas is now satisfied that it can begin reintroducing A380s to its international network progressively,”
“In line with its conservative approach to operational safety, Qantas is voluntarily suspending A380 services on routes that regularly require use of maximum certified engine thrust and will do so until further operational experience is gained, or possible additional changes are made to engines. This is an operational decision by Qantas and pilots still have access to maximum certified thrust if they require it during flight. It is not a manufacturer’s directive,” says the airline.
Expect slow filtering of aircraft and short substitutions. QF31 will be the first, operating from Sydney to London via Singapore. This will be “the” A380 as Qantas decides how best to deploy them, and where to deploy them
Qantas are currently down to 5 A380’s currently (the 6th being the unit stuck at Singapore), however an additional 2 aircraft are expected towards the end of the year. How these are deployed will be the important question – or if the engines will be donated to other aircraft to keep the rest of the fleet going.
Qantas’s approach to safety has be visually applauded, but there have been a series of gaffs over the past weeks (with another contained engine failure, and a failure of a service from EZE where it had to turn back).
Hopefully, this will mark the end of this chapter, and we’ll hear more positive A380 news.
