QANTAS, Airbus and Rolls-Royce are working ''round the clock'' to get the airline's grounded A380s back into service.
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce yesterday said thorough checks were being done and if passed, five of the airline's six A380s could be flying within 48 hours.
As investigators arrived in Singapore to begin an inquiry that could take a year, the 440 passengers from QF32 arrived in Sydney last night after their mid-air drama on Thursday.
Mr Joyce conceded that the emergency was ''most likely a material failure or some sort of design issue'' with the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine.
Rolls-Royce, the second-largest maker of jet engines, faces concern about its latest models. In at least two cases in the past year, two A380s with Trent 900s had been forced to land after an engine failure, The New York Times reported. In August, a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 test engine developed for Boeing had blown up during a ground test.
Rolls-Royce engineers are flying to Sydney and Qantas and Rolls-Royce engineers will go to Los Angeles and test each A380 engine for eight hours to determine their safety for flight.
The global aviation industry is watching developments intently, as 20 of the 37 A380s in the skies use the same type of engine that exploded near Singapore.
Singapore Airlines announced it had grounded its fleet of 11 A380s, but later cleared them for flight following inspections. Lufthansa, contracted for Qantas's A380 heavy maintenance, did not ground its three craft. Emirates's fleet of 13 and Air France's two A380s carry different engines.
Yesterday Qantas had to delay four flights between Australia and the US by 24 hours, and shifted some of its ageing fleet of 26 Boeing 747 jumbos from other routes to fill the gap left by the removal of the A380 on US and British routes.
Four investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau have arrived in Singapore to take charge of the investigation to determine what caused the frightening mid-air engine explosion. They will be joined by air safety investigators from France, Britain, Indonesia and Singapore.
Investigators have studied data from the flight recorder and identified ''a number of abnormal engine indications'' that were recorded four minutes after takeoff, said the bureau's general manager aviation safety investigations, Ian Sangston.
A preliminary report should be released within 30 days, but a final determination on what caused the blast could take up to a year, Mr Sangston said.
Mr Joyce said the explosion was not related to the way the aircraft or engines were maintained and slammed claims by the aircraft engineers union that offshore maintenance was behind a rise in air incidents.
''This issue does not relate to maintenance,'' Mr Joyce said. ''Some of the claims that have been made are false and in some cases are completely outrageous. Last year 92 per cent of Qantas's heavy maintenance was done in Australia.''
But a union representative claimed Qantas engineers in offshore facilities were frequently asked to sign off on inspections and maintenance that they had not witnessed.
Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association president Paul Cousins said the association had an agreement with Qantas that offshore maintenance would be inspected at critical stages by Australian-licensed engineers. ''Quite often they come in to find that work has been carried out and signed off without their knowledge.''
With DAN HARRISON, AARON COOK, MATT O'SULLIVAN
-------------------------------
Read more Aviation News
View Model Aircraft
No comments:
Post a Comment