At the outset i have to say that I have watched Qantas and this 380 saga closely and at times my heart went out to them. Australia has had rotten luck. Of course Qantas is not that big an outfit and ferrying the machines upto Lufthansa cannot be logistically easy for a C check.
"What is even more disturbing for me, is that SQ had already had one total IFSD of a Trent 900 on their A380 and is believed to have prematurely removed from wing and changed over a dozen engines on their fleet."
My God..that tells a tale. News to me. RR has just announced a £750 million deal to supply China with engines and back up. This is 12 noon zulu Tues Nov 9th 2010.
This accident happened on the climb out so that is the first clue. Of course I agree with you and see clearly your reasoning. You know these failures happened regularly back in the 50s and 60s and for the life of me I cannot work this out.
We are a hell of along way past slide rules and log tables in 2010 and this failure ..? Either the volcanic dust has shot blasted some mass away from the internals or RR have completely screwed up some specs on materials. God only knows.
In some way the turbine oil has got loose, union failure, stress fracture to lines? Now as far as the public is concerned SQ and Lufthansa are immaculate and of course Qantas has been kicked in the balls yet again.
If you note the wear on the splines that also suggests some chattering. I just don't know if these engines had telemetry on them as do say JetBlues do in KJFK. Of course the guarantees JetBlue got were phenomenal. They can not loose. Even Bird strikes are covered.
Then you lost an engine in your one of your 74s. You push 'em hard and thats what they were built for but I have to say that the 380 was/is not fit for the purpose. I would seriously consider sending them back to Toulose. Let them tie them down run up to 98% and see what happens load em up to full, move around the freight.
Even the friggen sea seals have radio collars fitted to them with a satellite telemetry link. Annoying.
