Ben Sandilands writes...
Qantas A380 finishes London flight on three engines – Plane Talking
Quote: Tuesday a Qantas A380 finished its long flight from Singapore to London on three engines only, although the incident doesn’t seem to have been nearly as dramatic as the ATSB notification of an investigation this morning suggests.
That summary implies the defective engine was shut down to ‘idle’ thrust near New Delhi, with another eight hours or more of normal four engined flight time remaining.
In fact the affected Rolls-Royce engine was not closed down to idle thrust until it was within several hours of London, and in airspace with multiple suitable airports for an A380 diversion. The loss of power from an engine near New Delhi would have reduced the cruising speed and altitude of the airliner and its fuel efficiency to a level where it could not have flown all the way to London and arrived with the minimum statutory fuel reserves required by the rules.
According to Qantas the issue that affected the engine has also been found on a Rolls-Royce powered A380 flown by another airline (meaning either with Singapore Airlines or Lufthansa) and it is one which has been raised with the engine maker and is neither the same nor as serious as the issue which saw the disintegration of an engine on QF32 shortly after leaving Singapore on November 4.
That incident lead to a prolonged grounding of the Qantas A380 fleet, and as outlined in its half yearly financial result press conference yesterday, also pushed its London and Los Angeles flights into loss during the 6 months reporting period.