Jetstar 787 Osaka
 

It may well have been a little more than a 'surge' Mr O'Sullivan.

Many will recall the ANA 787 suffering a double engine failure at Osaka. Fortunately, the software decided to shut it down on the ground. This event is an interesting development.
With engine design a highly competitive and costly enterprise manufacturers are keen to be lighter and more efficient than the other offerings.
Rolls Royce miscalculated the wear rates on the Trent 1000 engines, as it related to the intermediate turbine stage. A separate issue with compressor wear was found. Both components wear far faster than their models predicted.
Airlines will have factored the projected fatigue lives into the maintenance modelling.

Little Napoleon made big fanfare of the 787 operating economics sighting the lower maintenance costs.

“It gives you better economics because it’s 20% more fuel efficient and with a lot lower maintenance cost given the new technology. That means there are routes we could have done before with distance, but couldn’t do economically that now come onto the radar screen.”

When it comes to predicting the future, past performance has proved inaccurate. New technology with little operational exposure is even less able to accurately allow airlines to confidently predict the future.

As Donald Rumsfeld reminded us, "You don't know what you don't know."

From a fleet perspective, Boeing has not identified and resolved the root cause of the 787 electrical fires. Whilst the battery 'box' has been approved and the aircraft flies, the necessary elements of combustion remain.
Perhaps what we are witnessing with Boeing is a normalisation of deviance, in that having little control over engines and batteries the aircraft may have failure points that their design processes have failed to adequately address as they lost process control.
It is too early to tell whether there is a systemic problem with the GenX engine, but one can be sure Boeing will be very concerned; Despite short term savings from outsourcing looking rather elegant on the spread sheet, the risk of reputational damage is all in-house; Boeing will own it.

Airlines like Qantas waiting an eternity for new technology to deliver a comparative advantage may unwittingly have exposed themselves to more risk than their spread sheets predicted.

It could be a thrust surge if contaminated fuel, sounds potentially similar to the CX A330: Report on the accident to Airbus A330-342 B-HLL operated by Cathay Pacific Airways Limited at Hong Kong International Airport, Hong Kong on 13 April 2010

Often repeated, but simply not true. Boeing completely redesigned the battery and the charging system. However, due to the extent of the damage to the battery during the two battery fires, they were unable to firmly establish what the root cause was. So using a belt and suspenders approach, they put the battery in the steel box.
Before the redesign, 40 787s experienced 2 battery fires in about a year.
There are now ~800 787s in service, averaging ~4000 hours/year utilization (that works out to over 3 million flight hours/year fleetwide). Since the redesign there has been one battery event - a single cell failed but thanks to the battery redesign the fault was contained to a single cell and didn't propagate to the other cells. The cell fault was traced to a manufacturing defect and corrective action was put in place.

Japan Transport Safety Board has commenced an investigation

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...r/ae-2019-016/

Qantas fleet metrics are as validated by the International Council of Clean Transportation poor.
Their fuel spend component of CASK is, self evidently a result of an extended delay in fleet re-equipment.

S&P made mention of it in February 2018
Roger Montgomery highlighted the increasing problem in July 2018.

Qantas has repeatedly stated through Little Napoleon they are waiting for the manufacturers to deliver something that can't yet be done. Presumably technology will as Little Napoleon alluded too several times, be a cornerstone to delivering the as yet unforeseen.
As the electrical problems with the 787 and indeed the powerplant issues of both GenX and Rolls Royce demonstrate, waiting for a comparative advantage to be delivered by a leap of technology, can expose the company to unforeseen risk.

I see this A/C has finally taken to the air again today.
Any idea where it is going?

VH-VKJ. Currently (0800UTC) over the East China Sea.