Qantas A380 uncontained #2 engine failure

[Dave's brother]

Wrong Bus

According to the video in this report, it's worse than we thought. The A380 completely lost two engines - and an entire passenger deck. Either that or they're showing the wrong kind of Airbus...

Video: Qantas flight lands safely- reports

[babotika]

Media really making a dog's meal of what is an engine failure with damage followed by an inflight return. Gotta love the "no one was hurt BUT 500 people could have been in extreeeeme danger!"

Whole fleet is grounded now according to the BBC.

And to think I was holding short of 20R as it landed and departed not 30 seconds later. Hmm.

S.

[Torqueman]

A photo shown taken from a passenger shows some debris has shot through the wing less than twelve inches in front of the wing front spar. Behind the front spar is the fuel tank! I'm tipping that if a piece of hot turbine had gone though the wing tank it would have made the Air France Concorde disaster look like a fairly small accident.
The aircraft has just undergone it's first heavy maintenance check at lufthansa tech. in Germany.

[ventus45]

From the evidence of the fragment of turbine disk in the back of the truck, and the hole in the wing, this has to be classed as an uncontained engine failure of an unacceptable kind. When you have an explosion (as reported by many on the island) and damage like, QF can't just brush it off as an "incident". Time to ground them until the real cause is found, and dealt with, decisively.

[AN2 Driver]

That damage looks pretty darn scary and not unlike a Trent 700 uncontained failure a few years back near Miami. That A330 came in on a wing and a swiss cheese...

Gotta love the "no one was hurt BUT 500 people could have been in extreeeeme danger!"

Um, actually, looking at the damage to the wing and where that debris ended up, that might not be too far from the truth... This kind of hardware can do loads of damage with that kind of home-delivery. Reckon some folks down at that island were extremely lucky. As for the aircraft, the wing damage looks scary enough. If this material really went through the fuel tanks, then lucky doesn't come close.

Agreed, the Press have really kicked over several buckets of smelly stuff this morning, starting from a mid air explosion to a crash, one major agency had even found the wreckage before the plane landed!! Heavens, some of these guys really need to get their act together. Hope those with the quick typing fingers get a nice interview with their editor in chief and one of those "tea, no bisquits" treatments.

[spatston]

Qantas web site says:

"Qantas has also indicated that, in accordance with its commitment to the highest safety standards, it has suspended scheduled A380 takeoffs until sufficient information has been obtained about what occurred on QF32.

Qantas Chief Executive Officer, Alan Joyce said Qantas would suspend A380 services until we are confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met. "

[Squawk7777]

pictures

[Airways B]

Interesting Pics, Pic 1 shows obviously damaged No2 engine. Pic 2 shows AFS dousing No1 which has a blackened pylon.

One or two?


AB

[msbbarratt]

Wait

Well done the press

So now for the long and anxious wait to find out whether it's a design issue or a maintenance issue, or just a random failure... No doubt the folk in Derby are already ploughing through their telemetry data...

An uncontained engine failure. Does that mean RR will have to make design changes, no matter what the cause turns out to be? Have they or anyone else had to do so in the past in response to such an escape of innards?

[MELT]

Notice that the doors for nose undercarriage are open, is this significant or due to emergency landing?

[Squawk7777]

Looking at the second picture I posted, is that a piece of the wing that is sticking up (third window to the left from the emergency exit)?

[bracebrace!]

I saw that too Melt. Open gear doors is normally a sign of some sort of major hydraulic problem.

[no sponsor]

Some pics from Reuters:

Reuters Pictures

[fox niner]

In one of the pictures it seems that even the upper part of the wing is damaged, probably by debris from the engine making its way through the wing structure.

[A2QFI]

ISTR that a Trent engine (maybe not this model) failed on test at Derby a few weeks ago and damaged the test facility at the same time.

[lurker999]

Fox, top of the wing



hole in middle of wing is "interesting"

[BEagle]

Clearly more than a simple 'loss of thrust'....

As well as the open landing gear doors indicating a major hydraulic failure, passengers also report that the captain was 'unable to shut down No.1 engine' after landing safely.

[jaybob777]

A380 incident

Very well done to the crew. Must have been plenty of reds and ambers for a while.

Rotor disc coming out
Punctured wing
Potential hydraulics not doing what they should
"Unable to shut down No 1"

Can't see this being a 5 minute fix. Another blow to a long suffering aviation sector. Nobody hurt is always a good ending.

[jimpy1979uk]

BEagle,

You mentioned that passengers believed that Engine #1 was hard to shut down. Looking at that damage on the top of the wing could explain that. The engine control signals are fed by databuses along the front edge of the forward wing spar and that damage ontop of the wing is right on the money for possibly damaging those wiring routes.

If they had been damaged then the engine would continue to run no matter what happens in the flight deck as the engine has its own dedicated generator to power the FADEC and the LP fuel valve would remain open.

Hope this is of interest.

Jimpy

[windy1]

I am supposed to be flying SIA A380 next month. Before updating my will, can anyone give the stats on uncontained engine failures for non-design reasons ( i.e. birds bigger than test chicken).

........ and what sort of considerations will apply to grounding all airlines A380 as there is only one engine type