Qantas A380 uncontained #2 engine failure

[wingz5000]

I have a question for Morrissey;
We have heard and seen that the wings upper surface was damaged, and that one of the holes was actually INCREASING IN SIZE! Also leaking either fuel or hydraulic fluid. I would have thought that this would A:compromise the wings integrity, or B: lead to a possible fire. Did any of the flight crew come back into the cabin to inspect the damage?? If so it may have caused them to reconsider the time involved in fuel dumping and checklists and get the behemoth on the ground a bit more smartly.

[WilyB]

Sharkwitch:

And I'll bet it is diesel.
Sure ain't Airbus.

You sure? Diesel, and jet fuel (JP4) are closely related to each other.

[paulg]

Grounded27 - You may well have been grounded 27 times, but you obviously still didn't manage to read this thread before posting here. It has been publicly acknowledged by Qantas that number one engine would not shut down.

[Gretchenfrage]

@enkei

What about your maximum landing weight? Despite dumping fuel, they still lost 2 or 3 tyres.

You can land any aircraft at any weight. It's simply a matter of runway lenth (no problem in SIN) and structural damage (a thorough check must follow ovwhgt ldg).

Don't worry about blowing tyres, you do that with any high speed t/o abortion. Worry about how long will the wing keep me airborne, with such a damage!

This is a typical case where the failure seems doable at the first glance. Follow the lenthy sops and the even longer ECAM actions and you will be just fine, so says the manufacturor and the company. Once on ground and the whole damage assessed, the chilling awakening is that time might have been running out (memento SR111).

Two hours of dumping and ECAM handling appears to me as way too long for such a failure. Airbus and the companies sops might have to be rewritten for the big busses and big failures.

[grounded27]

Hey , seen a classic (tower air) 742 or 1 blow a HPT denting the wing through the flaps and sending a piece of fir tree ring (spelling) the ring that holds the HPT blades, into the empenage.

Impossible to damage the upper wing, the weakness is the luck of striking a fuel entry panel (under wing) is not likely.

Aircraft are designed with impact resistant fuel panels inbard for the more common tire explosions.

[Cubbie]

I was airborne from WSSS 20C yesterday,same runway they landed on, and noticed the big brown stain on the grass to the right of the threshold of 02C,where they used the foam- it only just stopped on the runway. Assuming maximum braking effort on what ever hydraulics they had, single reverse max, and landing weight?-full 4000m runway length to stop, yikes!

[Bizman]

@Gretchenfrage

... and despite dumping fuel, they only just stopped short of the end of that 4000 m runway.

Hmmmm ... we have no slats, half reverse thrust, wet runway, are over MLW and have a No. 1 that we don't know how much residual thrust may still be generating. ..... But, no, you want to hang the SOPs, just get 'er down Bud, and let's run 'er off the end of the runway; and if we loose a bunch of paxs to broken legs, fractured spines etc as we emergency evac them out the slides, and some walk into the still-running No1, we can explain it all later to the press that we just wanted to get 'er on the deck!

I suggest you do a grave disservice to that crew that obviously evaluated the situation as fully as they could, and ensured that every one walked away gracefully from a crippled bird that returned in better shape than expected.

Its easier to criticise a crew from where you are sitting now, than to make a good decision from where they were sitting then.

[Bolli]

@ Cubbie

or they kept rolling because the fire crews were at the end of the runway?

[NigelOnDraft]

58 ECAMs? Holy cr@p, thank god I left AB! Talking about design flaws RR does not seem to be alone.

If a donkey explodes, you lost it. If it's uncontained and bruises your wing, you need to get your butt down as fast as possible. Who guarantees that you will not lose more than just the leash of No1? I personally would not bother about dumping too much fuel and even less about the 58 ECAM alerts. I would want us down on mother earth as fast as possible.

We'll have to wait for the various more infomed inquiries to get an accurate assessment... but my instinct is to disagree with you.

I have no idea of your background / experience, but in my view you miss a main point about emergency handling - "stable" and "unstable". We have a Pax account the "hole was getting bigger".. but most of the photos do not show a dramatic change in size. Might I suggest:

1. Skin is "stressed", but I would think it would take a significant hole to cause a <MTOW jet at 1g to lose a wing i.e. suffer a structural failure.
2. Skins etc. are designed to cope with small failures, and have tear stops / limits / paths.

i.e. a wild guess, but I reckon the wing/skin damage in terms of the structural integrity of the aircraft was insignificant.

58 ECAMs to deal with - quite likely given the wiring damage. What's wrong with that? They are prioritised, and there is no obligation on the crew to deal with all of them prior landing. We have another thread (A320 AoA / stall / crash) where people are bleating for more failure messages.

We have another post saying they used almost the entire runway length - if they did, and using all stopping devices to the max, then I might suggest << I would want us down on mother earth as fast as possible>> could have seen an overrun?

I think we are going to see some good redundancy design (not unique to AB) that took some wing / wiring / hyd damage, yet was left with sufficient systems to fly, approach and land and stop.

I will be interested to know if there where any areas where 1 more failure e.g. further Hyd system would have left them in a very serious / terminal situation. #1 Engine for instance - having lost #2, if #1 was stuck at Climb Pwr, or idle, then I would think urgency might have been further up the priority list. OTOH, maybe #1 was working fine until the moment came to shut it down, when it wouldn't. Or maybe, who knows, 1 of the 58 messages effectively indicated to them the Eng would work fine, but couldn't be shut down, and they could plan around that.

Just my 2ps worth - summary, I suspect (and hope) the crew will come out looking very good, the A380 a robust design... and after the initial failure, this was a fairly "stable" situation, and no rush. As for the Trent and the IP problems, bit of a shame they were foreseen, but not stopped.

NoD

[kwateow]

NigelOnDraft

"maybe #1 was working fine until the moment came to shut it down"

That's what Qantas confirmed.

[Chris2303]

Limitations

Perhaps not so much the limitation of materials but the limitation of technology?

Have we already passed the maximum size of an engine?

[Scuffers]

Have we already passed the maximum size of an engine?

A380 engines are still smaller than the ones used on 787's etc (Trent 1000)

[Lemain]

Major design defect?

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.

Others have also expressed concern, in this thread. This is a major design flaw -- you must be able to shut down an engine either from the cockpit or, in extremis, from some kind of inspection hatch in the passenger cabin. It raises further questions about the integrity of other control and command functions that are transmitted via such data buses. The Trent is a reliable engine with a good service record -- but even the most reliable kit can fail so that possibly isn't the issue. I'm a huge admirer of the engineering by both Boeing and Airbus so no partisan attitude but this, if true, is a serious deficiency in design philosophy and will need to be corrected.

[aussiepax]

grounded27.

Your response to Morrisey was in my opinion just the flaming he / she asked not to have. I was interested in the information provided and it didn't merit your "crap"and "illogical" dismissal. Have some pity on us interested amateurs !

[ejectx3]

Why is it so hard to get the spelling of "lose" and "loose" sorted out? You 'Lose" an engine not "Loose" it....

It drives me INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ahhhhh...that's better

[Lemain]

Why is it so hard to get the spelling of "lose" and "loose" sorted out? You 'Lose" an engine not "Loose" it....

It drives me INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cos not everyone's first language is English, particularly in this industry?

[NigelOnDraft]

This is a major design flaw -- you must be able to shut down an engine either from the cockpit or, in extremis, from some kind of inspection hatch in the passenger cabin

I disagree... to the extent that already there is clearly 'a major design flaw'

The principle requirement is that engines do not suffer "uncontained failures". We know they do, but that is the aim. When the aim fails (as here), it does so in an unpredicatable pattern, and impossible to design against in a specific manner.

Assuming the A380 is like other Airbii, you can shut the engine down via the Master Switch or Engine Fire pb. I agree, if these 2 are routed via the same loom, that is not sensible... and some sort of separate paths should be required. However, if the routes are separate, and were taken out by bad luck, so be it.

I'd rather have engnes running when I didn't want them to, than numerous stopping methods / boxes that mean I have engines not running when I do want them.

NoD

[lomapaseo]

Me? I would strap on an A380 any day, GP7200 powered of course. With a RR900 engine, I would prefer they first have a definitive answer to why this occurred before flying it again. Whatever it was, it was outside what was anticipated or foreseen. Not a happy situation for A380/RR operators to be in.

Of course they all agree with you, thats why they have been working so hard for the last couple of days to address the issues to put the fleet back in the air.

One can't expect the general public to know whats going on behind the scene but you can expect that when a major airline puts their fleet back in the air that they are darn sure that they are satisfied.

[NigelOnDraft]

As just above, I thought grounded27's reply to Morrissey was exceptionally rude.

Morrissey - I found your post interesting and informative, unlike a lot of the armchair experts posting / guessing on here. Trust you got to SYD eventually, unlike your A380 crew who appear to be back in SIN again

NoD

[Lemain]

Major design defect?

Assuming the A380 is like other Airbii, you can shut the engine down via the Master Switch or Engine Fire pb. I agree, if these 2 are routed via the same loom, that is not sensible... and some sort of separate paths should be required. However, if the routes are separate, and were taken out by bad luck, so be it.

I think there ought to be a better way. Sure, you could feed the signals down two looms but then you go back to the old INS argument -- which signal do you believe? One data bus says "stay as you were" and the other says "shut down" so you add a third that might say "dunno". Someone on this thread floated the idea of a radio control system that could be enabled in an event like this -- would still require that electrical power was present at the control servos and solenoids, of course, but might be a relatively inexpensive and reliable 'emergency network' that could be used not just for engines but other commands and controls? There are other ways but, as you say, failures by their very nature tend to be unpredictable when sharp metal starts to fly around.

I'd rather have engnes running when I didn't want them to, than numerous stopping methods / boxes that mean I have engines not running when I do want them.

Hmmmm.....I lost a throttle cable in a piston-engined Jodel, thirty or more years ago and the engine opened right up on the spring -- which it was designed to do. One of those things you read about and theorise about but when it happens you feel rather glum. But in a small piston-engined aircraft you have mixture and mags, so you can go idle cut-off, mags off, then and mags on and rich to blip as they did in the old days. Not a big deal in a Jodel but I don't suppose it would be so easy in an Airbus? And you can't blip a Trent. With powerful power plants and aircraft that don't glide well an engine that cannot be controlled must be a major design defect that needs to be corrected. Why did the 195x Jodel have a greater redundancy than an Airbus?