Qantas jumbo makes emergency landing in Singapore

Here we go again, Rolls Royce engines giving a hard time. Not too long ago one of the new Boeing 787 had to land right away from a test flight towards its certification because of the RR engines had a bad malfunction.

I have always felt the Airbus was a "poor mans Boeing" since I stepped on one of the first ones to fly. I have also wondered why Rolls-Royce was in the jet engine business as a small car manufacturer. No one is sure why the engine had a problem fifteen minutes into the flight, but It could have been dust in the air from the volcano. Winds aloft can carry that sand around the world. I don't believe the spokesman that said it was too far.

I was wondering why it took two hours to get the passengers off the plane? Were they in the middle of a meal service? The passengers wanted to finish the movie? Was the top step of the portable stairs 6 ft below the bottom of the door? The airport should have equipment and people that can properly service such situations. They charge each passenger (through facility usage fees) enough to have gold plated handrails on the steps. I would have found such a delay unacceptable.

Roic, sorry for disagreeing with you, Airbus makes excellent aircraft, and not only that, if they did not exist good ole Boeing, which makes wonderful airliners too, would have held the airlines by the through extracting whatever the hell they wanted for their planes taking advantage of their monopolistic position. Why Rolls Royce makes jet engines and small cars too, too complicated to discuss here, try Wikipedia or the Google. No, the Quantas jet did not fly through volcanic ash clouds, they are still investigating what happened. I subscribe to your amazement as to why in hell’s name they evacuated the stricken plane in two long hours, suppose that flames erupted, nobody would have survived. Maybe whoever wrote that piece meant to say that the luggage was extracted two hours after the plane landed, or whatever; but the jury is still out.

Anyone have a tracking link for that flight. Can't find one.

I agree with chalet on the need for Airbus being in the market. As for Rolls Royce it is largely a seperate company for the car maker and again the need for competition keeps the B... honest.
This flight was not in USA air space so will not be covered by Flightwise or others.
Interesting the map in the articale indicates a place called Port Headland or near abouts, which is some 3000Km SE of SGP. Glad the writer is not a navigator.
However I disagree with chalet on the spelling of Qantas. Quaint but incorrect.

Hi,

since when is an A380 called 'Jumbo'? ;-)

chalet, Rolls Royce has been making aircraft engines since World War 1. Their engines powered many of the most successful Allied aircraft during WWII (Remember the Merlin? it powered such planes as the Spitfire and the P-51 Mustang.) They built the first truly successful and reliable turbine engine. This was the Nene, which was built under license in the US by Pratt & Whitney to power the Grumman F9F Panther, and was reverse-engineered by the Soviet Union (after being given 25 engines by the Brits as a "good will" gesture!) to power the Mig 15. The automobile manufacturing company is totally seperate from the aircraft engine company. All they share is the name.

I am an aircraft mechanic, and while I have not worked on the A380, I do have some experience on othe Airbus models, as well as Boeings. I much prefer working on Boeing aircraft. It seems like Airbus designs by the "stick it there - it'll work!" philosophy, with no thought as to what is behind it or how you might need to get at it. Boeing's planes are much more logically and thoughtfully laid out. They seem to ahve given some thought to the idea that someday some poor schmuck is gonna have to work on that equipment!

"QANTAS" is an acronym. It stands for "Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd."

RR was dissolved in a bankruptcy some years ago, if my memory serves. The aircraft engine business was reorganized as Rolls Royce Aerospace, and it manufactures the Trent engine. The auto business (Rolls Royce and Bentley) was sold to VW . A quirk in the deal allowed RR Aerospace to separately sell the RR name for use on automobiles, and BMW bought it. To settle the mess, VW re-sold the RR manufacturing ops to BMW. So, dust settled, BMW manufactures RR, VW manufactures Bentley. VW got the better deal, I think. If you're still confused, don't worry.

re: ownership of the RR name and the various manufacturing entities, "wrapitup" has the story correct.

Interesting, as of 3:30 pm Pacific Time there wasn't a single A380 being tracked by flightaware. While I am no expert, one would of excpected something in air. All I know I I wouldn't fly on it with that engine until Airbus and RR figure out exactly what went wrong and take corrective steps.

Interesting, as of 3:30 pm Pacific Time there wasn't a single A380 being tracked by flightaware. While I am no expert, one would of excpected something in air. All I know I I wouldn't fly on it with that engine until Airbus and RR figure out exactly what went wrong and take corrective steps.

Re Ric Wernicke's comment. ' It could have been dust in the air from the volcano'. If that were the case would not all of the engines have been affected?

Macgso, I didn't mean to portray RR as a manufacturer of defective engines, they have a proud past, however their recent mishaps make you wonder, a Qantas 747 out of SFO last August and another Qantas 747 out of Singapore today both returning to the airport due to RR engine failures.Qantas grounded yesterday the entire 380 fleet and I don't know what they are going to do about the 330 and 747 fleets, probably run special tests prior to release them back to service.

Per another squawk, I question whether the issue is with Qantas' maintenance regime. How many jets (Boeing, Airbus, etc) have flown with RR engines and how many engine failures like this have been reported? In just over two month Qantas has had two major engine failures - two with 747s (8/31 out of SFO and earlier today out of Changi) plus this particular incident with the 380 (too bad it was the Nancy-Bird Walton jet). Mr. Horstmann above indicated he wouldn't want to fly aboard an A380 until they figure out what happened. With all due respect to you, I wouldn't want to fly aboard any Qantas jet until they've thoroughly gone over their maintenance routines. Does anyone if Qantas' maintenance is done in-house, or do they farm it out?

Re Marty Martino's maintenance question. Most of the Qantas maintenance is carried out overseas. The A380 engines in question are maintained in Germany at Lufthansa. At the moment there is quite a large backlash by the the unions and soon to be by the public I believe to have maintenance carried out here in Australia. Which seems to me to be more logical. It's all to do with costing according to Qantas. I wonder.........

While Qantas might need to address their overall maint. program, RR engines have had too many serious incidents in new aircraft to overlook, for the B788 and A380 programs, which is the fault of the engine, nor long term maintenance programs as they were too new to be impacted by faulty maintenance. Clearly it is a design or production flaw, which has to be addressed as this accident could of been devastating. And in my opinion, all 380's with RR engines of this type should be grounded until the issue has been thoroughly studied, or it could happen again, with possibly more worse consequences. Who wants to take that chance? Hopefully no one!

I can only agree with T Horstmann. I am old enough to have had an uncle ( in Scotland) who had an entire new RR Merlin engine in his garage...but the honest and unfortunate conclusion I believe, is that this is all related to some likely production flaw. Notwithstanding that I far prefer Boeing to Airbus....[ and an honest look at how each company 'finances' its aircraft sales is pretty revealing]..I think that this is a potentially very serious issue which might conceivably
be ultimately fatal for the RR Engine Group. Still, better an RR p/plant to something cobbled up in the PRC!!! Yes, that day is coming.....

Engine failures in-flight are somewhat more common then the public is aware of. What makes this RR Engine failure more news worthy is the fact that it is a new engine on a new aircraft(s). You name the aircraft and the engine manufacturer and somewhere in the world an aircraft has landed with an engine shut down. Unless there is an accident caused by the shut down engine the landing is not news worth anywhere other than, possibly the area local to the airport the plane landed at, and then only if it is a slow news day.