BBC TV has announced one of those new A380 Superjumbo jets just made an emergency landing in Singapore with only three of its four engines working. Engine parts have reportedly been found on the ground in Indonesia. A Qantas flight. No injuries apparently.
These carry … what? More than 500 passengers? I recall predictions during the plane’s development of some really spectacular crashes to come.
Ah, CNN just put up a story here.
Now BBC is saying the engine did not simply fail, but rather blew up, in mid-flight.
Losing one engine shouldn’t be a problem in an of itself but that is going to be one expensive repair and investigation. If there are any serious recalls, Airbus is going to be hurting hard financially for it.
It was a QANTAS flight. Apparently the engine exploded dropping debris on Batam. 433 passengers and 26 crew. AFP story
CNN now has a larger version of the same photo in the AFP link of the exploded engine. See here.
But the story text still says the engine just "shut down. 
Yeah, the plane flew around Changi for a while to dump fuel - no doubt I will see the detailed reports in tomorrow’s paper
In the “throw a brick through the engine” style of shutting down.
I wonder if it was a bird ingestion.
I was on an Airbus 320 flying out of Kuwait last week that turned round over Iran, came back to Kuwait, dumped fuel then landed and was met by a fire engine. Scary shit. They never told us what was wrong though.
Having seen the pix, I don’t think was a bird strike, the engine literally exploded - there are big chunks of cowling all over the place.
It can be bird in, engine ka-boom too. If the bird is big enough to break loose pieces of the front fan which subsequently make an ungodly mess on the inner workings of the engine as they go through the turbine.
Serious? The wing also has nice big holes in it. One source is claiming that Qantas has grounded its A380 fleet in the meantime…
Yes, this is an engine test, I’m not sure what size bird they used for it though.
The engine is built so that while it may be wrecked it won’t bring down the plane by tearing a wing off or spraying shrapnel into the cabin.
Og darn it, I couldn’t fix my post. I saw in the description of the video that they actually detached a fan blade, there was no chicken involved in the test. Although it’s possible for a large bird to break off a fan blade.
The news crawl (bottom of the screen headlines during the morning news) on our local NBC affiliate notes that Qantas is insisting there was no explosion. Maybe they mean there wasn’t a bomb or fuel explosion or anything, versus ‘a dramatic ripping apart with accompanying loud noise’ like a big bird and then fan parts could cause.
I don’t see why Airbus would get into too long term trouble for this…the engine obviously failed. And Airbus didn’t design, or build the engine. Testing will need to be done, but it was not a fault of the airframe.
All things considered, this incident went spectacularly well.
I saw some video of the plane on the ground and was thinking that Airbus had done a good job of designing the cowling as it had apparently contained the very energetic forces of an engine failure and unplanned disassembly.
In the past, fast spinning bits that became fast flinging bits have had a way of punching through control surfaces and fuel / hydraulic lines with disastrous results. This one’s more like “Oh, we better order a new engine and ask those chaps over at Rolls Royce why their engine came apart.”
Passenger video of the wing damage here. There are some definite holes but not what I would have expected from photos showing that the engine and the rear half of the cowling were basically destroyed. Some engineers out there deserve a lot of credit they’re not going to get, I think.
The video includes the very calm voice of the captain telling everyone there has been a “technical issue” with the number two engine and they’re heading back to Singapore.
“There seems to be something wrong with our bloody airplanes today.”
I expected to see a gremlin tearing pieces off the wing.
I want my money back :mad:
Define explosion. The engine can’t really explode as it is already burning merrily away at something like 600 degrees C. What can happen is that a turbine blade can let go and on rare occasions it and the associated debris may not be contained by the engine cowling. It’s not an explosion though.