News Qantas A380 makes emergency landing in Singapore

[Turbinator]

Better quality pictures:

This is a diagram of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 for reference.
They had another Trent 900 fail a while ago on a Singapore A380 during lift-off, however it was not catastrophic faliure.
(there don't seem to be very many high quality pics of this engine)

And here is a super high quality picture of the Engine Alliance GP7000 engine, note this engine is -NOT- in Quantas planes.
And not the engine that experienced the catastrophic failure. They never had problems with these.

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[Urwumpe]

Yes this is very good quality for a cell phone. Perhaps a smart phone instead? iPhone 4 or Blackberry Torch perhaps, or along those lines...

The HTC Desire HD also comes with a HD video camera.

 

[Keatah]

This wil have a bigger impact on the engine mfg than on the aircraft mfg or airline, financially.

But the public will see this as an airbus and quantas problem!

Travelers know what airline they flew on.
They might know the type of plane, but not often. All they remember about it was how big it was inside.
And knowledge about the specific engine mfg. is definitely off-limits to the family vacationer! They just don't care!

I myself prefer planes powered by GE or Pratt-Whitney.

 

[Dambuster]

I'm wondering - what's the engine nacelle made out of? It really doesn't look like a metal to me from the way it broke.

 

[Turbinator]

I myself prefer planes powered by GE or Pratt-Whitney.

Absolutely the same here, never had confidence in RR to begin with.

I'm wondering - what's the engine nacelle made out of? It really doesn't look like a metal to me from the way it broke.

Composite materials, carbon-fibre reinforced plastic, glass-fibre reinforced plastic and quartz-fibre reinforced plastic. Yes, its a giant plastic toy. Gone are the days when a plane could take a flak shell to the wing, and loose half of it and still return to base. This is the reason why today's planes burn to a fine crisp nothingness after a crash landing.



Case in point, Air France A340-300 skidded of the end of the runway during a thunderstorm in Toronto, Canada, catching on fire, everyone escaped safely.
This is what was left of the plane.

(you can almost see my hose from that picture !!!)

As a matter of fact this is one of my favourite mountain bike paths (during warmer weather)

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[Keatah]

It's all a big conspiracy! Planes are designed to burn when crashing, less garbage to clean up afterwards!

Ahem, !! RR engines are un-necessarily complicated. The trent 900 used on the a380 is a 3 shaft design, the ge-90 is a two-shaft design.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trent_900#Specifications_.28Trent_900.29
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_GE90"]General Electric GE90 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[Urwumpe]

(you can almost see my hose from that picture !!!)

Is it the D hose from the yellow fire truck?

 

[N_Molson]

A good thing they still had 3 engines working after the fire.

 

[jinglesassy]

Could have been an albatross

YouTube - Monty Python - Albatross

Off topic:Is it sad that the quality of that video is better then my camcorder?


On topic:Hope it was a big bird not just a small hummingbird causing that amount of damage.

 

[Linguofreak]

I would guess bird strike, since the scorch marks already start right behind the fan, at the thrust reverser.

And it was sure a blade-off, but that was no the primary cause, since the problems started already before the compressor stages. If it was just a blade-off, the flames shouldn't be able to travel forward, at least not that far that it leaves through the idle compressor inlet.

Well, I've definitely seen fan blade-off test videos in which the blade-off event led to flames escaping through the front of the engine. Of course, I suspect a turbine blade-off, not a fan blade-off, and you may well be right that an intact compressor would prevent the scorch marks we see here in that case. Of course, there is the possibility that a turbine blade-off could somehow lead to a compressor failure, which might be an explanation.

Relevant video is relevant.

The fact that debris penetrated the wing, and that such a big chunk of the engine casing is missing, makes me wonder if the engine should have passed the test shown in that video. Sure, it managed to contain a failure under ideal conditions in one test, but it seems here that in an incident under real flight conditions the failure was not contained.

 

[garyw]

I'm wondering - what's the engine nacelle made out of? It really doesn't look like a metal to me from the way it broke.

Carbonfibre. parts of it are designed to allow easy access to the engine and so those parts can quite easy fail if something bad happens.

Talking to a pilot friend this is what he had to say:

given the charred cowl forward of the (most definitely uncontained) turbine failure, it's possible that this was an uncontrolled surge, followed by a disc failure due to overspeed.

modern jet engines have not-so-complicated control systems (PID-a-go-go) attempting to control a very complicated and nonlinear system. my guess is that the engine (during the climb phase, which is a max envelope type of operating area) entered a poorly modeled/unmodeled regime for which the controls system was not correctly designed

 

[tblaxland]

Singapore grounds fleet after Qantas drama
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/05/3057785.htm

Qantas has grounded all six of its A380s until further notice.

Singapore Airlines has also grounded its 11-strong A380 fleet as a precautionary measure.

Maybe it exploded after they all disembarked? :lol:

From that article:

Firefighters moved in to stem fuel spilling from the damaged wing but the passengers, now safely landed, were still in danger as the risks multiplied.

Sydney lawyer Christopher Lee says the pilot again did his best to keep the passengers calm as the engine would not shut down, but he was still afraid.

"Obviously in the back of your mind you're concerned about a very hot engine next to leaking fuel. Obviously you're in a state of anxiety," he said.

No mention of which engine wouldn't shutdown though. It could have been exciting if was no.1 :dry:

EDIT:

Talking to a pilot friend this is what he had to say:

Interesting comments. Isn't overspeed easy to protect against by having a governor shut the engine down? Unless the control time constant was greater than the surge rate :shrug:

 

[Keatah]

Could be an explosion outside of the engine core, like the support hoses and pipes and stuff.

 

[tl8]

From the Qantas Press conference today.

• Qantas A380s are undergoing checks.
• 8hrs per engine for each plane.
• Completed in 24-48hrs.
• One service has been performed by Roll Roycle on the engine.
• CEO is saying Material Failure or Design Issue.
• Airplane will be repaired in the coming weeks.
• No. 1 Engine had trouble shutting down.
• And some other non technical things that are not important to us.

 

[tblaxland]

• And some other non technical things that are not important to us.

:lol:

A couple of other points of interest:

• Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) staff will lead the investigation and will be assisted by their counterparts from Singapore and Indonesia.
• Airbus will also send a team of specialists from France.
• The plane involved in the incident had logged 8,165 flight hours and 831 flight cycles.

 

[Turbinator]

!!! That hole !!!​

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdk-uhYLF2U"]YouTube - Australia Qantas A380 Engine Damage Video & Passenger Video 4 nov 2010[/ame]



To avoid any misconceptions out there, this is a Rolls-Royce issue, not an Airbus flaw. This is a 3rd Trent 900 failure. If anything, it's demonstrative of how forgiving and tough the A380 is, from other images you can see that the hole near the leading edge is larger than a person. Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa are the only operators of A380s powered by the Trent 900 engine, built by the British firm at its factory in Derby. And all 3 operators experienced engine malfunctions. Two months ago, a Lufthansa A380 had to shut down one of its four Trent 900 engines shortly before landing at Frankfurt due to concerns about a change in oil pressure. Another Rolls-Royce powered A380, this time operated by Singapore Airlines, was forced to turn back after leaving Paris in September last year because of an engine malfunction. And finally the 3rd one being the Quantas A380 suffering a catastrophic engine failure after lift off. This led to a significant fall in Rolls Royce stocks, as a major international investigation of the engine has been launched.




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[garyw]

Any word on hydraulic fluid loss? when it landed not all of the spoilers deployed which suggests one of the three hydraulic systems failed.

Not being able to shut an engine down is a worry. I wonder what the cause of that was and did the pilots have ANY control at all over the engine (I would assume they had some?)

 

[tl8]

Nothing on either, Probably will have to wait for the preliminary report in 30 days to see what was or wasn't working. It won't stay in the news long, a footballer has had some nasty pictures taken that will occupy the media for a while.

---------- Post added at 11:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:28 PM ----------

On another incident, although somewhat similar:
http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/1587731/ao2010066prelim.pdf
The preliminary report into an Uncontained engine failure on a 747-438 out of San Francisco. Not as bad as this failure, but interesting none the less.

 

[Dambuster]

Any word on hydraulic fluid loss? when it landed not all of the spoilers deployed which suggests one of the three hydraulic systems failed.

Not being able to shut an engine down is a worry. I wonder what the cause of that was and did the pilots have ANY control at all over the engine (I would assume they had some?)

Haven't heard anything talking about the hydraulics themselves, but I just dug a few interesting things up off teh interwebz:

Slats aren't down (from: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/11/04/349304/pictures-extent-of-peripheral-damage-to-qantas-a380-unclear.html)

At least some of the landing gear doors didn't close:

vs

From http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/432704-qantas-a380-uncontained-2-engine-failure-5.html http://www.airliners.net/photo/Airbus Industrie/Airbus A380-841/0825948/L http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/11/04/349295/pictures.html

 

[Sunhillow]

This one looks interesting too:

Hydraulic system seems to be damaged. Leading edge slats, gear doors and part of the spoilers didn't move. Luckily the debris did not shoot towards the cabin...