Did volcanic ash nearly bring down Airbus."Oz Airbus Forced To Make Emergency Landing "

There is speculation that a Qantas airbus may have run into volcanic ash over Mount Merapi, Indonesia's. The engine suffered significant damage with a large part falling off it. www.bbc.co.uk...

Qantas flight QF32 was travelling from Singapore to Sydney with 459 people on board. It had originated in London.

Pieces of debris believed to be from an aircraft were found on the nearby Indonesian island of Batam.

It is unclear why one of the plane's four engines failed. Qantas has grounded its six-strong A380 fleet.

Qantas said the plane, with 433 passengers and 26 crew on board, experienced an "engine issue" over western Indonesia shortly after taking off from Singapore time at about 1000 (0200 GMT).

"It's a significant engine failure," the chief executive of Qantas, Alan Joyce, said at a news conference.

"We do take our safety reputation and our safety standards unbelievably seriously. And we're not going to take any risks with passenger safety - and as a precaution, we're suspending the flights of the A380 aircraft until we're comfortable that we understand the reasons for this."

No-one was injured. Correspondents at Singapore's Changi airport said smoke billowed from the aircraft, which was surrounded by fire engines.
Engine blackened
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“Start Quote

Everyone was surprisingly calm on the plane. We [were] not going crazy at all”

End Quote Ulf Waschbusch Passenger

Firefighters were seen spraying liquid on the plane.

One of the engines was blackened and its rear casing was missing.

"We heard the boom, I looked outside and saw a little bit of fire," German national Ulf Waschbusch told AFP news agency by telephone after disembarking from the plane along with the 432 other passengers.

"Something ruptured the left wing, it was a small rupture," said the passenger, a technology company executive based in Singapore who was heading to Sydney on holiday.

He said the pilot had then spent two hours dumping fuel in preparation, he said, for an emergency landing.

"Everyone was surprisingly calm on the plane. We [were] not going crazy at all," Mr Waschbusch said.
Map

"The crew helped tremendously. I felt in good hands. Qantas did a great job in keeping us safe."

Witnesses on Batam said they heard an explosion as the plane flew overhead. "There were metal shards coming down from the sky into an industrial area in Batam," eyewitness Noor Kanwa told the AFP agency.

The BBC's Nick Bryant in Sydney says aviation experts have identified the debris as part of a Qantas engine casing, but that the airline has not confirmed this.

Qantas said the grounding of its A380 fleet would be followed by a full investigation.

Qantas had no immediate comment on whether the incident might be related to eruptions of Indonesia's Mount Merapi over the past 10 days - which have prompted some flights above the volcano to be suspended.
Flagship airliner

This incident is a worrying development for an airline which prides itself on an exemplary safety record.
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Airbus A380

No.

If it was ask more than 1 engine would have suffered.

It must be noted that the 380 has only been flying commercially for 2 years....

This is the first major event with this plane design(Its the double decker plane...), so it could be a design fault, or poor workmanship by the maintenance crews....either way, bad for Airbus....

Thankfully no-one injured...including people on the ground!!

Birds maybe?

Glad everyone got off safely, thats a lot of people to be on a plane that has trouble.

CX.

Originally posted by SNAFU38
No.

If it was ask more than 1 engine would have suffered.

Very good point, have they checked the other engines for as damage yet? I am relieved they got the plane down safely. Kudos to the pilots.They showed great skill and nerve.

Sky are reporting that the casing that protects the engine just blew away.

They are saying that it wouldn't have effected the flying ability of the plane, i guess those things are built to fly with a loss of engine.

CX.

Quantas and Australian Pilots for that matter are some of the best in the world. They excell in skill & safety measures. They're well known not to take off, if part of the plane is malfunctioning or playing up. Once they refused to take off due to a light had fused on one of the control panels. It took them a few days to receive the part from overseas lol.

Anyway, back to the topic on hand...

I think what happened today is fantastic. Better for an Airbus to experience problems and land safely than crash and burn up in the air. I hope they find out what caused this to happen. I doubt the volcanoes are to blame though.

reply to post by benoni

I'm no expert but the damage looks like turbine blade failure, where a blade fails and ejects through the engine cowling.