Qantas' A380 fleet to remain grounded indefinitely

2010-11-08 10:30:01 GMT+7 (ICT)

SYDNEY (BNO NEWS) -- Qantas' fleet of Airbus A380 airplanes will remain grounded indefinitely after new problems were found over the weekend, its CEO told Australian media on Monday.

The fleet was grounded Thursday after a Sydney-bound flight made a dramatic emergency landing in Singapore due to an "uncontained engine failure."

On Thursday, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told a news conference in Sydney that the incident involved "significant engine failure," and that the airline "will suspend those A380 services until we are completely confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met."

On Friday he said that he hopped to have the A380 back in service within 48 hours, but on Monday morning, he told ABC Australia that the airline "did find some issues that we are investigating further."

"On three of the engines what we found is slight anomalies - oil where oil shouldn't be on the engines," he said. "We're just trying to check what the cause of that would be."

"We take safety unbelievably seriously and as a consequence, we are taking this action to ground the aircraft and we will leave them on the ground as long as it takes in order for us to ensure the operation is safe," Joyce added.

Thursday's incident began when a Qantas A380 aircraft operating flight 32 from Singapore to Sydney experienced an engine issue soon after take off and returned to Singapore.

Debris from flight 32 fell on Indonesia's Batam Island, near Singapore, after residents reported hearing a loud explosion.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2010-11-08

Still not heard from Rolls Royce.

Wake up Public Relations Rolls Royce, your Trent 900 seems to have a tiny problem old chap.

Edited November 9, 201015 yr by LindsayBKK

and are the the other airlines grounding them? wouldnt feel safe in an A380 at the moment