Qantas' A380s Still Grounded with 'Oil Where Oil Shouldn't Be'
The news surrounding the "uncontained engine failure" onboard a Qantas A380 flight last Thursday hasn't gotten any better over the weekend; the planes remain grounded, after more oil leaks were discovered in other engines. Although they had hoped to have the double-decker superjumbos back in the skies by today, there is now no telling when the issues will be fixed (although we're hoping pretty soon).
The A380s currently grounded belong to Qantas and Singapore Airlines, as they are the airlines operating the plane with the Rolls Royce Trent 900 problem engines. Lufthansa's few A380s also fly with the Trent 900s, but they've only grounded one just to check. The other A380s still flying, from Emirates and Air France, instead have Engine Alliance GP7200s so they aren't necessarily at risk of this same issue.
Qantas' CEO Alan Joyce detailed to the press what is going on with their A380s at this time:
On three of the engines what we found is slight anomalies—oil where oil shouldn’t be on the engines. 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.
Now let's see what Joyce said to us about their A380s earlier this summer when we chatted in Australia:
Three of the grounded Qantas A380s are chilling out at LAX, so if you're flying out of Los Angeles this week, keep your eyes open for them.
[Photo: Wikimedia]
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