QF32 388 - emergency landing in SIN after Engine failure

[codash1099]

No ferries.

Only the ones at the bottom of nonews' garden

 

[ethernet]

Thanks for the informative post looking at the bearings.
Qantas has been slow off the mark explaining why they picked the Trent - I suspect better engine all round - and quieter. They are greener.

Alright - looks like a teething problem - or volcano dust finding the weakest link - which may affect the other engines as well. Very hard to inspect sealed bearings. They could pressure inject new greese, and test the old oil for distinctive metal content which would signal excessive wear.

I found this: Pratt & Whitney Sues to Block Rolls-Royce Engines - Bloomberg
where another engine got the ****s on Aug 02
and this Rolls-Royce Trent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
so Mr Rolls has had 2 months to suspect something.

Despite all the rubbishing QF has gotten - I ignore it all. They get you from A to B.
There is more talk on the lounge downgrades. Those in the know, know QF has other safety factors that matter. And as for that captain that gave out his mobile number - good PR money can't buy.

I would be more worried about JSF. All jet engines have tradeoffs, and after this investigation I will bet these will need expensive modifications.

 

[oz_mark]

Apparently a couple of engines being replaced - #3 on VH-OQC and one in LA, although not confirmed by Qantas.

Qantas Airways will change two Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines on its A380 aircraft as a result of ongoing inspections following the fleet's grounding on Thursday.

The number three engine on an A380, registration VH-OQC, will be changed after an inspection in Sydney found abnormalities including an oil leak, say sources familiar with the matter. Another Qantas A380 currently grounded in Los Angeles will have one of its engines changed due to unspecified problems.

The abnormalities in the number three engine of VH-OQC could have potentially led to a repeat of Thursday's incident on QF32, sources say.

Qantas to change engines on two A380s

 

[samh004]

QF32 A388 makes emergency landing in SIN after Engine failure

The only ones doing badly here really are RR. Shocking! QF may appear badly, but it's RR who will suffer.

 

[mannej]

The only ones doing badly here really are RR. Shocking! QF may appear badly, but it's RR who will suffer.

Rightly or wrongly, QF will suffer out of this as the average person wouldn't know the difference between GE, RR or P&W. I have already heard the comments from such people already

 

[drron]

Rightly or wrongly, QF will suffer out of this as the average person wouldn't know the difference between GE, RR or P&W. I have already heard the comments from such people already

Absolutely.SMH have a poll going at present.49% of votes are for worried and will consider flying someone else.
Midair emergencies raise pilot concerns
Main article is now the pilots union.interesting the fellow complains about declining safety standards on all airlines but QF is the direct aim of the journalist.

 

[jb747]

Love the poll...fly with someone else....where the maintenance will all be done overseas and pilot standards are a total unknown.

The pilot standards thing is interesting, and it coincides with cadet schemes; pilots in some cases actually paying the airline for the flying instead of the other way around. Whilst I've seen threads on which people make the basic comment of 'why not, if they are trained properly (and implied lets me pay less)', as the bloke who would have to sit next to them, I'd consider the vast majority to be little better than ballast. Whilst he hasn't been mentioned by too many people, the FO would have had his hands every bit as full as the captain, and having an inexperienced one would have made it extremely hard.

Basically, the LCC model goes with minimal training, and lower wages. The assumption of the CEOs is that pilots are overtrained (and overpaid), and that anyone could do their job. On day to day ops that might even be the case, but you just never know when day to day will instantly become that once in a lifetime exercise of something you learnt in the sim, or perhaps something that was removed from the sim exercises, to make them cheaper.

What I find most interesting is that QF have found a couple of other suspect engines (according to flight global), and yet Singapore, with more of them, considers it's business as usual. As the engines are more or less the same between the RR operators, so I would have expected a couple of changes from them.

 

[pauly7]

QF32 A388 makes emergency landing in SIN after Engine failure

Rightly or wrongly, QF will suffer out of this as the average person wouldn't know the difference between GE, RR or P&W. I have already heard the comments from such people already

In a couple of weeks this will be old news, no news and skum (sky) news will be inaccurately reporting something else.

Just like when DJ left tens of thousands of passengers stranded for days not so long ago... Almost forgot about that!

Such is the life of the news cycle. QF have an absolutely choccas nov and dec coming up, loads were very solid. Highly doubt this will change anything. Fingers crossed for a good op-up season!!

 

[Flashback]

Absolutely.SMH have a poll going at present.49% of votes are for worried and will consider flying someone else.

That's fine, more chance of a spare seat next to me when flying whY

 

[NM]

What I find most interesting is that QF have found a couple of other suspect engines (according to flight global), and yet Singapore, with more of them, considers it's business as usual. As the engines are more or less the same between the RR operators, so I would have expected a couple of changes from them.

Indeed interesting. I assume RR also maintain the SQ Trent 970 engines. Who is doing the inspections - QF/SQ or RR themselves? Has RR issued an inspection directive that tells the engineers exactly what to look for, so that SQ and QF engines are being inspected for the same potential issues?

 

[oz_mark]

If you are in Batam, and find some items that look like a geared disc, the ATSB wants to hear from you

News:

The ATSB has requested any residents of Batam Island that might have recovered additional aircraft items, in particular similar to the portion of what looks like a geared disk at Figure 1, to forward those items to the local police for retention. The recovery of that disk could be crucial to a full understanding of the nature of the engine failure, and may have implications for the prevention of future similar occurrences.

 

[ethernet]

More engine links for technically minded people.

The good news is that spare engines can be ferried in 747, and that oil leaks are going to be taken very seriously, and QF is doing a massive overkill by just replacing everything and the kitchen sink. Oh and RR engines are reliable.
Brains smarter than RR's may have spilled the beans. I dont know if QF engineers would be allowed to do holographic tests, but if RR does not say something, or say they HAVE eliminated it as a cause, then they deserve the shorting that is going on.

Rolls-royce_trent encyclopedia topics | Reference.com
The Trent 900 will be the first Trent engine fitted with the advanced Engine Health Monitoring (EHM) system based on QUICK Technology
[apparently a boroscope and an eye for oil leaks trumps technology]
Rolls-Royce Test-Bed Blowout Shuts Site Used for Boeing, Airbus - Bloomberg
Who else may have the engines
Airbus A380 production list and Lufthansa
China Southern Airlines
Wiki Rolls-Royce Trent 900 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
News: EU flagged Rolls-Royce engine issue in Aug | News | Business Spectator

Speculation: Qantas A380 fleet grounded following Trent 900 failure (Update2) - FlightBlogger - Aviation News, Commentary and Analysis

Based on the photo evidence, you could argue a strong case for turbine disc rupture. I'm curious about the design of the triple axle design and the possibility of weld quality between the discs. My bet would be premature fatigue crack initiation in Udimet 720 Li nickel-base superalloy turbine disc in the bore. This alloy is known to suffer from textural defects referred to as ghost grains, which hide the presence of material defects during ultrasonic inspection of the final as-forged as-machined disc. Also the texture of very large as-cast grains can be carried through the entire thermomechanical processing supply chain and has been confirmed through SEM EBSD pattern analysis. These ghost grains pose as huge stress discontinuities acting like a brick wall to the even redistribution of stress through the material. Typically the bore of the disc supports the highest loads and the presence of defective particles or microstruture/textural discontinuities could act as a stress raiser. Crack propagation toward the rim would result in blade-out failure and disc fragmentation. Just a speculative albeit intuitive guess at what happened here, not too dissimilar to Sioux City in 1989. I am truly stunned that plane was able to land without a single fatality.

and suggestion

Hmm,
mount the disk to a driven shaft.
rmp capability short of burst rpm ( cold )
Take a hologramm from the stationary specimen.
Illuminate the specimen with the hologramm.
( There is a standard setup on how to do holographic comparison. You get Rotate the specimen and flash the illumination in sync
with passing the position from the stationary take.
You will see (regular) interference patterns developing when the specimen expands. The irregular deviations are the ones you are looking for.
this idea is herewith in the public domain.


As for the other airlines: I suspect they have the capability to secretly inspect and replace sus engines without anybody finding out, and the manpower to do it quickly. In a foreign country, a rival airline will not be able to 'manage' the bad news.


I reiterate: not a problem for flying public, but if you read up on JSF, and if 'wild bets' are true, Defense in in for a massive cost overrun. The US's interests would not be served by telling a rival engine plant what they know about perfecting Udimet 720.

 

[Flying Fox]

Apparently a couple of engines being replaced - #3 on VH-OQC and one in LA, although not confirmed by Qantas.

Qantas to change engines on two A380s

How many spare engines are simply lying around the place? I heard that they are $15M each so its not something you simply have sitting around doing nothing.

 

[markis10]

I have seen a lot of engines at AVV and the jet base, $15M is not that big a ticket item all things considered, the cost of a plane being delayed is around 120K a day by comparison just for passenger accommodation etc.

 

[oz_mark]

How many spare engines are simply lying around the place? I heard that they are $15M each so its not something you simply have sitting around doing nothing.

There would be a few around - I would expect that Qantas have some that get rotated around the aircraft (for example when one is taken off the aircraft for service). Having said that, I don't think the numbers would be big!

While it never really gets talked about much on these boards, Qantas carries quite an inventory of spare parts.

 

[markis10]

It should be noted that engines are not spare parts but assets just as much as an airframe, often with different finance as well. Its not unusual to see an engine with various bank placards on it indicating their ownership.

 

[markis10]

Oil leaks on A380 engines: Qantas CEO

Hmm, oils aint oils......

Qantas A380 jets will remain grounded for days after engine oil was found "where oil shouldn't be", the airline's boss says.
Emergency checks found "anomalies" on three of the fleet's new Rolls-Royce engines, chief executive Alan Joyce said.
He told ABC radio it should be days and not weeks before the aircraft were declared ready for fly again.


Read more here: Oil leaks on A380 engines: Qantas CEO

 

[cove]

Well Markis10 it appears reporters are reading entries here to put in their reports in the newspapers.

 

[mannej]

Well Markis10 it appears reporters are reading entries here to put in their reports in the newspapers.

Just like the media quoting expert comments from pprune?:shock:

 

[NM]

Well Markis10 it appears reporters are reading entries here to put in their reports in the newspapers.

Just like the media quoting expert comments from pprune?:shock:

Nothing like some good old-fashioned research