[Infowarrior] - Analysis of the Qantas A380 jet

[Richard Forno]

(c/o Anonymous)


The pictures and diagrams in the slides seem to come from Airbus. The
implication - nay the statement that Rolls knew about the bad engines but
didn't tell Airbus or Qantas - is a serious charge of malicious negligence.

<http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2010/11/17/the-anatomy-of-the-airbu
s-a380-qf32-near-disaster/>

About Ben Sandilands <http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/about/>
A reporter since November 30, 1960, Ben looks at what really matters up in
the sky: public administration of air transport and its safety, the
accountability of the carriers, and space for everyone’s knees.

[image 01]

The Airbus presentation to accident investigators of the damage done to QF32
on November 4 gives new technical insights into this near disaster involving
a Qantas A380 with 466 persons on board.

The examination of the damage is far from complete, as the presentation
makes clear. It doesn’t deal with the other dimensions of this serious
incident, which are the loss or impairment of various systems on the giant
airliner, and the emerging difficulties the crew faced from fuel load
imbalance caused by some of those failures.

[image 02]
[image 03]
[image 04]

One thing needs to be kept firmly in mind. Rolls-Royce the maker of the
Trent 900 engine which disintegrated knew about the faults that the current
airworthiness directive concerning these engines says are likely to have
caused an intense oil fire in a structural cavity in the intermediate
pressure turbine area of the engine.

Rolls-Royce had designed and was introducing a fix for the oil leak issues
for this into the engines at its own speed. Qantas was left in the dark. It
is fair to suggest that Qantas needs to review relationships with engine
manufacturers in which it pays for power by-the-hour and leaves much of the
maintenance and oversight  of those engines to the designer and
manufacturer.

To emphasise the obvious. The interests of the engine maker and holder of
the service agreements are not the same as those of the airline. A carrier
might want to correct and replace inadequate design features to a different,
more urgent timetable that the party that benefits from the support
contract, and has its own brand image to protect.

[image 05]
[image 06]
[image 07]
[image 08]

The set of graphics shown above were accompanied by a brief written and
photographic overview of the damage as currently assessed.

[image 09]
[image 10]
[image 11]
[image 12]
[image 13]
[image 14]

Reviewing these images makes it  clear why Qantas was quick, and  correct,
in grounding its A380 fleet.

The wing  of the jet shows remarkable structural strength in sustaining
damage that might have destroyed the airliners of earlier decades, but the
questions as to whether control system revisions are necessary to deal with
some of the consequences in terms of failed hydraulics and fuel imbalance
are said to be very actively under consideration.

And the questions concerning the timeliness of the Rolls-Royce responses to
a known problem, and its capacity and willingness to share them with the
airlines concerned will not go away. If the engine maker doesn’t address
them its customers will.