Flight Safety Information November 8, 2010 - No. 230 In This Issue Qantas Jet Damage Details Emerge... Australian Transport Watchdog To Quiz Qantas A380 Flight Crew 3 Qantas Airbus A380's Super Jets Grounded at LAX Qantas inspections on Trent 900 engines to continue until Wednesday Mach 5 jet can cover Sydney to NY within 3 hours DGCA reluctant to continue objections to Air India appointments Drunk Pilot Caught By Scotland Yard SMS Consulting FSI Advertising Qantas Jet Damage Details Emerge By ANDY PASZTOR (WSJ) Three days after the fiery engine blowout on a Quantas Airways Ltd. superjumbo jet off the coast of Singapore, pilots and safety experts increasingly suspect the plane suffered more-extensive damage than initially portrayed. Over the weekend, new details emerged about significant problems with some of the hydaulic and flight-control systems after the engine failed on the Qantas jet. One of two engines attached to the left wing of the Airbus A380 plane suffered a dramatic failure a few minutes after Thursday's takeoff from Singapore, spewing flames and a trail of metal pieces, some several feet in size. The four-engine plane landed safely, nobody was hurt and the airline didn't indicate the precise nature of damage to other systems. But the latest information paints a more disturbing picture. Exploding outward like supercharged pieces of shrapnel at about 10,000 feet, according to pilots familiar with the incident, pieces from the engine apparently damaged some hydraulic lines or other parts that control certain flight-control panels on the wings. Some landing-gear systems also may have suffered damage, these pilots said. The incident also is believed to have damaged controls affecting the nearby engine on the plane's left wing, according to these pilots. After much of the failed engine's rear section initially blew apart, the plane circled as the cockpit crew decided to dump fuel-a typical emergency response to ensure a safe landing. The airline on Sunday declined to comment on the extent of damage on the plane involved in Thursday's event. But during the approach to return and land at Singapore's international airport, some of the plane's ailerons apparently weren't working properly, pilots familiar with the incident said. Such movable devices on the rear of the wings help the plane turn and keep the wings level when touching down. In addition, the A380 pilots couldn't shut off the nearby left engine after landing, according to pilots who are familiar with the sequence of events and have reviewed videos of the crippled plane on the tarmac. Firefighters tried but initially failed to shut off the engine on the ground by dousing it with water, some pilots said. Investigators haven't commented on damage fallout from the initial engine failure. Back to Top Australian Transport Watchdog To Quiz Qantas A380 Flight Crew SYDNEY (Dow Jones)--Australia's air safety regulator plans to interview the flight crew of the Qantas Airways Ltd. (QAN.AU) A380 Airbus which made an emergency landing at Singapore's Changi airport last week following an engine explosion shortly after take off. The Australian Transport Safety Bureau said Monday the interviews will take place in the next few days, while confirming that the aircraft's affected No. 2 engine will shortly be removed for inspection. An Airbus A380 test pilot will arrive in Canberra Monday to assist in the examination of the cockpit indicators leading up to the engine failure, the ATSB said in a statement. Efforts to track down parts of the engine on the Indonesian island of Batam are continuing, it said. A portion of the recovered engine component has arrived in the U.K. and will be subject to technical examination at the Rolls Royce Group PLC's (RR.LN) plant in Derby from Tuesday, the ATSB said. The damaged two-deck jet, with 466 passengers and crew onboard, returned safely to Singapore and Qantas immediately grounded all six of its A380s for inspections. It has since reported problems with other engines in its A380 fleet. Back to Top 3 Qantas Airbus A380's Super Jets Grounded at LAX Serious problems detected with the Rolls-Royce engines. LOS ANGELES ( KTLA) -- Three of Qantas Airlines' six Airbus A380 super jumbo jets remain grounded at Los Angeles International Airport after a defect was discovered with the jets' Rolls Royce engines. The Australian carrier decided to ground its entire A380 fleet Wednesday, after one of the double-decker aircraft's engines blew apart shortly after takeoff on the island of Batam, just south of Singapore. There were no injuries reported among the 459 people aboard. The airline is inspecting the engines of all six A380s. Two engines - on aircraft in Sydney and Los Angeles - have been taken off for closer inspection as a result of the eight-hour tests Rolls-Royce recommended. One mechanic testing the engines said, 'there is oil where oil shouldn't be.' In the meantime, an LAX spokeswoman said Qantas canceled two flights at the airport Wednesday night and one Thursday. Passengers who were scheduled to take those flights were put on other Qantas jets, moved to other airlines or housed in nearby hotels. Sunday, Qantas said that the flights were not canceled, but rather were delayed 15 hours, and that the passengers were put on flights Thursday afternoon. Qantas has 10 flights a week on the A380, with a nightly flight to Sydney and a flight three nights a week to Melbourne. LAX spent $88 million to build a taxiway that can handle the world's largest passenger jet. With two decks, the plane can hold more than 500 passengers and has a price tag of about $300 million. The plane debuted in October 2007, with Singapore Airlines flying it from Singapore to Sydney, Australia. Singapore Airlines said in a statement it would be "delaying all flights operating our A380 aircraft" after Rolls-Royce and Airbus advised it to conduct precautionary technical checks. Germany's Lufthansa, which operates three A380s, told the Associated Press it was continuing with service as normal. Airbus has delivered a total of 37 A380s so far. Thirteen are in service with Emirates, 11 with Singapore Airlines, six with Qantas, four with Air France and three with Lufthansa. http://www.chicagotribune.com/ Back to Top Qantas inspections on Trent 900 engines to continue until Wednesday Qantas Airways may not finish inspecting the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines on its grounded A380 fleet until Wednesday, casting further doubt on when the fleet will resume operations. Inspections are ongoing after last Thursday's uncontained engine failure on the number two engine of VH-OQA during a flight to Sydney from Singapore, says a spokeswoman. The aircraft safely returned to Singapore. The Australian Transportation Safety Board is focusing its investigation on the engine's geared disk in the intermediate pressure chamber. The ATSB says the 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". Qantas general manager David Epstein confirms that two Trent 900 engines were changed over the weekend. In Sydney, VH-OQC had its number three engine changed. In Los Angeles, VH-OQE had an undisclosed engine changed. Epstein says that engine changes do not "necessarily imply" that the engine is faulty. "If we found a condition in the engine which suggests we need to examine it further, we're pulling the engines off and swapping in 100% cleared engines in the interest of trying to return the fleet to service as soon as possible," he adds. Epstein declines to specify the reasons for the changes, but sources familiar with the matter say the number three engine on VH-OQC had oil leaks and other abnormalities. The engine on VH-OQE had different abnormalities, they add. The spokeswoman says a second engine on VH-OQE has been taken off for further inspection. Qantas had a spare Trent 900 engine in Sydney and has access to the limited worldwide spares, Epstein says. Only 20 of the 37 delivered A380s are powered by Trent 900 engines, according to Flightglobal's ACAS database. Epstein says Qantas may "swap clear engines out of a number of aircraft in the fleet and consolidate them on a core group of aircraft". The aircraft that was involved in the Singapore incident, for example, does not need its three other engines as it is unlikely to return to service for weeks. He also denied reports that Qantas CEO Alan Joyce is blaming Rolls-Royce for the failure. "He was perhaps misquoted or taken out of context. We are not pointing fingers at anyone," Epstein says. "If you're looking at the range of the possibilities that might have caused [the failure], it appears to be inherent of the physical nature of the engine rather than how it is maintained." Qantas has, in the past, been criticised domestically for outsourcing some maintenance to other countries. Joyce's alleged comments came as reports re-surfaced of earlier Rolls-Royce uncontained failures. On 2 August, a Trent 1000 engine experienced an uncontained failure in the intermediate pressure chamber, the same area as the failure on the Trent 900 in last week's incident. The Trent 1000 failure occurred on a test bed at Rolls-Royce's facility in Derby. The Trent 1000 engine is a derivative of the Trent 900 engine, and is one of two engine options for the the Boeing 787. Industry sources, however, say the Trent 1000 failure occurred due to "non-adherence to test procedures". That permitted oil and fuel to accumulate throughout the engine. On 30 August, a RB211 engine on a Qantas Boeing 747-400 experienced an uncontained failure en-route to Sydney from San Francisco, where the aircraft safely returned. A preliminary report from the ATSB suggests the cause was turbine failure that caused damage to the intermediate pressure and low pressure turbine rotors. Source: Air Transport Intelligence news Back to Top Mach 5 jet can cover Sydney to NY within 3 hours LONDON: Sydney may soon be just 2 hours 30 minutes away from New York compared to 21 hours it is now, for Nasa is planning to develop "hypersonic" passenger jets that would travel at five times the speed of sound. These aircraft would fly through the Earth's atmosphere and slash flight times around the world to a few hours at most. The US space agency wants to manufacture an aircraft that would travel at five times the speed of sound and bring in a new age of aircraft akin to a turbo-charged Concorde, reports the Daily Mail. The project is thought to be aimed at making a reusable aircraft that could fly to Mars but, as with previous space technology, it could have a huge impact upon passenger transport too. Under the Nasa Aeronautics 2010 proposal, the space agency will allocate $5 million per year for the next three years to make the new aircraft a reality. According to the proposal, engineers will look into "entry, descent and landing of high-mass vehicles entering into planetary atmospheres'' and "air breathing access to space''. The proposal says: "The hypersonic heating environment, coupled with the emphasis on reusability, creates additional severe technology challenges for materials, material coatings, and structures that not only carry the aerodynamic loads of the air but also repeatedly sustain high thermal loads requiring long-life and durability while minimizing weight. "Space access launch vehicles must be lightweight, fully reusable and easily maintained if low-cost access to space is to be achieved." In June, an experimental aircraft traveled at a record-breaking speed Mach 6-6 times the speed of sound. The aircraft achieved a maximum speed of 7,200 kmph. Hypersonic means travelling at five times the speed of sound. The supersonic jet, the Concorde, flew at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ Back to Top DGCA reluctant to continue objections to Air India appointments The recent controversy over high-profile appointments at Air India appears set to ease. Going by sources, the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), which had earlier raised safety concerns over the appointment of Air India Express COO Pawan Arora and also questioned the appointment of Stefan Sukumar as the chief of training saying he was not qualified for the job, appears to be on the backfoot now. The DGCA did not provide time to the airline management on Saturday for a meeting to explain their side of the story. Its sudden reluctance to continue with its objections comes even as Nasim Zaidi's term as the director general expires at the end of this month and his next appointment, as secretary, civil aviation, is being questioned by some of his own juniors. Besides questioning the appointment of an outsider to the post of DGCA after Zaidi, these juniors are also questioning Zaidi's objections to Arora and Sukumar, say sources. The controversy erupted late last month when the independent directors on Air India board objected to the high-profile appointments after the DGCA's adverse comments. Thereafter, the Ministry of Civil Aviation had written to the airline seeking clarity on Arora's appointment. Things now appear to be going in favour of Air India's chairman and managing director Arvind Jadhav, who has already drawn up a detailed explanation to defend these key appointments and is expected to lay it before the board, which is slated to meet on Thursday. Sources said the appointments of Arora, Sukumar and chief information officer Kamaljeet Rattan had been cleared without getting them vetted by Air India's personnel department. "These appointments were made after COO Gustav Baldauf recommended the three men. Their names were proposed to the board of directors and then cleared by the board. There seems to have been no background check done on them," said a source. Earlier, civil aviation minister Praful Patel had clarified to DNA that there was no issue over "high" salaries to these three people since some pilots were regularly getting salaries of Rs1 crore and more. He had also said that after questions over these appointments were raised, he had sought an explanation from the airline. Early next week, Patel is also scheduled to meet the independent directors on the Air India board separately. http://www.dnaindia.com/ Back to Top Drunk Pilot Caught By Scotland Yard A pilot from the Delta Airlines, George LaPerle, 48, was not allowed to fly from the Heathrow airport in London to Detroit on November 1 because he was drunk enough for ´take off´. LaPerle was caught up to him by cops in the cockpit. His blood-alcohol level was five times the legal limit for pilots. For this he was in custody. So the pilot has to appear in a British court on Nov. 16 for facing charges. Another pilot was caught and arrested by Dutch authorities on September 15 for the same reason. http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=86208 Curt Lewis, P.E., CSP CURT LEWIS & ASSOCIATES, LLC