A380 pilots’ skill averted crash: Australian regulator
ASTB says Rolls-Royce missed missed multiple opportunities to detect faulty component
Rolls-Royce failed to identify a defect that caused one of its engines to explode on a Qantas Airways Ltd aircraft carrying more than 400 people over Indonesia three years ago, an Australian safety regulator found.
In its final report on the incident, the Australian Safety Transport Bureau (ASTB) said the company missed multiple opportunities to detect the faulty component which almost certainly would have caused the Airbus A380 to crash had it not been for the exceptional skill of the pilots.
It was the first major safety scare to affect the A380 and led to the temporary global grounding of the then relatively new jumbo jet. The ASTB report could lead to broader requirements for new aircraft certification around the world.
“Those opportunities were missed for a number of reasons, but generally because of ambiguities within the manufacturer’s procedures and the non-adherence by a number of the manufacturing staff to those procedures,” the report said on Thursday.
The four-engined A380 was on flying from Singapore to Sydney with 433 passengers and 26 crew on board when one of its engines blew up, spraying the plane with shrapnel and dropping chunks of debris on Indonesia’s Batam island.
A large section of turbine disc crashed into a house, but there were no injuries to anyone on the plane or on the ground.
The pilots returned to Singapore and landed with limited controls, stopping just 150 metres (490 feet) before the end of the runway with four blown tyres, brakes heated to 900 degrees Celsius and fuel leaking to the ground.
