Page 48 - AA 2018_11

“Taking delivery of the first of As it headed out over the Pacific, The first Qantas A380 touches determined to have been caused by the
our A380s is an important occasion no-one could have dreamed that down at Sydney at the end of its breaking of a stub oil pipe which had
for us. It is both a culmination – almost exactly two years later the delivery flight from Toulouse on been manufactured improperly. With
following years of meticulous design plane would be the centre of one of the September 21 2008. paul sadler parts of the engine nacelle plunging to
development – and a beginning, most dramatic incidents in Qantas’s the ground on the Indonesian island
with the A380 leading us into a new history, when A380 flight QF32, of Batam, complete with the Qantas
chapter in the story of Qantas,” said climbing out from Singapore on its Flying Kangaroo symbol fully visible,
Joyce. way back to Sydney on November 4 initial reports suggested the aircraft
That first A380 touched down in 2010, came within a knife edge of had crashed.
Sydney at 9am on September 21 to becoming one of the world’s worst air What in fact was happening was
begin several weeks of proving flights disasters. that Captain Richard de Crespigny
and induction into the Qantas fleet. What happened is now history. The and his crew were methodically
With its 450 seats in four cabins - 14 plane suffered an uncontained engine working through the dozens of error
in first class, 72 in business class, failure when a turbine disc in the messages they were receiving, working
32 in premium economy and 332 aircraft’s No 2 Rolls-Royce Trent 900 out what was working and what
engine (on the port side nearest the
in economy – everyone thought the fuselage) disintegrated. In addition to ‘For a time, wasn’t, to eventually guide the aircraft
A380 was a game-changer, as had and its 433 passengers safely back to
been its high-capacity predecessor, destruction of the engine, this caused the big plane an emergency landing at Singapore’s
the Boeing 747. That first A380, damage to the nacelle, wing, fuel Changi airport.
system, landing gear, flight controls,
christened Nancy-Bird Walton, took and the controls for engine No 1, and became a big For Qantas, it was a heroic
off on its first commercial flight, from moment, a confirmation of its
a fire in the left inner wing fuel tank
Melbourne to Los Angles, a month that self-extinguished. The failure was liability.’ unparalleled safety record and the
later on the morning of October 21. training of its flightcrews. It was also
48 AUSTRALIAN AVIATION