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Qantas A380 Experience? (Page 2)
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Moderator Emeritus
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The A380 was made by nazis.
Are we done here?
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Perth, Australia
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Never flown with Qantas A380 but I have flown with Qantas within Australia. I've never had any problems with them at all. I've flown from Perth to Sydney return several times, Perth to Melbourne and Perth to Cairns. Always great service and I've never lost any luggage. Its a bit more expensive than the budget airlines (Virgin, Jetstar and Tiger) but worth it. Ive booked flights to Melbourne later this year, also with Qantas. They had better flight times than all the other airlines and I know they are good so I didn't mind spending a bit of extra money.
I would recommend Air Canada to anyone (international flights) I flew from Sydney to Vancouver with them in 2009 - comfortable seats, lots of leg room, great service, good food, overall an excellent flight (even though it was 14 hours). The toilets were HUGE!!! I wasn't overly impressed with Air Canada flying from Las Vegas to Toronto though - we had to buy our own 'very bad' food and they only had 1 movie showing for the entire 4 hour flight (no individual screens on the backs of seats) In comparison, the flight from Calgary (Canada) to Las Vegas was only 2 hours and we got screens on the backs of seats (also Air Canada).
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Administrator
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: San Antonio TX USA
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Originally Posted by AKcrab
The A380 was made by nazis.
Are we done here?
Not yet. "Anyone who thinks Qantas has a good service reputation must be a Nazi. (We needed to get both sides of Godwin into this to finish it.)
Now we're done.
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Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
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Originally Posted by ghporter
I would suggest that this was not a Qantas problem. It was a Rolls Royce problem. The Australian aviation authorities have determined that Rolls Royce had improperly manufactured certain critical parts of the engine that failed, prompting inspections of the entire Qantas A380 fleet and similar inspections of a number of other airlines' fleets. The Rolls Royce Trent 900 engine appears to have been produced without sufficient quality inspections to prevent off-center bored lubrication bearings from going into a number of finished engines-that wound up going on A380s shipped to a number of airlines... Not Qantas. Rolls. Not at all the kind of thing that one expects out of such a prestigious engine maker.
It was oil tubes, not "lubrication bearings," that were improperly manufactured with the off-axis counterbore.
Under the QF-RR PBH contract, who is responsible for routine inspections? If it is QF, were there any inspections where QF mechanics had the opportunity to notice oil in the HPT/IPT cavity and missed it? I'm not familiar with the pre-incident T900 inspection schedule.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Hadn't VH-OQA been in maintenance the week prior at Lufthansa Technik?
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Administrator
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Thanks for the clarification-I was going by memory and used the wrong term.
I strongly believe that the manufacturer is primarily responsible for delivering properly assembled products that contain properly manufactured parts. If (Dodge) Ram had Cummins engines fail due to a manufacturing defect, Ram would most certainly require Cummins to replace the engines and then demonstrate how the defect would not be repeated. If a fleet user discovered the problem, it would still be up to Cummins to correct the problem and demonstrate how it would not recur.
Unless there's some sort of "hand in hand" inspection process involving the engine provider, the aircraft manufacturer and the customer that examines minute details of each and every unit, I would think that there must be a certain amount of responsibility incumbent on the engine manufacturer to ensure that all manufacturing steps had been performed within safe and functional tolerances.
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Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Posting Junkie
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Something to keep in mind as well was the uncontained failure of a RR Trent 1000 (a modified 900) for the Boeing 787 in RR's labs in the UK. It set back the 787 program for a bit this summer. It's pretty clear to me that RR have a few issues to work out.
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Professional Poster
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A timeline with shocking words highlighted in red for effect:
July 2008 A Qantas flight suffered a rapid decompression and made an emergency landing in Manila after an explosion ripped a hole in its side.
July 2008 A Qantas flight taking off from Adelaide was forced to land after the landing gear doors became loose.
October 2008, Airbus A330-300 rapid loss of altitude in two sudden uncommanded pitch down manoeuvres causing serious injuries with 14 people requiring transportation by air ambulance to Perth. Another 30 people also required hospital treatment
December 2008, A330-300 aircraft from Perth to Singapore was involved in an occurrence north-west of Perth while flying at 36,000 feet. At this time, the autopilot disconnected and the crew received an alert indicating a severe problem with the Arial Data Inertial Reference Unit (same issue that bought down Air France 447 killing 216 passengers and 12 crew members in 2009)
November 2010 in Singapore- Oil Leak caused fire in A380, causing emergency landing
November 2010 Qantas 747-400 had a midair incident, with flames bursting from an engine just after take-off from Singapore.
November 2010 flight QF64 from Johannesburg to Sydney experienced an incident with one of the four engines of the Boeing 747 and suffered engine damage and and was forced to carry out an emergency landing.
Jan 2011 Qantas jet flying to Melbourne from Adelaide made an emergency descent, dropping 8000 metres, after rapid decompression.
Jan 2011 flight carrying 352 passengers suffering engine troubles has been forced to land in Bangkok after one of its engines malfunctioned.
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Last edited by moonmonkey; Jan 30, 2011 at 07:31 AM.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Houston, TX
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Originally Posted by ghporter
Unless there's some sort of "hand in hand" inspection process involving the engine provider, the aircraft manufacturer and the customer that examines minute details of each and every unit, I would think that there must be a certain amount of responsibility incumbent on the engine manufacturer to ensure that all manufacturing steps had been performed within safe and functional tolerances.
There's no doubt the engine was manufactured improperly by RR and QF took no part in the manufacture of the engine.
But this thread was about maintenance, not manufacture, so I'm asking who was responsible for routine inspections and was there one scheduled for the engines before the incident where they'd have a chance to observe the oil leakage?
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Clinically Insane
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Originally Posted by AKcrab
The A380 was made by nazis.
Are we done here?
Nazis and Surrender Monkeys.
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Moderator
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Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot
Nazis and Surrender Monkeys.
… and the Brits are making the engine.
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I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
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Posting Junkie
Join Date: Jan 2006
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Originally Posted by moonmonkey
A timeline with shocking words highlighted in red for effect:
July 2008 A Qantas flight suffered a rapid decompression and made an emergency landing in Manila after an explosion ripped a hole in its side.
Too vague to be pinned down on a maintenance problem.
July 2008 A Qantas flight taking off from Adelaide was forced to land after the landing gear doors became loose.
Also not necessarily indicative of a maintenance issue. It wouldn't be the first time that a gear door had been hit on the ground causing malfunction alerts in the cockpit.
October 2008, Airbus A330-300 rapid loss of altitude in two sudden uncommanded pitch down manoeuvres causing serious injuries with 14 people requiring transportation by air ambulance to Perth. Another 30 people also required hospital treatment
Sounds like severe turbulence bad enough where autopilot booted itself off. Not maintenance.
December 2008, A330-300 aircraft from Perth to Singapore was involved in an occurrence north-west of Perth while flying at 36,000 feet. At this time, the autopilot disconnected and the crew received an alert indicating a severe problem with the Arial Data Inertial Reference Unit (same issue that bought down Air France 447 killing 216 passengers and 12 crew members in 2009)
So it was a manufacturing issue, not maintenance, for which Airbus issue bulletins to replace pitot tubes.
November 2010 in Singapore- Oil Leak caused fire in A380, causing emergency landing
Sounds like the premature wear issue found to exist in the RR motor.
November 2010 Qantas 747-400 had a midair incident, with flames bursting from an engine just after take-off from Singapore.
Whoa, same motor.
November 2010 flight QF64 from Johannesburg to Sydney experienced an incident with one of the four engines of the Boeing 747 and suffered engine damage and and was forced to carry out an emergency landing.
Same motor again.
Jan 2011 Qantas jet flying to Melbourne from Adelaide made an emergency descent, dropping 8000 metres, after rapid decompression.
More likely than not, rapid decompressions are a result of some denting or weakened area caused by contact on the ground.
Jan 2011 flight carrying 352 passengers suffering engine troubles has been forced to land in Bangkok after one of its engines malfunctioned.
Oops, RR issue.
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Professional Poster
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Originally Posted by imitchellg5
Also not necessarily indicative of a maintenance issue. It wouldn't be the first time that a gear door had been hit on the ground causing malfunction alerts in the cockpit.
I'd call that a maintenance issue.
More likely than not, rapid decompressions are a result of some denting or weakened area caused by contact on the ground.
I'd call this a maintenance issue, too.
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Professional Poster
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They are probably all maintenance issues, just because an engine is involved does not mean Qantas can pass blame to the engine manufacturer when other airlines use the same engines and manage to maintain them in working order correctly.
Find me any other developed world international carrier with a recent track record problems like Qantas.
Its shocking.
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Professional Poster
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July 2008 A Qantas flight suffered a rapid decompression and made an emergency landing in Manila after an explosion ripped a hole in its side.
Originally Posted by imitchellg5
Too vague to be pinned down on a maintenance problem.
Could you acknowledge a passenger aircraft with a large hole in its side is not desirable for the passengers onboard?
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Administrator
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The Trent 900 was considered to be a wonderful engine...all the way until it was shown that Rolls had some manufacturing problems. The evidence of this was aircraft with the engine installed having problems with really low hours on the engines, and then the Australians showing specifically what manufacturing defect was responsible for the Qantas engine failure over Singapore. Other airlines had experienced problems with aircraft equipped with the same engine, and all the evidence points to the engine's manufacturing being the problem, not how the airline maintained it.
How many of those "landing gear door" problems were demonstrably due to gear door impacts on previous flights versus on the flight the problem was experienced? It's kind of hard to blame "maintenance" when the impact leads immediately to the problem...
Skin failures... Hmmm. The US Air Force specified that their KC-135 fleet would be maintained with polished skin in specified areas of the fuselage for the appearance it provided-they were beautiful. Until they had a rash of skin failures. I believe Boeing even supported the polished finish until they started helping the USAF investigate the problems...
Simply noting that a specific airline experienced problems does not at all demonstrate their level of maintenance or overall quality. Unless you can show that said airline had more problems than others, and that the problems were of a type that other airlines prevented by higher levels of maintenance supervision and higher stress on maintenance, all you're doing is cataloging events. No major airline can skimp on maintenance and stay in business. One real "safety of flight" problem that can be pinned on the carrier could nearly immediately put that airline completely out of business. But with more and more flights pushed closer and closer together, you're going to see a quantitatively larger number of problems that are statistically no different from prior time periods.
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Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
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Posting Junkie
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Originally Posted by Person Man
I'd call that a maintenance issue.
I'd call this a maintenance issue, too.
So are pilots supposed to somehow get out of the plane and do a visual inspection once the aircraft is free of ground handling? In the case of an American Airlines 757 last year, a piece of ground equipment backed into the airplane, the driver didn't tell anyone, and then while in flight the cabin was depressurized.
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Posting Junkie
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Originally Posted by moonmonkey
Could you acknowledge a passenger aircraft with a large hole in its side is not desirable for the passengers onboard?
Sure. But what was it? An explosion caused by explosives? Or a malfunction of the hardware? Only one of those things is controllable by the carrier.
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