Qantas grounds its A380's after engine incident

[SCCutler]

Man, they *knew * they had trouble when the vaunted A380's EICAS showed them this:

 

[poadeleted20]

Well, I'm sitting in seat 50K of a Qantas 747-400 at LAX that was supposed to be a 380 going to Sydney. Guess the 380's are stii grounded.

 

[SCCutler]

Well, I'm sitting in seat 50K of a Qantas 747-400 at LAX that was supposed to be a 380 going to Sydney. Guess the 380's are stii grounded.

Well, Ron, by now you're nearly halfway to Aussie, and it'll be tomorrow (your time) when you read this (the Date Line always messes with my head).

Glad they were able to accommodate you; I cannot easily imagine the gyrations Qantas have been having to go through to deal with this situation.

Have fun in Australia, and take a LOT of pictures. And share 'em!

 

[Ted]

This reminds me how I bought tickets to Australia on Fiji Air and Fijieans had a coup d'etat.

From a multiple-choice exam in high school:

Q: A coup d'etat is

1) A military uprising against government
2) Setting your own houses on fire to protest
3) Setting someone else's house on fire to protest
4) A two-door Cadillac

Glad you made it to Australia, Ron. I had a great time when I was there about 10 years ago. A beautiful country and lots of fun.

The failure was certainly bad, but keep in mind that uncontianed engine failures happen on piston engines as well (doesn't make it any better, just pointing it out). Here's an example (also from Australia):



This Navajo threw a cylinder. I forget the specific cascading array of failures, but in a few months it threw another cylinder, and then the remaining good engine suffered some massive detonation and stopped working as well. Plane went into the water and everyone died. Seems like this A380 had a slightly better outcome.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

I saw in today's newspaper that QANTAS is bringing the planes back on-line- today, I think?

 

[poadeleted20]

Well, Ron, by now you're nearly halfway to Aussie, and it'll be tomorrow (your time) when you read this (the Date Line always messes with my head).

I'm reading this at 5:20 pm on Wed (2:20 am Wed EST) while cooling off from a jog around the harbor -- around the Opera House, by the Botanical Gardens, and back to the hotel. Perfect weather -- clear and 76F today. Gonna shower up and head to the pub, then to bet (early start tomorrow for the Fish Market walking tour).

Glad they were able to accommodate you; I cannot easily imagine the gyrations Qantas have been having to go through to deal with this situation.

No doubt, but it appears they've managed to do so with no apparent customer dissatisfaction.

Have fun in Australia, and take a LOT of pictures. And share 'em!

Fran's the family photog, and she's been shooting away like crazy. Damn glad electrons are free, 'cause the cost of that amount of film would be staggering.

Also, I took the Australian English Proficiency test this afternoon with one of their DPE's ("ATO" in Aussiespeak). For those unfamiliar, the FAA does not certify one of the standard English Language Proficiency levels on our certificates, so the Aussies (who require at least level 4) don't accept the EP endorsement on our tickets, so I had to take the test to get my Certificate of Validation to fly a borrowed Tiger aound later on in our tip.

The test wasn't what you might have thought, and was actually kind of interesting. They have a recording of a conversation between an Australian airline pilot having an emergeny and some sort of South Asian controller trying to help, and I have to tell the examiner what the controller is saying despite the controller's thick accent, bizarre pronunciations (e.g., the number nine comes out "NEE-neh"), and rather nonstandard (if not unique) phraseology. In some ways, it wasn't as hard as following a JFK departure controller at 5:30pm handling the big overseas push, and I've heard much less understandable comm from some East Asian and Turkish airline pilots and controllers. The tough part was coughing up the $99 examination fee ($90 fee plus 10% tax). However, the examiner was great, and ran the paperwork over to the FSDO on the other side of the field in time to be put on the shuttle to Canberra so it will be on someone's desk at CASA HQ tomorrow morning.

 

[TangoWhiskey]

Have fun in Australia, Ron!

Man, I hope someday they release the CVR tapes for this...

 

[flyingcheesehead]

Glad they were able to accommodate you; I cannot easily imagine the gyrations Qantas have been having to go through to deal with this situation.

No kidding. I saw somewhere that they shifted some 747's to A380 routes, A330's to 747 routes, and 757's to A330 routes. Of course, they're losing seats every time, so that means either bumping pax or running more flights, and in both cases notifying pax of any changes... Yeah, they're definitely going through lots of gyrations!