A380 explosion rattles aircraft industry

Both Airbus and Rolls-Royce shares have fallen since Thursday's engine explosion. File photo / Greg Bowker

LONDON - The engine failure on the A380 superjumbo is a potentially serious blow to the European aircraft industry - and especially to the British engine-maker Rolls-Royce.

The incident is the third involving an A380 in the past 13 months and the second involving an aircraft with a Rolls-Royce engine.

With scores of orders pending or still unconfirmed for the world's largest passenger plane, the outcome of the preliminary investigations could be commercially damaging.

The Airbus A380 can be bought with Rolls-Royce or Engine Alliance (Pratt and Whitney, General Electric and Safran) versions of its four engines. Both in-flight incidents involving engines have been on Rolls-Royce-fitted aircraft.

Although the share prices of both Rolls-Royce and the Airbus parent company, EADS, dropped sharply after Thursday's incident, aviation experts in France said they thought the longer-term questions would mostly be asked of Rolls-Royce, rather than the Toulouse-based Airbus organisation.

One analyst pointed out that the giant aircraft had "performed perfectly" on Thursday in making an emergency landing at Singapore with three engines. The A380 is designed to be able to fly with only two.

"The plane-maker's work is not in question here," the analyst said. "It is Rolls-Royce that has to find some answers."

One of the four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines is believed to have suffered an explosion so violent that the rear part of the engine fell off.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said: "This issue, an engine failure, has been one that we haven't seen before. So we are obviously taking it very seriously."

In September last year, a Singapore Airlines A380 was forced to return to Paris after an engine malfunction. On March 31 this year a Qantas A380 burst two tyres when it landed in Sydney after a flight from Singapore.

The latest incident comes just as Airbus is in discussions to sell 100 smaller aircraft to China with a €3.5 billion deal for 36 planes due to be settled during a state visit to France by President Hu Jintao, which began yesterday.

Both Singapore Airlines, which has 11 Rolls-Royce-fitted A380s, and Qantas, which has six, grounded their aircraft for checks yesterday.

Emirates has 13 A380 aircraft fitted with the alternative Engine Alliance engine, Air France has four and Lufthansa has three. All their planes continued to fly yesterday.

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are among a number of carriers from 17 nations which have placed orders for the superjumbo. Airbus has received 234 orders and industry analysts have predicted an ultimate worldwide fleet of up to 800.

Despite design delays and higher than expected costs, the Airbus flagship aircraft has been a reasonable commercial and operating success since it entered service in 2007.

The 37 A380s in service have flown 192,000 flying hours and made 21,400 commercial flights. Airbus employs 57,000 people at 16 sites.

- INDEPENDENT