Australian Transport Safety Bureau says company knew three years before Qantas blowout that parts failed to meet standards
Rolls-Royce missed several chances over a three-year period to fix a problem that caused an engine blowout on a Qantas A380 jet with more than 450 people on board in 2010, according to a report by Australia's aviation safety body.
The report by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) detailed how faulty manufacturing processes had led to one of Rolls-Royce's Trent 900 engines exploding at 2,100 metres (7,000ft) over Indonesia on a flight from Singapore to Sydney in November 2010.
According to the ATSB report, Rolls-Royce knew at least three years before the accident that components manufactured at its Hucknall plant in Nottingham failed to conform to design standards. An initial investigation by the company in 2007 failed to understand the consequences of using parts that did not match the design specification.
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| The damaged engine of Qantas's A380 superjumbo after it made an emergency landing at Changi airport In 2009, a Rolls-Royce engineer identified the potential risk of these defective parts, but the company failed to carry out an investigation into what this would mean for its fleet of Trent 900 engines. |
Rolls-Royce missed "a number of opportunities … generally because of ambiguities within the manufacturer's procedures and the non-adherence by a number of the manufacturing staff to those procedures", the ATSB report concluded. The safety agency also highlighted cultural flaws at the Hucknall plant, where it was acceptable not to report so-called minor deviations in parts.
This was the first major safety scare for the Airbus A380 jet and resulted in Qantas temporarily grounding its entire fleet – although Airbus subsequently said the aircraft's resilience was proven by its ability to land despite severe damage to its left wing.
The A380 superjumbo was just minutes into its flight after takeoff from Changi airport Singapore when members of the crew heard two loud bangs. A faulty feed pipe had cracked causing oil to spray into one of the plane's four engines, which burst into flames. Several passengers saw fuel escaping from the under the affected wing.
The pilot, praised for his competence by the ATSB, returned to Singapore and brought the stricken plane down just 150 metres from the end of the runway. None of the 440 passengers and 24 cabin crew were injured, although several homes beneath the flight path were badly damaged when fragments from the engine turbine smashed into walls.
Since the accident, Rolls-Royce has introduced software that would shut down a Trent 900 engine to prevent a repeat occurrence. The ATSB, which issued a safety recommendation to Rolls-Royce in December 2010, said it was satisfied with the steps taken regarding Trent 900 engines in A380 planes, adding that quality control at Hucknall had improved.
Rolls-Royce said it accepted the conclusions of the ATSB report. "On this occasion we clearly fell short," said Colin Smith, director of engineering and technology at Rolls-Royce. "We support the ATSB's conclusions and, as the report notes, have already applied the lessons learned throughout our engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance procedures to prevent this type of accident from happening again."
The engine manufacturer agreed to pay Qantas A$95m (£62m) in a 2011 settlement.
Article Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk
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