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Airbus A380 FLight QF32: What Have They Learnt A Year On?

By Alexander Mason

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 08Dec2011
Word count: 494
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In November 2010 Qantas had to ground one of their Airbus A380 planes unexpectedly, and this sparked huge controversy across the aviation world; rumours were rife. So what happened, or more importantly does anyone know what happened a year ago?

On the 4th November 2010 a Qantas plane travelling on the usually un-dramatic Singapore to London route had a problem with one of its engines and had to land unexpectedly in Dubai. As soon as the plane touched ground and the 258 passengers disembarked rumours began to circulate across the news and internet mediums.

What was going to happen to the sovereign British engineering firm Rolls-Royce? Nobody knew, but a witch hunt was definitely about to begin. It turns out there was an engine oil quantity defect and it wasn't the first time this Trent 900 engine had endured an oil problem.

Inspections after the incident showed that there was an oil leak from an external high pressure/intermediate pressure oil tube at its connection to the engine case, said the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. So, in November 2010 a fault in the Trent 900's oil feed tube caused one of the engines to suffer an unconditional failure which resulted in an emergency landing in Singapore for Qantas' plane. This meant a grounding of all 53 Trent 900 engines from service - something which hit the British company profoundly.

It couldn't have been worse. One of the most innovative pieces of engineering that has graced our skies since Concorde and a plane which made travel exciting on whole new gargantuan scale stumbled on something as trivial as one pipe being too small in the engines.

One year on from this kafuffle where has it left us; has the A380 brand been tarnished, and what about the brand of Rolls-Royce Trent?

On the 21st October 2011, in a press briefing, Trent 900 program director Rosie Toogood explained: "All the improvements introduced focus on improving air flow and cooling to the engines. The first performance improvement package includes new elliptical leading edges, tighter low pressure tip clearance and a new hard coating for the pressure compressor drum. The second performance-improvement package, which is in final stages will cover the following elements: optimized fan blade tip clearance, better cooling of the turbine case, improved sealing for the low-pressure turbine, ELEs for the engine section stators, re-profiling of engine frames and upgrades to the air system."

Toogood went on to explain that the Trent 900 improvements have come around directly as a result of the progress made with Rolls-Royce new Trent 1000 and Trent XWB engines, which power the Boeing 787 and A350XWB.

The changes over the past year have renewed everyone's trust in the Rolls-Royce Trent brand and with their latest developments in energy efficient and powerful engines; the UK engineers were down but they certainly weren't out.

Based in the heart of England, in Stoke-on-Trent, Aerotherm is a management-owned private company. We are industrial engineers, focused on practical process and carbon reduction solutions, providing high levels of innovation, quality and financial payback for our clients, throughout the UK and overseas.

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