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I was going to edit that just now, but screw it, ...it's probably not necessary to remove the wing to reskin it... but I don't know. I've never seen that section damaged.

Edited to add [ :Scratch-Head: ]: ...and though I knows a ting or two 'bout dem smaller airbiii, I know sweet-diddly-squat about that ugly behemoth. :mellow:

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I was going to edit that just now, but screw it, ...it's probably not necessary to remove the wing to reskin it... but I don't know. I've never seen that section damaged.

Edited to add [ Scratch-Head.gif ]: ...and though I knows a ting or two 'bout dem smaller airbiii, I know sweet-diddly-squat about that ugly behemoth. mellow.gif

Now the disc has disappeared.

I wonder if anyone checked e-bay? dry.gif

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/11/07/349416/picture-australian-safety-board-missing-qantas-a380-engine-disk-evidence.html

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Don there is also video of the damage from the same angle that was taken from a Cell Phone or something just after it happenned. It has the pilot making an announcement about returning to Singaport. In that video the plane is making a left turn. This picture could have been snapped at the time the left turn was being initiated.

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AVHerald is reporting that the disk is in the proper hands.

Link with picture

Engineers reported on Nov 6th, that the intermediate pressure turbine disk of engine #2 had failed. The cause of that failure is still being investigated. Once on the ground the crew noticed they could not shut down the #1 engine due to wiring damage. Emergency services doused the engine to shut it down. The Trent 900 engine has been subject to an Airworthiness Directive by EASA requiring the intermediate pressure shaft coupling splines to be inspected for excessive wear, which was found beyond material limits on a few engines. Engineers are looking whether these problems have resurfaced again, but do not believe this engine failure is related.

Australia's Transportation Safety Board (ATSB) said, an investigation is in progress reporting that shortly after takeoff from Singapore the aircraft experienced a #2 engine failure, dumped fuel and returned to Singapore. The airplane sustained substantial damage.

On Nov 5th the ATSB reported, that the Indonesian NTSC delegated the investigation so that the ATSB will lead the investigation and prepare a factual preliminary report by Dec 3rd 2010. Four Australian accident investigators have reached Singapore, downloaded the cockpit voice and flight data recorder data. The airplane took off at 9:57L, about 4 minutes later abnormal engine #2 indications occurred and the engine shut down at 10:01L. The airplane dumped fuel and landed at 11:47L. The engine is about to be removed from the aircraft for further analysis, the investigators are inspecting the aircraft for other damage, too. The parts fallen onto Indonesian territory were quarantained for further examination.

On Nov 7th the ATSB confirmed that parts of a turbine disk (see picture below) have been recovered in Indonesia with the help of the Indonesian NTSC.

This thing could have been a whole lot worse, had the rotor been slung through the fuselage there would have been serious injuries and possible hull loss, all I can say is YIKES!

Some one mentioned the AA 767 that tossed a rotor, I recall looking at those photos, it sliced through the fuselage and embedded into the #2 engine and that was on the ground for a maint run, with a pressurized fuselage it could have been an absolute disaster, I am very thankful this was not the case.

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I wonder if this could be related to the failure, what you think Mitch?

Rearward movement of the IP turbine would enable contact with static

turbine components and would result in loss of engine performance with

potential for in-flight shut down, oil migration and oil fire below the LP

turbine discs prior to sufficient indication resulting in loss of LP turbine disc

integrity.

Yup, I'd certainly say it "could" be related.... but we'd best let the folks who investigate these things let us know what they find. The timing of the AD sure makes it appear that RR may consider it a possible cause.

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'Possible fault' in A380 -

Qantas Focus on Airbus and Rolls-Royce

The Australian airline, Qantas, has said it has found "slight anomalies" on three Airbus A380 engines and is keeping its fleet of six passenger jets grounded for further checks.

Chief executive Alan Joyce said there "was oil where oil shouldn't be on the engines" of two of the super-jumbos.

Qantas was "trying to check what the cause of that would be", he added.

A similar engine broke apart in flight on Thursday, forcing a Qantas A380 to make an emergency landing in Singapore.

After the incident - the first since the aircraft came into service in 2007 - the airline began checking their Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines.

On Monday, Mr Joyce said engineers had found oil in three engines, which was unusual given that they were only two years old.

We will take as long as it needs to in order that we are absolutely comfortable the aircraft is safe to fly”

"These are new engines on new aircraft and they shouldn't have these issues at this stage, so it's given us indication of an area for us to focus into," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"We are keeping an open mind on it but... We think it could have been a materials issue on the engine, or a design issue."

Mr Joyce said all of the airlines A380s would likely be grounded for at least another 72 hours.

"We still believe with the progress we are making - this is days not weeks - but we will take as long as it needs to in order that we are absolutely comfortable the aircraft is safe to fly," he added.

In an unrelated incident on Friday, a Qantas Boeing 747 - also equipped with Rolls-Royce engines - was forced to return to Singapore with an engine problem after taking off.

Mr Joyce said it was "not a safety issue" and that there were no plans to ground the airline's fleet of 747s.

Rolls-Royce, the British firm which makes the engines for the Qantas planes, saw its share price fall by nearly 5% on Friday.

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Separately, a Rolls-Royce RB211-powered QF Boeing 747-400 experienced an inflight engine shutdown after departure from Singapore to Sydney on Friday night. In an ironic twist, the flight deck crew from the A380 that suffered the uncontained failure the previous day were among the passengers on the 747-400.

Interesting....

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http://www.reuters.com/article/idCNSGE6A901M20101110?rpc=44

Singapore Air says changing engines on three A380S

SINGAPORE Nov 10 (Reuters) - Singapore Airlines (SIAL.SI) said on Wednesday it will change the engines on three of its A380 aircraft following an engine blowout last week on a Qantas (QAN.AX) flight.

The Rolls Royce (RR.L) engines on the three SIA aircraft, currently in Sydney, Melbourne and London, will be fitted with new engines, but the model will remain the same, the airline said.

"We apologise to our customers for flight disruptions that may result," Singapore Airlines said.

An airline spokeswoman described the engine change as "precautionary, as advised by Rolls Royce".

She said the engine would remain the Rolls Royce Trent 900, with a minor variation.

Qantas is looking into its use of A380 engines as part of a wider investigation into why a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine blew apart last week, forcing the world's largest passenger plane to make an emergency landing in Singapore with 459 passengers and crew on board.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/idCNSGE6A901M20101110?rpc=44

An airline spokeswoman described the engine change as "precautionary, as advised by Rolls Royce".

She said the engine would remain the Rolls Royce Trent 900, with a minor variation.

An interesting word "minor". If it fixes the problem, it would seem at the very least "significant", n'est-ce pas?

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Airline calls in flying doctors for A380 'hospital line'

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/airline-calls-in-flying-doctors-for-a380-hospital-line-20101115-17uf8.html

The airline has a plan to check and reinstall the Rolls-Royce engines from its grounded A380 fleet, writes Andrew Heasley.

QANTAS will have an Airbus A380 superjumbo in the air by the end of the month - a new plane Airbus is due to deliver in France in the next fortnight.

But the other six aircraft remain out of service - one damaged and impounded by air investigators in Singapore after the midair engine explosion on November 4, and the other five grounded while engine checks and technical examinations continue.

Qantas is establishing what it calls a ''hospital line'' to manage the checking, dismantling, upgrading and reinstalling the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines from the aircraft, said Qantas's chief executive, Alan Joyce.

Airbus has announced that Rolls-Royce has a kit to bring older Trent 900s up to date with the latest version coming off its production line.

''The engines, when we take them off, will essentially go through a 'hospital line', which is an intense program that will look at fixing these components on the engine,'' Mr Joyce said.

Rolls-Royce has been making running modifications to the design, manufacturing and assembly of the engine's components, including the component believed to be at the centre of the midair explosion, a gear bearing and its oil supply system.

Qantas first has to identify what version of the engines it has, what problems the engine might exhibit and determine what components need upgrading to bring the engines up to the latest specification.

''When we identify that there's an engine that is a problem engine, that engine will be taken off-wing, and that engine will go through a program that puts those [latest] modifications back on it,'' Mr Joyce said.

''We have the aircraft on the ground so we're obviously taking engines off, as we speak. Rolls will be then telling us what the program is to get them through the 'mod program' [of technical updates] and this 'hospital' review.

''We need to have the plan from Rolls about when this can be done, when the components can be done, when the components can be provided.''

Work will be done in Rolls-Royce's engine facilities - one in Hong Kong and one in Britain. Engines will be airfreighted to the workshops from the grounded planes, two in Sydney and three in Los Angeles. They will then be modified and flown back for re-installation.

"We don't know at this stage what that time-frame's going to be," Mr Joyce said.

''That means we can't be definitive when the aircraft will be back in the air.''

There is also likely to be a shortage of the special cranes that lift and move the engines from the wings.

The latest industry estimate is that about 20 engines in the Singapore Airlines fleet, as many as 14 in the Qantas fleet and two in Lufthansa's fleet will need to be upgraded.Singapore Airlines is particularly affected, having received more early versions of the engine, Mr Joyce said.

Even the new A380, the seventh in Qantas's fleet, will still be subjected to the same airworthiness directives from the European Aviation Safety Agency as the other Rolls-Royce engines in the A380 fleet, which requires engines to be inspected by their 10th flight and every 20 flights thereafter.

Qantas is due to receive its eighth A380 next month and its ninth in January, so it should have at least one in the skies for Oprah Winfrey's tour to Australia.

Airbus has said Rolls-Royce is completing a software patch that would shut down an engine automatically in flight if it sensed anomalies to its normal operating conditions.

The new A380 will be fitted with the latest version of the Trent 900 engine and the safety shutdown software.

Mr Joyce said that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority was also involved in the process of returning the aircraft to the skies.

He said Rolls-Royce would not put Qantas at the back of the queue for new engines, even if Singapore Airlines needs a larger number of engine replacements or upgrades.

''We did all testing before anybody else did. Other airlines were clearing their fleets to fly.

''We said 'no', we'd found problems. And when we found the problems we were requesting spare engines, so we were in there first; it was one of the advantages of the process that we've done.''

Rolls-Royce has provided scant information to the public about how it is handling the engine explosion and the fallout, leaving the explanations to the airlines and airframe manufacturer.

Some industry insiders say it has adopted the strategy of BP in its handling of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: say as little as you can and it will all go away.

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Received this in an e-mail today:

Here are just SOME of the problems the QANTAS guys had in Singapore last week aboard

QF32, in addition to the engine failure....

* massive fuel leak in the left mid fuel tank (the beast has 11 tanks, including in the horizontal stabiliser on the tail)

* massive fuel leak in the left inner fuel tank

* a hole on the flap canoe/fairing that you could fit your upper body through.

* the aft gallery in the fuel system failed, preventing many fuel transfer functions

* fuel jettison had problems due to the previous problem above

* bloody great hole in the upper wing surface

* partial failure of leading edge slats

* partial failure of speed brakes/ground spoilers

* shrapnel damage to the flaps

* TOTAL loss of all hydraulic fluid in the Green System (beast has 2 x 5,000 PSI systems, Green and Yellow)

* manual extension of landing gear

* loss of 1 generator and associated systems

* loss of brake anti-skid system

* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using normal method after landing due to major damage to systems

* unable to shutdown adjacent #1 engine using the fire switch!!!!!!!!

Therefore, no fire protection was available for that engine after the explosion in #2

* ECAM warnings about major fuel imbalance because of fuel leaks on left side, that were UNABLE to be fixed with cross-feeding

* fuel trapped in Trim Tank (in the tail). Therefore, possible major CofG out-of-balance condition for landing. Yikes!

* and much more to come..........

Richard was in the left seat, (FO in the right), SO in the 2nd obs seat (right rear, also with his own Radio Management Panel, so he probably did most of the coordination with the ground), Capt Dave Evans in the 1st obs seat (middle). He is a Check & Training Captain who was training Harry Wubbin to be one also. Harry was in the 3rd obs seat (left rear). All 5 guys were FLAT OUT, especially the FO who would have been processing complicated 'ECAM' messages and procedures that were seemingly never-ending!

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Thanks W5.

Many of those faults are downstream outcomes of major system failures such as the complete loss of the green hydraulic system, major loss of electrical generation, loss of control of the #1 engine and extensive damage to the airframe in places more widespread than anyone initially thought.

The graphics at "Plane Talk" give the clearest picture yet of the extent of the damage. The forward spar was indeed hit, as suggested earlier and so were the fuel tanks. Some images from "Plane Talk", run by Ben Sandilands.

1094994500_tVhnT-L.jpg

Photograph of the slat drive motor

1094994328_keamc-L.png

1094994358_dPro4-L.jpg

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Looks like they need to rethink the cable routing so as to prevent a dual outage.

Airbus told airlines in its latest technical bulletin on the incident that three "high-energy" turbine fragments flew out of the engine when it exploded, and two of these severed cables in the wing. The report, seen by Reuters on Thursday, said this explained why pilots could not immediately shut down a different engine after the plane landed in Singapore.

Earlier Sky News reported a memo sent to operators of A380 aircraft had revealed a "cascade of failures" aboard the Qantas plane. The bulletin seen by Reuters did not mention a cascade of failures although it did say the "crew had to manage a dynamic situation" as a result of damage from the explosion.

"The reason engine one could not be shut down has been determined: two segregated wiring routes were cut by two out of the three individual disk debris," the bulletin said, before listing all systems that continued to operate in support of the crew.

.....One single high energy fragment is considered from a certification requirement viewpoint. The damage assessment has established that the IPT disk released 3 different high energy fragments, .....

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I believe this was very, very close to being a complete hull loss.

I'd like to know your reasoning for that belief. Yes the damage is significant, but there are many safeguards in place that prevents damage to a control surface actuator from causing a greater problem, and it sounds like they worked.

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I'd like to know your reasoning for that belief.

* massive fuel leak in the left mid fuel tank (the beast has 11 tanks, including in the horizontal stabiliser on the tail)

* massive fuel leak in the left inner fuel tank

* the aft gallery in the fuel system failed, preventing many fuel transfer functions

* fuel jettison had problems due to the previous problem above

* ECAM warnings about major fuel imbalance because of fuel leaks on left side, that were UNABLE to be fixed with cross-feeding

* fuel trapped in Trim Tank (in the tail). Therefore, possible major CofG out-of-balance condition for landing. Yikes!

The chance of fire was high, as well as the problems with controlling the C of G while on approach. I just think that this thing was a lot closer to catastrophy than people realize.... just my opinion.

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The diagrams in the Blog also indicate a fuselage impact site. That coould have been the proverbial straw has the fragment had enough energy to penetrate the fuselage. This was definately a serious incident that coould have ended differently.

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