Sydney, AUFollowing Thursday's emergency landing by a Qantas Airbus A380 in Singapore, and Qantas' subsequent grounding of its A380 fleet further to engine inspections, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines have also grounded their A380 aircraft with Rolls Royce engines.
On Thursday, a Qantas flight en route to Sydney from Singapore experienced an engine failure resulting from what has been described as an explosion in the engine, less than 60 minutes into the flight. The Airbus, carrying 450 people, circled for 90 minutes to dump enough fuel to land, then returned to Singapore's Changi International Airport without further incident. No injuries were reported.
In a report in the New York Times, Nicholas Ionides, a Singapore Airlines spokesman, said that based on the Rolls-Royce advice, the airline was temporarily suspending flights by its A380s. Lufthansa is inspecting its Rolls Royce engines on its A380 fleet. Rolls Royce, based in London, UK, is a separate company from the carmaker.
Currently, five airlines are flying A380s, which can seat up to 800 passengers. Thirty-seven A380s are being flown by five airlines, with Qantas, Singapore and Lufthansa operating 20 of those, all of which have Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines. The remaining 17 A380s operated by Air France and Emirates airlines have different engines.