Qantas ! QF ! QFA !

Un Boeing de Qantas fait demi-tour après avoir happé un oiseau.

SYDNEY, 17 nov 2010 (AFP) Un Boeing 747 de Qantas, avec 171 passagers à bord, a du faire demi-tour vers Johannesburg après avoir happé un oiseau, un incident qui a endommagé un de ses moteurs, a annoncé mercredi un porte-parole de la compagnie aérienne australienne.

http://www.air-cosmos.com/news/depeches-afp/un-boeing-de-qantas-fait-demi-tour-apres-avoir-happe-un-oiseau.html

antas A380s Set To Return This Weekend
Posted by Sean.Broderick at 11/22/2010 7:04 PM CST

Qantas will return two of its Airbus A380s to service starting Saturday, the carrier said early Tuesday (Sydney time). Here's an AP dispatch from Sydney.

The announcement comes as Australian regulators said that they have approved a plan submitted by Qantas to return the carrier's six grounded A380s to service. The CASA statement doesn't reveal much, but it underscores that Qantas will "comply with relevant airworthiness directives, as well as service bulletins from Rolls Royce, relating to the Trent 900 engines fitted to the A380 aircraft."

Pipe fatigue behind Qantas A380 Trent 900 failure

The Australian Transport and Safety Bureau (ATSB) has detailed the reasons behind the uncontained failure of a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine, which forced a Qantas Airways Airbus A380 to make an emergency landing in November.

The ATSB has also recommended an additional one-off inspection within two flight cycles, after an examination of the failed engines components at the Rolls-Royce plants in Derby. This applies to all "relevant" variants of the Trent 900 engine.

In the first public details about the likely cause of the 4 November incident, the ATSB says that there was "fatigue cracking" within a stub pipe that feeds oil into the High Pressure (HP)/Intermediate Pressure (IP) bearing structure. This led to an oil leakage, and subsequently an oil fire and the engine failure, it adds.

"While the analysis of the engine failure is ongoing, it has been identified that the leakage of oil into the HP/IP bearing structure buffer space, and a subsequent oil fire within that area, was central to the engine failure and IP turbine disc liberation event," it adds.

"Further examination of the cracked area has identified the axial misalignment of an area of counter-boring within the inner diameter of the stub pipe; the misalignment having produced a localised thinning of the pipe wall on one side. The area of fatigue cracking was associated with the area of pipe wall thinning."

The failure led to the Qantas A380 losing part of its engine cowling and other components, and damaged its wing, shortly after take-off from Singapore. The pilots made an emergency landing at the same airport.

Both Qantas and Singapore Airlines, which also operates A380s powered by the Trent 900 engines, temporarily grounded their aircraft as a result. SIA resumed services soon after the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) issued guidelines for additional inspections, and Qantas resumed A380 flights last week.

The ATSB, after discussions with Qantas, Rolls-Royce and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), has recommended a more detailed one-off inspection of Trent 900 engines following the latest findings. These should be conducted within two flight cycles, which is above the 20 cycle inspection mandated by EASA after the first incident.

The findings apply to all "relevant" variants of the Trent 900 engine operated worldwide. This means that SIA and Lufthansa, which also operates A380s powered by the engines, will be affected.

"We have begun the inspections and are complying with the recommendations, which are intended to ensure the continued safe operation of the fleet," says SIA.

Qantas, which has returned two A380s to service, says that it will begin the inspections at its maintenance facility in Sydney this afternoon. It does not anticipate any impact on international services at this stage.

"Qantas will determine any further response after it has finalised the inspection regime and consulted with both regulators and the manufacturer," adds the Oneworld carrier.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/12/02/350414/pipe-fatigue-behind-qantas-a380-trent-900-failure-atsb.html

Boeing Australia has contradicted expectations of a 787 delay update by Christmas with a statement today in response to a query from Plane Talking.

Our query:

Multiple sources. A delay of 6-8 months for first NH jet with strong risk of additional delays beyond that estimate, worsening for deliveries that were originally scheduled to follow NH in first 24 months. Strong risk of no ETOPS. Lots of concern about this.

Is there an indication as to when Boeing will publicly address the situation, other than the previous guidance of late last month?
Boeing’s response:

We do anticipate an impact to our schedule for certification and first delivery, and expect first delivery will occur after the first quarter. We expect a revised program schedule will be finalized in the coming weeks.

We expect there to be some impact to other deliveries, but there are still too many uncertainties to determine the exact impact on specific customer deliveries. The program will be in a better position to assess the potential impact on specific deliveries once the revised program schedule is established in the coming weeks.
The 787 situation is looking serious when various clues are put together including the delay information provided by multiple sources among Dreamliner customers.

We say ’serious’ because the disclosure coming out of Boeing through reputable reports in US based media conform to the usual damage control strategies of corporate image managers. The bad news, and some potential remedies, are released in stages. The potential remedy that emerged overnight is the official announcement of increased 777 production, which at the right prices and for delivery in the next few years, could be a highly attractive course of action for some 787 customers, and particularly Qantas as mentioned earlier today in Plane Talking.

The current pre-delivery situation at Everett is a grand scale screw up. In other reports Boeing has admitted that some partially completed units will be bypassed as too difficult to fix for the intended delivery sequence by later but less compromised units.

This shambles is but one of the consequences of Boeing losing control over the quality of design and assembly of significant sections of the Dreamliner. It could also be a consequence of a management that does not seem to have valued the in-house skills and experience of Boeing engineers and designers until critically late in the process of bringing the 787s into shape for testing and certification.

The Boeing that has mangled the 787 program is not the Boeing that designed the 777, although it can be argued that Boeing in more recent times was too slow to bring the -300ER and -200LR to market.

Multiple sources have said that the first All Nippon 787 will not be delivered for at least 6-8 months after the promise of a first quarter 2011 delivery, meaning possibly as late as December next year if the current references to a first quarter of 2011 delivery are read as right at the end of that quarter. Eight months from the end of March 2011 is the end of November 2011, and the estimate of up to eight months assumes there are no time consuming consequences from FAA concerns about the causes of the November 9 fire in ZA002 or its remedies.

However, the issue for Qantas customers and shareholders is the continued failure of Boeing to meet a series of promises as to the delivery of the 50 assorted 787s it has on order, originally for deliveries starting in August 2008.

Qantas has a geriatric fleet of Boeing 767s that were supposed to have been replaced by Dreamliners by about now. These now unreliable and costly to maintain jets were to have been initially replaced by the newer Airbus A330s that Qantas transferred to Jetstar, pending their planned return to the parent company after the low cost carrier takes delivery of eight brand new high density format 787-8s to be based in Singapore from June 2012 according to the most recent version of how the Dreamliner was going to transform Qantas beyond recognition. (Which it might, but not as intended.)

Part two of that fleet shuffling strategy is no longer available. Under part one, Jetstar has received a small fleet of young ex-Qantas A330s as well as some of the new ones it had on order, and Qantas is stuck with a collection of un-dead 767s it probably couldn’t pay anyone to take away.

It is considering extending the leases on the 767s, which is ‘unsatisfactory’ or finding more A330s, which are said to be ‘unavailable’.

An unhappy sounding source at Qantas this morning said the airline had been left in the dark by Boeing. Being left in the dark by Rolls-Royce over the issues with its Trent 900 engines on the giant Airbus A380s has already been a major, major problem for Qantas. But to be now also plunged into darkness by Boeing makes the airline sound like it is in a perpetual state of eclipse. And from companies who have taken billions of dollars worth of orders from it.

When Qantas will get illuminated by Rolls-Royce or Boeing is apparently anyone’s guess, although at the moment January 18 has been set as the provisional date for the gradual re-introduction of Rolls-Royce powered A380s on the Australia-Los Angeles runs. Provided Qantas gets enough guarantees from the engine maker that one of them won’t disintegrate somewhere along the 14 hour long remote oceanic flight paths which require it to use those engines at a higher thrust rating than any other airline operating A380s just to get airborne with a decent payload from LAX.

It is easy, probably too easy, to imagine 777-300ERs taking over from 787s at Qantas and Jetstar. The 777s have proven abilities when it comes to the efficient carriage of worthwhile payloads between Singapore and Europe, which is what Jetstar intended to do with its 787-8s, except that perhaps they really won’t be able to do that anyhow given the claims that the super light weight plastic jet has been turned into something rather more ordinary during its development. The 777s are also ideal support airliners for the A380 trunk routes, as Singapore Airlines has already demonstrated to great effect, and good anywhere on the long haul Qantas network except the far southern routes to South Africa and South America.

The Qantas board of directors doesn’t usually meet in January. Perhaps this January it should, and give serious consideration to an exit strategy for the 787s and an entry plan for some 777s.

Beochien a écrit:Bonjour !

L'assureur a dit ... EON, pour le QF32 !
70 Millions, pour commencer !
On parle du A380 KC et des coûts directs de l'accident !
Avec les réserves d'usage !
Ça fait cher du tuyaux de plomberie , le RR Ripoux !

http://www.planenation.com/2010/12/22/airbus/a380-engine-explosion-cost-qantas-70-million-says-aon-insurance.htm

JPRS