Hitch Delays Qantas A380 Delivery

Sydney. Australia’s Qantas said on Thursday that a “one-off problem” had caused Airbus to delay delivery of its newest A380 plane, in a fresh snag for the airline’s troubled superjumbo fleet. 

An airline spokeswoman said a “small anomaly” with the aircraft, reported by local news media to be a faulty oil tube in the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine, had forced the short delay. 

“It was a minor issue. A one-off problem was identified, and the issue has been rectified,” the spokeswoman said. “We are still expecting delivery by the middle of December.” 

Qantas chief Alan Joyce said that the problem — reportedly discovered on an A380 still on the Airbus factory floor in Toulouse — had also been found on a number of planes run by other airlines. 

“I think that it’s good that we’re homing in on it because it means we can replace the engines before they’re an issue,” he said. 

The Qantas spokeswoman said the discovery was part of an ongoing inspection program into Rolls-Royce’s Trent 900 engines, after one exploded over Indonesia last month, forcing a Qantas A380 to make an emergency landing. 

Australian transport officials have identified a potentially “catastrophic” manufacturing defect that caused an oil leakage and a fire in the engine as the likely cause. 

Reacting to Thursday’s announcement, an Airbus spokesman said delivery of the new A380 was imminent and Airbus maintained its “A380 deliveries target for 2010”. 

“We are confident that the program of precautionary engine inspections developed by Rolls-Royce and mandated by the authorities allows the ongoing safe operation of the Trent 900-powered A380 fleet,” the spokesman added. 

Qantas grounded all six of its A380s after the Nov. 4 explosion and has since returned to service just two of the superjumbos, with new regulations on engine thrust preventing the planes’ use on the long-haul Los Angeles route. 

The airline’s fleet manager said it was a case of “one step forward and two back” for the world’s largest passenger plane. 

“We can’t take a trick in getting more aircraft into the air and back into service,” the manager wrote in an e-mail message to pilots leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald. 

Analysis by financial services giant Merril Lynch, also obtained by the Herald, estimated that the grounding could cost Qantas more than 200 million Australian dollars ($197 million) in repairs and lost revenue. 

Qantas has begun legal action against Rolls-Royce in the Federal Court of Australia. 
 

Agence France-Presse