SINGAPORE (AP) — A Qantas superjumbo jet made an emergency landing Thursday in Singapore with 459 people aboard, after one of its four engines failed over western Indonesia and following witness reports of a blast that sent debris hurtling to the ground.
The carrier said there had not been any explosion, and that the plane landed safely with no injuries.
Qantas had no immediate comment on whether the engine troubles were related to eruptions of Indonesia’s Mount Merapi over the past 10 days. Given the timing of the malfunction, 15 minutes after takeoff from Singapore and before the flight had time to approach the mountain, there appeared to be no connection.
A Qantas statement said the double-decker Airbus 380 plane experienced an “engine issue” soon after taking off from Singapore for Sydney. It made a safe emergency landing in Singapore at 11:45 a.m. local time with 433 passengers and 26 crew on board, the statement said.
“Some media reports suggested the aircraft had crashed. These reports are incorrect. No Qantas aircraft has crashed,” it said.
Separately, Singapore’s Changi airport said in a statement that flight QF 32 left for Sydney at 9:56 a.m., and “for technical reasons the aircraft turned back to Changi,” landing safely one hour and 50 minutes later.
The flight is a regular service that flies between Sydney, Singapore and London. The route is usually flown by one of Qantas’ six Airbus A380 that were introduced into service in 2008. Qantas’ A380s can carry up to 525 people.
Qantas spokeswoman Emma Kearns in Sydney, Australia, said there were no reports of injuries or an explosion on board. When asked if the engine trouble was related to ash hurled from Merapi, Kearns said she had no further details.
A series of powerful eruptions from Indonesia’s most volatile volcano, which was spewing massive clouds of gray ash 310 miles (500 kilometers) west of Jakarta, earlier prompted officials to close some air routes above the mountain.
“We have no way of knowing what at this point caused the problem,” said Tatang Kurniadi, the chief of The National Transportation Safety Committee, when asked if volcanic ash could have clogged the Qantas airliner’s engine.
Witnesses on the western Indonesian island of Batam, near Singapore and 850 miles (1,400 kilometers) west of Merapi, reported hearing a large blast and seeing pieces of debris — including panels painted white and red — falling onto houses and a nearby shopping mall.
Pictures of metal, some the size of a door, were shown on Indonesia’s MetroTV broadcaster, with people milling around.
“I heard a big explosion at around 9:15 a.m. and saw a commercial passenger plane flying low in the distance with smoke on one of its wings,” Rusdi, a local resident, told MetroTV.
“The debris started falling on my house.”
A British Airways flight suffered engine failure in 1982 after it had flown into a volcanic cloud in western Sumatra and was forced to make an emergency landing in Jakarta.The flight from Singapore to Perth, Australia, plunged several thousand feet (meters) before the engines restarted in the June 24, 1982 incident.
The Airbus superjumbo has been in service since Singapore Airlines took delivery of the first of the A380 planes in late 2007. Qantas now has six of them in service.
Qantas’ safety record is enviable among major airlines, with only one fatal crash in its 90-year history — seven people died when a small plane plunged into the sea off Papua New Guinea in 1951.
But there have been a run of scares in recent years across a range of plane types. The most serious — when a faulty oxygen tank caused an explosion that blew a 5-foot hole in the fuselage of a Boeing 747-400 over the Philippines — prompted aviation officials to order Qantas to upgrade maintenance procedures.
On March 31, a Qantas A380 with 244 people on board burst two tires on landing in Sydney after a flight from Singapore.
UPDATE:
Submitting your tip... please wait!
shellmen
Posted on November 5, 2010 at 8:24amThey landed safely end of story.
Report Post »free2bme1961
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 8:32pmIt is still frightening, none the less, and implying that a person is unreasonable for feeling that way, is “not” normal. Not knowing the how‘s or the why’s, something has taken place, is going to be a life altering experience either way….and definitely not a pleasant one!
Report Post »CowboyExpat
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 7:33pmCNN’s report was about 5 minutes too long. Yes, the engine suffered a catastrophic failure, no, no one was hurt. It’s a large aircraft with 4 engines and designed to suffer this type of loss and return safely.
Report Post »N37BU6
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 10:09amIf you look closely, you can see that something went upward through the wing… obviously high velocity and heavy, whatever it was. Not a piece of cowling. Compressor blade, maybe?
Doesn’t get much more catastrophic than that. Good thing it has 4 of them!
Report Post »N37BU6
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 10:03amEngines have different manufacturers than the airframes, remember… can’t blame the aircraft as a whole.
If anything, the fuselage’s high quality regularly protects the passengers from faulty engines / bad maintenance. Airbus is great. I always feel safe on one.
Report Post »pavnvet
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 9:13amUS Air, American and a bunch of US airlines have horrible safety records compared to Quantas. The only large American carrier that comes close is to this safety record is, strangely enough, Alaska Airlines.
This is a testament to the redundancy of the systems built into commercial aircraft and the professionalism of the flight crew. Some of the comments here about this incident are just plain ignorant.
Report Post »heavyduty
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 9:08amI bet the airline is going to have to replace the seat cushions for most of the customers on that flight. After they had put permanent creases in them when their butts puckered. Either that or they had to go to the e.r. in order to get them removed surgically.
Report Post »Sledgehammer
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 8:01amJust glad no one got hurt!
Report Post »canuck44
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 7:49amAirHearse…I look for the Boeing label whenever possible. A380 is just a bigger coffin.
Of interest, I always though QANTAS was some sort of aboriginal word until I was informed that it stands for Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service.
Report Post »Flagwaver
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 7:47amNot the building that’s the problem, it’s the maintenance.
Report Post »Laus Deo
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 7:46amEmergency stop for some malayasian cuisine… Duh! I hear the barbecued stingray is pretty tasty.
Report Post »DagneyT
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 7:45amDoesn’t make me anxious to fly Qantas anytime soon.
Report Post »HouseNegro
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 7:44amPlanes are built by Unions, so it might be safer to walk.
Report Post »snowleopard3200 {mix art}
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 8:38amPraise be that the Almighty guided the piolets hands, and protected the people onboard to safety, and spared their lives from a terrible tradgety.
Report Post »abc
Posted on November 4, 2010 at 8:41pmYeah. And let’s get rid of the FAA and accident investigations BY THE GOVERNMENT, since I‘m sure we’d have fewer plane crashes if the airlines handled it themselves. I mean, it’s not like flying is the safest way to travel…wait a minute.
Report Post »