Debris rained from the sky, witnesses say; Qantas cites 'significant engine failure'
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Indonesian police officers inspect parts of a Qantas jetliner that were found in Batam, Indonesia, on Thursday.
SINGAPORE — Qantas grounded its six Airbus A380 jetliners Thursday after one of the aircraft suffered "significant engine failure."
A superjumbo jet made an emergency landing 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.
Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce told a news conference in Sydney on Thursday the suspension would remain in place until Qantas was satisfied that it was safe for its A380s to fly.
"We will suspend those A380 services until we are completely confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met," Joyce said. "The A380 is a fantastic aircraft. This issue of an engine failure is one we have not seen before. We are obviously taking this very seriously, because it was a significant engine failure."
Witnesses on the western Indonesian island of Batam, near Singapore and 850 miles 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.
'I heard a big explosion' 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."
The flight had originated in London.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 before the engines restarted in the June 24, 1982 incident.
Singapore's Channel NewsAsia said the plane circled Singapore to burn fuel before making an emergency landing.
A Reuters reporter said the plane was surrounded by emergency vehicles but there was no sign of any smoke or fire. One of the four nacelles — structures that house the engines — was missing and there appeared to be charring around that area of the plane.
There have been no fatal incidents involving A380s since they were launched in 2005 amid great fanfare as the greenest, quietest — as well as the biggest — jetliner.
"This is probably the most serious incident involving the A380 since it began flying in commercial service," said aviation expert Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent of Orient Aviation magazine. "There have been minor engine incidents before but nothing like this."
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.
The A380 has been bedeviled with production delays. More than 200 orders have been placed for the aircraft, and 37 are in operation worldwide, according to Airbus. Qantas said the incident did not impact its standing orders for more A380s.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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