Qantas Flight 32

Qantas Flight 32 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight from London to Sydney via Singapore. On 4 November 2010, the Airbus A380 operating the route suffered an uncontained failure in one of its four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines. The failure occurred over the Riau Islands, Indonesia, four minutes after takeoff from Singapore Changi Airport. After holding for almost two hours to assess the situation, the aircraft made a successful emergency landing at Changi. No injuries occurred to the passengers, crew, or people on the ground, despite debris from the aircraft falling onto houses in Batam.

On inspection, it was found that a turbine disc in the aircraft's number-two engine (on the port side nearer the fuselage) had disintegrated, causing extensive damage to the nacelle, wing, fuel system, landing gear, flight controls, and engine controls, and a fire in a fuel tank that self-extinguished. The subsequent investigation concluded that the failure had been caused by the breaking of a stub oil pipe, which had been manufactured improperly.

The failure was the first of its kind for the A380, the world's largest passenger aircraft. At the time of the accident, 39 A380s were operating with five airlines: Qantas, Air France, Emirates, Lufthansa, and Singapore Airlines. The accident led to the temporary grounding of the rest of the six-plane Qantas A380 fleet. It also led to groundings, inspections, and engine replacements on some other Rolls-Royce-powered A380s in service with Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines, but not in the A380 fleets of Air France or Emirates, which were powered by Engine Alliance engines.

Accident

The accident, at 10:01 am Singapore Standard Time (02:01 UTC), was caused by an uncontained failure of the port inboard (number-two) engine, while en route over Batam Island, Indonesia.

Shrapnel from the engine punctured part of the wing and damaged the fuel system, causing leaks and a fuel-tank fire, disabled one hydraulic system and the anti-lock braking system, caused the number-one and number-four engines to go into a "degraded" mode, and damaged landing flaps and the controls for the outer left number-one engine.

The crew, after finding the plane controllable, decided to fly a holding pattern close to Singapore Changi Airport, while assessing the status of the aircraft. Completing this initial assessment took 50 minutes. The first officer and supervising check captain (SCC) then put the plane's status into the landing distance performance application (LDPA) for a landing 50 tonnes over maximum landing weight at Changi. Based on these inputs, the LDPA could not calculate a landing distance. After discussion, the crew elected to remove inputs related to a wet runway, in the knowledge that the runway was dry. The LDPA then returned the information that the landing was feasible with 100 m of runway remaining. The flight then returned to Changi Airport, landing safely after the crew extended the landing gear by a gravity drop emergency extension system, at 11:45 am Singapore time. As a result of the aircraft landing 35 kn faster than normal, four tyres were blown.

Upon landing, the crew was unable to shut down the number-one engine, which had to be doused by emergency crews until flameout was achieved. The pilots considered whether to evacuate the plane immediately after landing, as fuel was leaking from the left wing near to the brakes, which were assumed to be extremely hot from maximum braking. The SCC pilot, David Evans, noted in an interview, The plane was on battery power and had to contend with only one VHF radio to coordinate emergency procedure with the local fire crew.

No injuries were reported among the 440 passengers and 29 crew on board the plane. On Batam Island, some debris fell on a school, some houses, and a car.

Flight crew

The pilot in command of the aircraft, Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, has been credited in the media as "having guided a heavily damaged double-decker jet to the safety of Singapore Changi Airport and averting what could have been a catastrophe". At the time of the accident, he had 35 years of flying experience. He was commended for debriefing the passengers in the passenger terminal after the flight, disclosing details of the flight and offering care for his passengers. In 2016, Champion de Crespigny was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the aviation industry, both nationally and internationally, particularly to flight safety, and to the community.

In 2010, Richard Woodward, a vice president of the Australian and International Pilots Association, reported that five pilots were in the cockpit of this flight. In addition to the normal crew of pilot-in-command and co-pilot, there was an experienced relief pilot and two additional check captains; one was being trained as a check captain (CC) and the supervising CC, who was training the CC. Captain Champion de Crespigny concentrated on flying and managing the aircraft while the co-pilot focused on monitoring and sifting through the 100 electronic centralised aircraft monitor (ECAM) checklists. The supernumerary pilots monitored all actions and assisted where necessary.