Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

admiralcloudberg.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 122 posts

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#51

Post by paulmooreparks »

I flew on this exact same plane, VH-OQA, on November 4, 2019, from Singapore to Melbourne.

While I was sitting at the gate, I remembered that line from Rain Main about "Qantas never crashed," and since that flight would be my first time flying on an A380, I wondered if any had crashed or had any other incidents. I looked up "a380 crash" on my phone, and what do you know? The first hit was a Wikipedia article about a Qantas A380 uncontained engine failure, which had occurred four minutes after takeoff... from Changi! Even wilder was the fact that it had happened 9 years earlier. When I looked up the plane's registration number on Flightradar24, I realized that was the same plane I was flying to Melbourne on.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#52

Post by alex1138 »

CursedSilicon wrote: post #4

One of my favourite memories of flying Qantas when I was younger was the inflight entertainment. If memory serves, they were celebrating some sort of milestone like "60 years without a fatal accident" or similar. Quite an impressive feat! I'm unclear if it was directly related. But the Qantas inflight entertainment system on our flight from Sydney to Los Angeles meanwhile contained about 12 seasons of the National Ge…

That's hilarious. They don't think about "hey, maybe not show this, we might have nervous passengers"?

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#53

Post by Farmadupe »

amelius wrote: post #30
u1hcw9nx wrote: post #3

Turbine disk failure is one thing that can down a plane, and you can only reduce the probability so much. Fan blades and turbine blades can be contained by containment cases if they break off, but turbine disks can't. When a disk breaks, it's an uncontained engine failure. A 20 kg disk fragment flying at Mach 1 goes through everything. Airframes are have a 30-degree fragment spread cone around every disk stage. Airfr…

But it seems to me that the whole failure could have been prevented with a bunch of temperature sensors spread throughout the engine, and a good anomaly detection system.

Don't know why you're getting faded out, because having worked on exactly this engine, software mitigations were put in place. That's exactly your `anomaly detection system`

It was a belt-and-braces fix, because the primary fix was of course to manufacture the engines correctly in the first place.

The "lots of temperature sensors" thing is actually easier said than done; jet engines already have lots of temperature sensors, and they will turn the engine off if a huge overtemperature is detected, but it's not a free win to add more of them. It increases the risk of a faulty sensor shutting down a perfectly good engine in flight, which from a safety-critical perspective is a borderline disaster condition all by itself.

(technically you usually cross-correlate temperature sensor readings with pressure sensor readings to prevent sensor faults turning engines off, but still, extra sensors isn't always a free win.)

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#54

Post by quink »

dostick wrote: post #44

The whole incident was because of 0.2mm offset in a machined part! And the company that made the part ignored the quality compliance process was not fired. I wonder why - did Airbus think it’s their failure not to verify that the subcontractor adhered to procedures?

This feels more like engine manufacturer QC rather than anything Airbus.

Because also, from Wikipedia: On 22 June 2011, Qantas announced that it had agreed to a compensation of AUD$95 million (£62 million/US$100 million) from Rolls-Royce. - skipping Airbus entirely.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#55

Post by gregjw »

paulmooreparks wrote: post #51

I flew on this exact same plane, VH-OQA, on November 4, 2019, from Singapore to Melbourne. While I was sitting at the gate, I remembered that line from Rain Main about "Qantas never crashed," and since that flight would be my first time flying on an A380, I wondered if any had crashed or had any other incidents. I looked up "a380 crash" on my phone, and what do you know? The first hit was a Wikipedia article about a…

yikes, im sure that didnt freak you out at all.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#56

Post by ygouzerh »

adaml_623 wrote: post #18

"Even the airplane itself ultimately survived: after a marathon repair that lasted 535 days and cost $139 million, the A380 Nancy-Bird Walton triumphantly returned to the skies in 2012." This quote amazes me. My understanding is that Airbus, Qantas, and probably Rolls Royce were willing to spend this much because it meant that the incident was not a "hull loss" and therefore not as bad a hit to reputation and safety…

One thing that might be taken into account is the delay between ordering a plane, and the delivery (can take up to 10 years), so 1.5 years and 139$ million is worth investing into, to keep revenue flowing earlier.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#57

Post by mr_toad »

mcapodici wrote: post #46
u1hcw9nx wrote: post #3

Turbine disk failure is one thing that can down a plane, and you can only reduce the probability so much. Fan blades and turbine blades can be contained by containment cases if they break off, but turbine disks can't. When a disk breaks, it's an uncontained engine failure. A 20 kg disk fragment flying at Mach 1 goes through everything. Airframes are have a 30-degree fragment spread cone around every disk stage. Airfr…

It is worse than even that: > Within the space of four seconds, the energy from the annulus gas flow accelerated the IP turbine past its critical speed, until centrifugal forces exceeded the ultimate strength of the nickel alloy disk. The red-hot, wildly spinning disk instantly fractured into several sections, which rocketed outward in multiple directions at incomprehensible speed.

“It goes without saying that if any of the turbine fragments had entered the passenger cabin, there would have been injuries, if not fatalities, even if the plane later landed safely.”

They got lucky.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#59

Post by annzabelle »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #47
CursedSilicon wrote: post #4

One of my favourite memories of flying Qantas when I was younger was the inflight entertainment. If memory serves, they were celebrating some sort of milestone like "60 years without a fatal accident" or similar. Quite an impressive feat! I'm unclear if it was directly related. But the Qantas inflight entertainment system on our flight from Sydney to Los Angeles meanwhile contained about 12 seasons of the National Ge…

Watching Mayday on flights is one of my favorite things to do for some odd reason.

There's a podcast (that's been on "hiatus" for 6 years) that I used to listen to that would do an air crash segment. The show was called Hello Internet, and I would always try to queue up the air crash episodes for any flights I was on.

One of the hosts recently started a new podcast called Runway 23 that's mostly about air crashes, and his cohost is actually a Qantas pilot.

Re: Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)

#60

Post by Insanity »

gregjw wrote: post #55
paulmooreparks wrote: post #51

I flew on this exact same plane, VH-OQA, on November 4, 2019, from Singapore to Melbourne. While I was sitting at the gate, I remembered that line from Rain Main about "Qantas never crashed," and since that flight would be my first time flying on an A380, I wondered if any had crashed or had any other incidents. I looked up "a380 crash" on my phone, and what do you know? The first hit was a Wikipedia article about a…

yikes, im sure that didnt freak you out at all.

I'd be insanely stressed about this. While at the same time realizing that logically it has flown for _years_ without incident afterwards.
Post reply on HN