Qantas says 40 of the world’s Airbus A380s need engine swaps.

Airport news for Flights,Travel on 18/11/2010.

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Australian airline Qantas says 40 Rolls-Royce engines on Airbus A380s in service around the world need to be replaced in order to make them safe again. The scramble to check and replace engines was kicked off when one engine on a Qantas A380 broke up in dramatic fashion earlier this month.

Such a high figure represents roughly half of the Rolls-Royce engines presently being used on A380s. The A380s superjumbo is the biggest passenger jet in the world. Each one costs about $350 million.

Alan Joyce, CEO at Qantas, said the airline had been in talks with Airbus and Rolls-Royce. He said Qantas understood from those talks that around 40 engines need to be replaced. He said his own airline has already replaced three engines on its own A380s and there could still be more.

On 4 November, a Qantas A380 carrying 466 people was forced to return to Singapore Airport and make an emergency landing after one of its engines blew up about 15 minutes after take-off. The Rolls-Royce engine had suffered an oil fire, which led to core components of the engine being rained upon an Indonesian island below. Nobody on the ground or on the aircraft was injured in the incident.

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