Engineers discovered more problems on three more Rolls-Royce engines powering Qantas A380s.

Airport news for Flights,Travel on 08/11/2010.

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Engineers at Qantas has discovered new problems on three of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines powering the rest of the Australian airline’s fleet of A380 airliners. As a result, announced the Qantas CEO on Monday that the airline’s A380s would remain grounded for a few days more.

Qantas initially grounded all of its six A380 superjumbos after one engine suffered a massive failure shortly after the flight departed from Singapore. The plane, which was headed to Sydney, was forced to return to Singapore. Broken pieces of engine cowling, as well as internal engine parts, appeared to have been rained down on the Indonesian island of Batam. The flight returned safely and there were no injuries reported.

During an eight-hour check of each engine on the Qantas A380s over the weekend, they apparently found more problems. According to CEO Alan Joyce, engineers found oil where it should not be on three engines. Saying the engines were found to be ‘leaking’ oil during tests, he pointed out that these new engines should not be suffering such ‘issues at this stage’.

Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa also use Airbus A380s powered by Trent 900 engines from Rolls-Royce. Both carriers had also grounded their planes but after performing their own checks, they both resumed flying their A380s.

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