nme7

June 24th was not a good day for HL7634. An engine fire after landing and parked at the gate. Thankfully no injuries.

More info here.

Could this be the reason why A380 departure times have been messed up lately?

SunLover

Yup; I am sitting in the INC OZ Biz lounge right now caught up in it.

Itin was 7/1 BKK-ICN-JFK A380 J. Heard about the engine fire, and on the day of departure went to the Asiana city office in Bangkok at 3pm. The lady there said yes you were confirmed and no problem with the flights.

Well... Get to the airport to be told 1) flight 1:45 delayed 2) flight down gaged to a A330 3) no problem with connections as the ICN-JFK leg was also delayed. New arrival time JFK was 4pm about 4.5 hours late. When the announced the reason for the delay on the airplane it was "airplane condition."

My huge gripe is the Asiana city ticket office HAVE TO HAVE KNOWN the issues. It was close to the time window for the for the ICN-BKK flight departure. If they had told be I could have switched to ANA via NRT no problem. Instead I land in NYC the Friday before a holiday weekend in prime time getaway hours.

Sorry OZ you have become my last alternative. Hate it when airlines play the kick the customer can down the road game.

SL

nme7

Since June 24th, the schedule for their A380s have been really messed up. 9 hour delays for certain flights. I did not see HL7634 scheduled for flights after the 24th. I assume there was more damage than just the engine. But today (July 1) it seems HL7634 is schedule for LAX-ICN on OZ201. Which means OZ202 is the flight taking the plane to LAX.
If it is indeed HL7634, then whatever repairs done on it must have taken longer than expected. Your flight today on OZ202 is on HL7634? If so, care to take some pictures of the far left engine? In these situations, it is not unusual to see different paint colors of the engine cowling and associated areas.

bobbybrown

According to one article, OZ221 JFK-ICN on 24th has been delayed by 29 hours due to the spark/fire on the engine, which was (duct-tape) fixed and carried passengers to ICN. But the aircraft is still grounded until now because the same spark happened again right after arrival into ICN. Asiana is rotating only 3 A380 fleets to daily JFK and LAX, and a few HKG/BKK. Delays may continue for the moment.

t_cliff

Looks like the said A380 is now grounded.


http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud...00789&RURL#jyk

http://m.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud...00838&RURL#jyk

nme7

It was grounded after landing back in ICN on June 25th. It has been repaired and a test flight was performed the morning of the 1st of July, flying to the east coast of Korea before landing back at ICN.

Then it went back into service that evening performing OZ202. As of this posting it is performing OZ201 back to Incheon.

With the current schedule of cities that OZ's A380s are serving, it is sad that a engine malfunction at JFK has had negative impact on scheduling for 3 other cities (LAX, HKG, BKK). I suppose it is just the nature of trying to keep the birds in the air. But if there was a problem at JFK, shouldn't they have tried to send a comparable replacement aircraft to JFK? Granted nothing else but an A380 has the seat capacity, but their 747 can perform the route. Even their A330 has the range, albeit with half the seating capacity.

Because of the engine fire, they had to juggle A380s to keep serving the routes, but with massively delayed scheduled was it acceptable to have them land at ICN at 2 or 3am?

Kacee

OZ apparently does not have a sufficiently large fleet nor the flexibility to handle unscheduled temporary loss of even one aircraft. They've still never fully recovered from the loss of the 772 at SFO three years ago. A financially solid airline would have replaced that frame.

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IIRC they were down to 3 A380s in late May or so (I think scheduled maintenance for a frame) and they scheduled a 744 to fly ICN-JFK-ICN every other day for 2 weeks and then ICN-LAX-ICN every other day for the next 2 weeks (which caused a great deal of consternation on this forum I believe) so they've definitely been able to deal with being down a frame... wonder why they don't have enough slack to bring a 744 on now.

Kacee

They plan in advance for scheduled maintenance, but apparently have no slack for further unscheduled loss of even a single airframe.

MostlyUA

Yup! The ICN-JFK flight was delayed over 3 hours on 7/3.

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Seems like HL7634 is flying again and the schedule seems to have recovered — 201, 202, 221 and 222 are basically on time today so fingers crossed that they've resolved all the issues...

Gasolin

Just flew OZ221 this week. A bit of delay for a reason I did not get, but nothing major (like 1 hour). Overall it was fine.

bunkunu

My OZ 201 flight was delayed by 4 hours. Looking at the ship's history, it looks like it's because the previous inbound OZ202 was delayed by 4.5 hours. I wonder if it is the same ship as the one being mentioned here