I had the pleasure of flying on the QF A380's last month (LAX-MEL and SYD-LAX). It was an incredible experience.

Very sorry to hear about this.

One thing with regard to the Twitter picture. Look at the damage to the wing....this aircraft will definitely be out of commission for a while.

There looks to be fuel streaming out of the hole on the top of the wing. Not a fun flight!

Did you actually look at the graph you linked to? They nosedived when it was rumoured there was a crash, then recovered slightly when confirmed it wasn't. Finished up 0.7% over the previous day, but down on where they had been during the day up to 2pm.

The announcement about grounding the fleet then occurred after the market closed.

Unless something major + unrelated happens in the next few days, the press are prob going to give QF a hard time, so the share price could take some flack. Investing in airlines is a mugs game anyway...

Wow @ the response by other airlines, hope they get to the bottom of this asap :o

Also fascinating to see all the passenger-produced reports using cameras on board, hopefully something was taken that could aid in the investigation.

Sounds like a garden variety contained engine failure.

Uh....the whole point is that it is NOT contained.

I've drafted and negotiated dozens of jet aircraft engine warranty provisions in my career. They are often very heavily negotiated.

I do not work for Rolls-Royce, so I do not know exactly how they structure their contracts, but at my company, we would have the following warranty provisions:

1. A basic warranty for defects in material and workmanship, based on the shorter of a) time since delivery or b) total cycles (hours matter less as most engine deterioration happens on takeoff and landing) that provides for a repair or replacement warranty;

2. An extended warranty, based on cycles, which provides financial compensation should there be a part failure within the extended period; and

3. Performance guarantees that provide financial compensation should the engine not live up to certain pre-agreed performance metrics - these can either be "zero event" guarantees, such as an uncontained engine failure guarantee or rate based guarantees such as shop visit rate guarantees.

None of these benefits would make a customer whole, but can provide some significant compensation. It is industry standard to disavow responsibility for incidental, consequential, special and punitive damages, meaning that, assuming RR uses a similar structure (and we think they do), they would not be liable for such costs as dumped fuel, passenger reaccomidation and lost revenue.

That said, in the event of a big screw-up (or a small screw-up with a big customer), it is typical to provide compensation beyond what is required by contract. Typically such compensation is linked to incremental business.

Rolls' business model is to sell its customers a "Total Care" package, whereby they cover engine maintenance under a power-by-the-hour structure (i.e. for $X/per flight hour, you get all maintenance covered). Typically such an agreement covers unscheduled visits such as this -- it's a risk borne by Rolls. Of course, this engine may well be a BER engine (damaged beyond economic repair - i.e. it will cost almost as much to fix it as it would cost to replace it).

Also note that airlines always maintain a supply of spare engines, so, notwithstanding the grounding of the fleet and the airframe damage, an engine failure rarely grounds an aircraft for long. Spare nacelles, though, are a different animal entirely. They are much less well stocked as nacelles don't fail very often and they have a long on-wing time between overhauls.

Looks like a major PR problem for Rolls Royce as it was a RR 787 engine that exploded during test a few months ago.

That is why Boeing has a line up of over a dozen 787s at it Everett, WA site waiting for RR engines.

Is there a design flaw with newer RR engines (for A380 and B787) causing these engine explosions?

They likely have a similar core, albeit scaled up for the A380.

Sure did, was watching it regularly the whole afternoon trading after the news first first broke. You missed the point of my post - the market implies that RR has the most at stake and therefore the most to lose when an RR engine on a QF A380 malfunctions.

Further information on the Trent 1000 uncontained failure which occurred during ground testing in Derby:

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles...contained.html

Are all A380 flights cancelled?

AVHerald:

"Airbus and Rolls Royce have ordered all operators using Trent 900 engines on Airbus A380-800s to have their engines inspected immediately before the next takeoff.

This comes after an uncontained failure of a Qantas Trent 972, see Accident: Qantas A388 near Singapore on Nov 4th 2010, uncontained engine failure.

Singapore Airlines have already announced all their A380 flights will be delayed as result of these inspections."

sin - 1, syd - 1, fra - 1, lax - 3.

Sounds like you don't know what you're talking about :o