Regarding the almost mythical safety record of Qantas; please correct me if I'm wrong, but Qantas has had plenty of incidents and accidents. What they have never had is a loss of a human life, or loss of an airframe ("hull loss"). I believe a few years ago they paid more to have a 744 repaired than it was worth (ie. it was a technical write-off), just to maintain their zero hull loss record. They then sold it to another airline. Also, as pointed out before, this safety record relates to jet aviation only.

Wrong. VH.OJH was the Bangkok Bunker Buster .. ie the one that over ran BKK into the golf course. It is still flying for QF. I was on it recently .. a month or so ago.

And QF crashes have had fatalities, but that thankfully has been restricted to the aircraft before jets came along. I believe one such accident was at Cocos Islands

There's going to be a massive ripple-effect from this. Qantas just took something like 2500 long-haul seats out of service with zero notice, and even if the LH/SQ "groundings" are a day or so, it's going to put (quite literally) hundreds of thousands of people in the wrong place.

I'm actually in Dubai (for the first time) for a week, and if EK follows and even temporarily grounds their 380 fleet, I'll probably never get home. ;-)

Flight update:
* today's QF93 service (Melbourne-Los Angeles), normally operated by an A380, has been delayed by 24 hours
* QF12 and QF108 (both Los Angeles-Sydney) and QF94 (Los Angeles-Melbourne) have also been delayed by 24 hours. These flights were scheduled to depart Los Angeles on 4 November local
* QF11 (Sydney-Los Angeles) and QF31 (Sydney-London via Singapore) will operate to schedule, with B747-400 aircraft replacing A380 aircraft
* QF10 (London-Singapore) on 5 November will be operated by a B777 aircraft chartered from British Airways. A decision will be made later this morning regarding customers with onward travel to Melbourne

Hundreds of thousands? That is a big over exaggeration.

With the A380 grounded that is, as you say 2500 that are currently disrupted. With the 747 replacing scheduled A380 services already, the number of people disrupted would be lucky to reach 5000 let alone the hundreds of thousands your expecting.

ABC News 24 just announced that today's QF10 service from LHR to SIN will be operated by a B777 aircraft, which I assume means BA.

QF12 and QF31 are both to be operated by B747.

QF93, 94, 108, 11 are all delayed by 24 hours.

BA can get some 777s out of storage again then.

I fly on Wed, Nov 10th SFO-SYD so hopefully no issues with me. However, my friends are flying on Nov 11th LAX-SYD on the A380 (i guess now probably a B747).

I hope they get it all sorted by then, it would really suck for them to be delayed its an expensive and long awaited vacation for us.:(

You must mean B744...I can not remember BA start to store its B777 already...Since it is still a relatively young fleet.

Astonishing. 7 pages of comment and at cursory glance not a single one saying glad everyone on board is ok.

You mean apart from post 6, right?

Will hundreds of FT members offering platitudes make any difference really, though?

Seems unlikely, since EK's A380 fleet are all powered by the Engine Alliance GP7200. Lucky for you! ^ The only current operators of A380s with Rolls-Royce engines are LH, SQ and QF.

You mean Boeing as in the company that uses RR engines in it's planes

Guess you won't be flying them either then :rolleyes:

How many "spare" 747s does Qantas have? Will it be possible (after a couple of days and aircraft repositionings) for QF to substitute 747s for all of its A380 routes?

You can definitely see fuel exiting the wing in that shot. It's my understanding though that jet fuel has a relatively high flash point and unless there's a major spark, it wouldn't ignite. The Concorde had its afterburners on which of course ignited the fuel.