Luckily none of the 466 passengers or the crew onboard were injured, as the plane landed safely with a charred engine and a wing damaged by shrapnel hurled from the turbine.
The faulty Trent 900 engine in A380 was designed by Rolls-Royce, the global power systems company based in the United Kingdom. There is an enormous amount of pressure exerted on Rolls-Royce by Airbus to fix the problem and prevent any further accidents. Meanwhile, Qantas has grounded six of its A380 planes.
Rolls-Royce has affirmed that it is working hard on identifying the root cause of the problem and will replace the defective part for all of the Trent 900 engines it manufactures.
“Safety is the highest priority of Rolls-Royce. This has been demonstrated by the rapid and prudent action we have taken following the Trent 900 incident. We have instigated a program of measures in collaboration with Airbus, our Trent 900 customers and the regulators. This will enable our customers progressively to bring the whole fleet back into service. We regret the disruption we have caused,” said Sir John Rose, the CEO of Rolls-Royce Group plc, in statement.
“This event and the consequent actions will have an impact on the [Rolls-Royce] Group’s financial performance this year. However the scale of our order book, the breadth and mix of our portfolio, the global nature of our business and our strong balance sheet makes Rolls-Royce a resilient business, and we expect continued underlying profit growth in 2010,” he added, reassuring the investors that the company is still on track with its profits.
The investors had welcomed the reassurance statement from Sir John Rose last week, and the confidence sent up its sunken shares back up 27 pence to 599 pence (US$9.58) on Wednesday, increasing the market value of Rolls-Royce by 1.3 billion pounds (US$2.07 billion). That is still however lower than before the incident, when the shares were 655 pence per share.
Stellar Year for Airbus
The Nov. 4 accident could slash some of the profits and reputation for Airbus, which until now has seen a tremendously profitable year with hundreds of deliveries for its A380 planes waiting in line. The UAE, the largest buyer of A380s with 90 planes on order, voiced concern over the quality of the engines, demanding the problem to be fixed immediately.
Airbus doesn’t rule out delays in delivery schedule in 2011, as the company needs to make sure the engines are 100 percent safe to prevent any further accidents.
“The customer has priority, and the priority is to keep the 39 aircraft flying or back in the air as quickly as possible, and I would not rule out some impact on the delivery schedule,” said Tom Enders, the Airbus CEO.
Airbus comes with two engine options: Rolls-Royce’s Trent 900 and an alternative engine dubbed “Engine Alliance” designed by General Electric Co. and Pratt & Whitney. Following the failure in Trent 900, many customers waiting on orders such as the UAE and China Southern Airlines Co. are considering switching to the alternative Engine Alliance instead.
Air France is already flying its A380s with alternative Engine Alliance engines and has had no reported issues so far.
