SYDNEY — Australia’s national airline is keeping its flagship superjumbos on the ground more than a week after a frightening midair engine disintegration, disrupting its most lucrative long-haul routes even as regulators and pilots say the Rolls-Royce motors are safe.
With its competitors’ Airbus A380s back in service, Qantas appears caught between a drive to zealously protect its reputation as the world’s safest airline, and the financial imperative to return its six spacious Airbus superjumbos to service on its grueling routes to the U.S. and Europe.
Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines are flying 13 of their 14 A380s again — one is undergoing engine changes — after carrying out extra inspections in the wake of the frightening engine problem on a Qantas flight to Singapore, which revealed a problem of potentially disastrous oil leaks in Rolls-Royce motors on the world’s largest jetliner.
“We’re not going to rush anybody, we’re not going to be putting a deadline on it. We’re going to make sure it’s absolutely right before we have this aircraft start flying again,” said chief executive Alan Joyce on Saturday at a celebration of the 90th anniversary of his airline, which began as a small-scale flier transporting pastoralists and miners across the Outback.
With no fatal crash since it introduced jet-powered planes in the late 1950s, Qantas enjoys a reputation made globally famous by the 1988 movie “Rainman,” in which Dustin Hoffman’s number-obsessed character insists it is the only airline he will use because “Qantas never crashed.” But a run of scares in recent years have tarnished that image.
The most serious — when a faulty oxygen tank caused an explosion that blew a 5-foot hole in the fuselage of a Boeing 747-400 over the Philippines — prompted aviation officials to order Qantas to upgrade maintenance procedures.
Then on Nov. 4, leaking oil caught fire in the motor of a four-engine Qantas A380, heating metal parts and causing the disintegration over Indonesia before the jetliner returned safely to Singapore.
Qantas grounded its A380s within hours and said four days later that the checks had revealed suspicious oil leaks on three engines on three grounded A380s.
It would be naive to think that Qantas management is not feeling financial pressure to return their A380s to the air, said Martin Chalk, head of the European Cockpit Association, a Brussels-based pilots’ union.
“But they know it’s not as strong as the pressure of adverse publicity if things go wrong,” he said. “Another incident would be much more damaging than the current commercial losses.”
