SINGAPORE — A Qantas Airways jet was
forced to make an emergency landing after an engine appeared to explode
Thursday — showering debris onto houses and a shopping mall below —
shortly after take-off from Singapore.
Qantas said the Airbus A380 — which had stopped off en route from London, U.K., to Sydney, Australia — suffered a "significant engine failure" and grounded its fleet of six A380s.
The carrier said there had not been any explosion and landed safely with no injuries. Australian officials said no one on board was injured.
However, passengers among the 459 people on board variously reported hearing a "massive bang" or a "loud boom," with one describing the incident as "the scariest thing I had seen." The giant jet was forced to return to Singapore to make an emergency landing.
Witnesses on the western Indonesian island of Batam, near Singapore, reported hearing a large blast and seeing pieces of debris — including panels painted white and red — falling onto houses and a nearby shopping mall...
Pictures of metal, some the size of a door, were shown on Indonesia's MetroTV broadcaster, with people milling around.
"I heard a big explosion at around 9:15 a.m. and saw a commercial passenger plane flying low in the distance with smoke on one of its wings," Rusdi, a local resident, told MetroTV. "The debris started falling on my house."
'Like a shotgun'
The A380 has four engines and passengers said while the incident was frightening, the plane coped remarkably well...
"I just heard this massive bang, like a shotgun going off," Tyler Wooster told Australia's Network Nine television. "Part of the skin had peeled off and you could see the foam underneath, pieces of broken wires sticking out."
"My whole body just went to jelly and I didn't know what was going to happen as we were going down, if we were going to be OK," he added.
"I was sitting over the wing, where the No. 2 engine is. I was looking out of the window on the tarmac as we took off," Ulf Waschbusch, another passenger, told Reuters.
"Five minutes after take-off there was a loud boom, small pieces flying around (outside), it was the scariest thing I had seen. The plane was surprisingly stable all through. There was no panic," he said.
Christopher Lee told Australia's ABC radio the passengers heard a bang, and reported rattling in the cabin.
"Some of the passengers then alerted cabin staff that there was an explosion, there was smoke ... We circled in a holding pattern above Singapore for about an hour," he said. Passengers were kept informed at all times, he said.
Rosemary Hegardy, 60, of Sydney, told The Associated Press that she heard two bangs and saw yellow flames from her window.
"There was flames — yellow flames came out, and debris came off. ... You could see black things shooting through the smoke, like bits of debris," she said.
Investigation pending
The plane circled Singapore to burn fuel before making an
emergency landing. Passengers evacuated andwere in Singapore's Changi
airport. A Reuters reporter said the plane was surrounded on the ground
by emergency vehicles, but there was no sign of smoke or fire.
Thursday's incident was one of most serious for the A380, the world's biggest passenger jet, in its three years of commercial flight.
Qantas said it was grounding its A380 fleet pending a full investigation.
A Qantas statement said the double-decker plane experienced an "engine issue" soon after taking off from Singapore for Sydney. It made a safe emergency landing in Singapore at 11:45 a.m. local time with 433 passengers and 26 crew on board, the statement said.
Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce told a news conference in Sydney that the suspension would remain in place until Qantas was satisfied that it was safe for its A380s to fly.
"We will suspend those A380 services until we are completely confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met," Joyce said.
"The A380 is a fantastic aircraft. This issue of an engine failure is one we have not seen before. We are obviously taking this very seriously, because it was a significant engine failure," he added.
Separately, Singapore's Changi airport said in a statement that flight QF 32 left for Sydney at 9:56 a.m., and "for technical reasons the aircraft turned back to Changi," landing safely one hour and 50 minutes later.
Qantas spokeswoman Emma Kearns in Sydney, Australia, said there were no reports of injuries or an explosion on board.
Did volcanic ash affect engine?
When asked if the engine trouble was related to ash hurled
from the Mount Merapi volcano, which has been erupting since last week,
Kearns said she had no further details.
