A380 Engines Recalled by Rolls Royce, Problems for Qantas

Roll-Royce, the engine maker responsible for the Trent 900 engine has asked Airbus to return some engines from production lines in order to use them to replace faulty engines on airplanes currently in service.

The move comes in light of a number of high profile incidents involving A380s used by Qantas over the last 10 days. A Sydney-destined A380 was forced to land in Singapore after part of an engine disintegrated in midair. The incident caused Qantas to ground its fleet of six A380s, while engineers ascertained the cause of the explosion was limited exclusively limited to the Trent 900 engine.

Qantas, Singapore Airlines Ltd. and Deutsche Lufthansa AG may need to replace one component in each of the engines powering their Airbus SAS A380 fleets, Rolls-Royce, the world's second-largest maker of engines, said in an email.

"Over a period of time, it is likely we will replace the relevant module on all engines," Rolls-Royce said. "We seek to minimize disruptions and this program will enable our customers progressively to bring the whole fleet back into service."

A380s out of service

Singapore Air had pulled three A380s out of service last week to change one engine each aircraft - Nicholas Ionides, a spokesman for the airline, told Bloomberg that all three airplanes would be back in service today.

The disruption could have a knock-on-effect on further A380 production, with Rolls-Royce expected to deliver over a dozen A380s primarily to Singapore Airlines, Qantas and Lufthansa by the end of 2011.

"Until this problem is fully resolved I think the situation with the delivery of A380 to customers... will be in jeopardy," Standard & Poor's analyst Sukhor Yusof said.

But both Singapore Airlines and Qantas, with a combined 22 A380s still to be delivered, said on Tuesday they had not been informed of any delivery delays.

Qantas fell 2.5 percent to A$2.72 as of 1:44 p.m. in Sydney trading, while Singapore Air dropped 0.1 percent in Singapore. Rolls-Royce declined 2.3 percent in London yesterday, when Lufthansa gained 0.5 percent in Frankfurt.

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