“If you are afraid of flying, do not read this news!” We will not make an introduction to our news that will cause you to panic. Remember, the safest means of transportation in the world is still airplanes. Our news today highlights a slightly different point. That simple mistake that almost caused the Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger plane, to crash. Here are the details and what happened to the Airbus A380 model plane weighing 560 tons…
A small design error could lead to a major disaster!
The calendars showed Thursday, November 4, 2010. An Airbus A380-842 belonging to Qantas Airlines took off from London and took off towards Sydney with 440 passengers. Known as the biggest bird of the sky, the A380 had a pleasant take-off with its 4 Rolls Royce engines.
Passengers were able to watch this takeoff second by second thanks to the special camera located at the tail of the plane. It was quite an impressive event that a huge structure weighing 560 tons could take off like a bird. But 4 minutes after takeoff, an explosion was heard.
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The parts coming out of the engine during the explosion caused damage to the wing and the connection point of the relevant engine. Control systems of the aircraft and engines were damaged. Of course, a serious atmosphere of panic began to occur inside the plane. Pilots and flight engineers were trying to understand what the problem was, but they couldn’t figure it out. Everything happened at once. All they knew was that one engine was disabled and they had to make an emergency landing.
The pilots and flight crew made an emergency landing using the remaining three engines. Nothing happened to anyone and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. If the pilots had not been able to land the plane, there would have been a real loss of life; we are talking about the lives of 440 passengers. So why did this engine explode? What went wrong on the plane?
The investigation into the incident was carried out by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) as Qantas is an Australian-owned airline. In the first findings, the reason was actually understood. There was a design flaw in the engines produced by Rolls Royce. And at that time, there were many Airbus A380s in use in the market. In short, there was a serious security vulnerability.
Coming to the design error, every engine needs oil. Thanks to this fluid, which prevents wear on constantly moving parts, engines have a long life. Of course, there are also pipes inside the engine that will carry this oil. This is where the problem starts. The wall thickness of one of the numerous synthetic oil-carrying pipes inside the engine is thinning. Of course, in this case, the part whose strength decreases cracks and synthetic oil leaks into the engine.
The oil entering the engine, which operates at high temperatures, becomes hot and causes a fire. This means the engine explodes. After the report on the issue is issued, Rolls Royce and the companies that issued the engine licenses are fined. Then, errors in all Airbus A380 engines on the market are fixed. We should point out that these planes are currently safe, but they have also experienced a disaster that was easily avoided.