Mid-flight explosion! The day a Qantas A380 survived the impossible

Video from the channel Víctor Vic: Reconstrucción de Accidentes Aéreos about Airbus A380, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 19:42. Language: Spanish. Video type: Documentary.

The video reconstructs Qantas Flight 32 of 4 November 2010. That day, an Airbus A380 suffered the uncontained failure of its number 2 engine shortly after taking off from Singapore bound for Sydney and managed to land again with no injuries. The narration follows the chain of failures, the crew's decisions and the subsequent investigation, and includes dramatized cockpit dialogue.

The A380, in service since 2007, is the largest passenger aircraft. Its production ended in 2021 with 254 units built. Qantas, Australia's flag carrier, was one of its customers. The aircraft involved in the accident was VH-OQA "Nancy-Bird Walton," the first of its fleet, fitted with Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines. It was carrying 440 passengers and 29 crew, with five pilots in the cockpit led by Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny.

At about 7,000 feet, fragments from the turbine disc tore through the left wing and the underside of the aircraft. They opened a leak in the left wing's fuel tank, severed around 650 wires and knocked out one of the two hydraulic systems. The debris fell on the Indonesian island of Batam. The crew took 55 minutes to work through the ECAM warnings, landed roughly 40 tonnes over the maximum landing weight and had to lower the gear by gravity. The aircraft stopped about 150 m from the end of the runway. Engine number 1 could only be shut down more than three hours later, by drowning it in foam. The cause was a cracked oil pipe, which triggered a fire and an uncontained turbine failure. 39 Trent 900 engines with the same faulty pipe were replaced, and Rolls-Royce compensated Qantas with around $100 million.