Latest announcement by EASA on A380

Yesterday, EASA through issued on Emergency Airworthiness Directive(EAD) had announce that all A380 that uses the Trent 900 engine are allowed to fly but under the following condition.

The incident investigation continues. However inspection data from in-service engines has been gathered and analysed. The results show the need to amend the inspection procedures required by the EAD of 11 November 2010, retaining the inspection of the air buffer cavity and focusing on the oil service tubes within the high pressure and intermediary pressure structure.
This EASA directive still makes it mandatory for airlines operating Airbus A380 aircraft equipped with Trent 900 engines to perform repetitive inspections, a first one within a maximum of 10 flights, then at intervals not exceeding 20 flights. If any discrepancy is found following these inspections, further engine operation shall be prohibited.
The requirements of this EAD are considered interim action as the investigation led by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau is yet to deliver its final conclusions.( http://easa.europa.eu/home.php)

Looks like Rolls Royce company have no time to waste. Everything that related to the Trent 900 has to be conduct detail and seriously, followed by the incident on Qantas A380 . Besides, they are also put at risk by involving their sharing partners that work together on developing the Trent 900.

Today, Rolls Royce has developing variants of the Trent 900.

Does this will affect other variants then?

Qantas A380 engine explode

See now, how quite troublesome to the aerodynamic of the A380, after one of the engine exploded

Last week, a Qantas Airbus A380 had to make an emergency landing in Singapore, after one of its Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines exploded. Rolls-Royce has admitted there's aproblem. Well, this is how the problem looks when it actually happens.

As a result of this incident, Qantas has grounded its A380 fleet for two weeks, Singapore Airlines pulled all the Trent 900s from three A380s, and Lufthansa has changed one engine from one of its mastodon planes.

But there's more than the problem that made the engine to blow up mid-flight. According to Jon Ostrower at Flight Global, "the failure in the number two engine was uncontained, as parts penetrated the wing."

This happened because the engine is not designed to contain a failure on its entirety. Only the front part can contain the engine's blades in the case of an explosion, but the rest of the casing is not designed to do so. According to the US National Transportation Safety Board, uncontained disk failure is "mitigated by designating disks as safety-critical parts, defined as the parts of an engine whose failure is likely to present a direct hazard to the aircraft."

It seems that a) their safety design principle only looks good on paper, b) Rolls-Royce has not one but two problems in the Trent 900 engine and c) the passengers and crew got lucky. [Flight Global]

Source : Gizmodo