Rolls-Royce wird sich wohl von Qantas einiges anhören müssen.
Zitat (Ich hoffe, das ist legal, sonst bitte ich die Mods um Löschung des Zitates) aus der Aviation Week vom 22. November, S. 11:
"Rolls may have known of Trent 900 failure risk.
As the Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation progresses into the Nov. 4 inflight uncontained failure of a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on a Qantas Airbus A380, it has emerged that Rolls may have known about deficiencies well before the incident.
Rolls, which has said very little publicly, revealed a week after the incident that a component failure in a Trent 900 caused an oil fire that led to "the release of the intermediate pressure turbine disk." It says that it will address the issue through inspections and by "the replacement of the relevant module according to an agreed program."
However, Aviation Week has learned that 15 of the 16 engines on Lufthansa´s four A380 already incorporate an upgrade that addresses the risk of oil leakages. According to industry sources, the Lufthansa engines are equipped with new casings around a bearing that is strongly suspected as the source of the oil leak. Earlier versions of the Trent 900 did not have that casing. Three of the four Lufthansa A380s were delivered well before Nov.4 and only one of the engines on its first A380, which was delivered in May, does not comply with the latest standards and needs replacing.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce expects the airline will have to remove and replace up to 14 of the Trent 900s powering the airline´s six groundes A380s. Citing Rolls, Joyce says the total replacements for all operators could reach around 40 engines.
Another hint that the problem may have been identified much earlier is that Rolls is pulling engines from A380s in final assembly to help Qantas, in particular, to replace earlier versions. Given that A380 engines spend a long period on wing before delivery, because aircraft must be ferried for cabin-furnishing, it would suggest enhancements were introduced at least several months ago. It is not clear so far, however, why Rolls did not order the replacement of earlier versions for in-service aircraft. One industry official believes the manufacturer seriously underestimated the extent of the problem."
Bitte erspart mir eine wörtliche Übersetzung. Zusammengefasst bedeutet der Artikel:
-Rolls kannte das Problem schon länger.
-Es wurde eine Modifikation des Triebwerkes entwickelt und schon länger in Triebwerke neuer Flugzeuge eingebaut.
-15 von 16 LH-Triebwerken waren schon bei Auslieferung modifiziert, nur bei MA war ein TW noch nicht modifiziert.
-Triebwerke hängen schon relativ lange vor der Auslieferung an der Fläche (u.a. wegen Überführung zur Kabinenausrüstung).
-Daraus folgt, dass die Modifizierungen an neuen Treibwerken schon vor mehreren Monaten begannen.
-Bisher ist nicht klar, warum Rolls keine Anweisung gab, die Triebwerke von in Betrieb befindlichen Flugzeugen zu wechseln oder zu modifizieren.
-"Ein Vertreter der (Luftfahr-)Industrie glaubt, dass der Hersteller das Ausmaß des Problems ernsthaft unterschätzt hat."
Zum Glück (u.a. für die Verantwortlichen bei Rolls-Royce) war das nur ein schwerwiegender Vorfall und kein Totalverlust.
Viele Grüße
Werner
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Wer Rechtschreib- und Tippfehler findet, darf sie wie immer behalten.