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Qantas jet makes emergency landing Airbus A380 plane landed in Singapore with smoke coming out of its underside after mid-air engine explosion.
Last Modified: 04 Nov 2010
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Asia-Pacific
Passengers were evacuated from the Airbus A380 after it made an emergency landing at Singapore airport [Reuters]A troubled Qantas airliner carrying 459 people has made an emergency landing in Singapore with smoke coming out of its underside.
Fire engines immediately swarmed the aircraft as soon is it landed on the tarmac on Changi Airport on Thursday.
"I can see smoke coming out of it," a reporter from the AFP news agency said.
The Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger plane, suffered engine trouble shortly after it had left Singapore.
The Australian government said no passengers or crew were injured during the ordeal.
'Scary moments'
Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, said that Qantas, Australia's flagship carrier, has confirmed that the plane had landed in Singapore.
"The 433 passengers have safely landed after two hours of very scary moments in the air," she said.
Initial media reports said the plane had crashed after an explosion over the island of Batam near Singapore.
"A piece of debris came down from the sky after witnesses reported a mid-air explosion over Batam," our correspondent said.
Debris of the Qantas jet was found in the Indonesian town of Batam after a mid-air explosion [Reuters] Indonesian TV showed pictures of debris on the ground near Batam airport which it said belonged to the Qantas flight, QF32. There was no independent confirmation.Singapore's Channel NewsAsia said the plane had initially circled Singapore to burn fuel before making an emergency landing at 0345 GMT.
A witness in Batam, told Indonesia's Metro TV: "After an explosion, the plane was still moving but smoke was trailing from one of its wings."
The plane was flying from London to Sydney via Singapore when it was forced to shut down an engine and return to Singapore's Changi airport.
"This is probably the most serious incident involving the A380 since it began flying in commercial service," Tom Ballantyne, chief correspondent of Orient Aviation magazine, said.
"There have been minor engine incidents before but nothing like this."
Qantas Airways grounded all of its six A380 aircraft after the incident.
"We will suspend all A380 takeoffs until we are fully confident we have sufficient information about (flight) QF32," Alan Joyce, Qantas' chief executive officer, told reporters in Sydney.
Qantas has never had a fatal accident. A mid-air explosion blew a minivan-size hole in the side of a Qantas 747-400 in 2008 which Australian air safety investigators blamed on an oxygen bottle.
Source:
Al Jazeera and angecies
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