Quantas A380 Engine Failure: The story of an ops team pulling through a crisis

markmaunder.com

9 points·mmaunder··9 comments

Bit of a nitpick before I've even read the article: Qantas is an acronym and doesn't actually have a U after the Q.

Doh! Fixed. Keyboard-finger reflex.

There's not much of an article here.

I was on board QF32 as a passenger near where the engine exploded. Kudos to the wonderful team under Captain de Crespigny.

Feel free to ask anything - http://blog.ulfw.com/2010/11/im-safe/

Blog should point to the full hourlong piece. Coincidentally, I just watched this a few days ago and it was excellent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHb9gjOFEbA

Thank you! I found it accidentally and didn't realize the full piece had been uploaded somewhere. Added the link.

Four Corners did a great job with the report. Here's them filming my miniscule part of the program over at my apartment in Singapore - http://blog.ulfw.com/2011/09/abc-four-corners-on-the-qantas-...

why didn't it catch fire? brakes at 900C and a lake of jet fuel...

Jet fuel auto ignites at over 200C so if the brakes weren't heating the ground above that and there was no spark, then that would perhaps explain it. From what I've gathered, fuel misting is a big cause of the fiery crashes one sees. In '84 NASA tested an anti-misting additive in a controlled crash but it proved ineffective.

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