Qantas Airways Ltd extended the grounding of its Airbus SAS A380 fleet to a week as it continues inspections of Rolls-Royce Group Plc engines following a mid- flight explosion.
The planes won’t fly for at least another 72 hours as engineers probe potential oil leaks found in three engines, Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce told reporters in Sydney today. The carrier expects to clear a passenger backlog and resume normal services by tomorrow as it uses other planes and chartered aircraft to offset the loss of the six A380s, he said.
Qantas fell the most in almost a month in Sydney trading as it works to reassure travellers following the A380 incident on November 4 and a separate Boeing Co 747 engine failure a day later. Joyce said it was too early to estimate the cost of the disruptions caused by the loss of the 450-seat A380s, which represent about 17 per cent of Qantas’s international capacity.
“We are not going to take any risks whatsoever,” Joyce said. “We will not be operating the fleet until we are sure we can ensure safety.”
The Sydney-based carrier grounded the four-engine A380s after the November 4 blowout forced an emergency landing in Singapore. The Boeing 747 landed in the city-state a day later after the failure of one its engines, which were also made by London-based Rolls-Royce. The airline has said the incidents were unrelated.
Qantas fell 2.1 per cent to A$2.80 at the 4.10 pm market close in Sydney, the largest decline in almost a month. The stock has fallen 6.4 per cent this year, compared with a 1.9 per cent drop in the benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index.
The airline is putting stranded A380 passengers, including 500 people in Los Angeles, in hotels and providing meals and international telephone calls.