By Matt O'Sullivan
Qantas expects to keep its fleet of Airbus A380 aircraft for at least another 72 hours as investigations continue into last week's mid-air engine failure.
"Qantas will not return its A380 fleet to service until confident the issues have been identified and resolved," chief executive Alan Joyce said in a statement. "At this stage Qantas does not expect to operate the A380 fleet for at least another 72 hours."
Qantas shares fell as much as 4.2 per cent, as investors worried when the airline's fleet of superjumbos would return to full service. Shares recovered some of the losses in late trade, but still ended the day down 6 cents, or 2.1 per cent, at $2.80, continuing their slide from last week.
Qantas has six Airbus A380s, the first of which was delivered in 2007. The fleet has been grounded since Thursday when QF32 travelling to Sydney from Singapore was forced to turn back after a mid-air explosion of one of the aircraft’s four Trent 900 Rolls Royce engines.
The explosion showered debris over the Indonesia island of Batam, while other debris flew up and damaged the wing.
Mr Joyce said it was still ‘‘too early’’ to say what the grounding would cost the airline, which has had to replace flights on routes from Australia to London and Los Angeles and put displaced passengers up in hotels.
He said the focus was still on finding out what caused the explosion on QF32. Teams of engineers are conducting engine tests on the A380s, alongside crews from Airbus and Qantas.
‘‘Qantas will not return its A380 fleet to service until confident the issues have been identified,’’ he said. ‘‘At this stage, Qantas does not expect to operate the A380 fleet for at least another 72 hours.’’
Qantas is putting on additional flights from London, where 30 passengers are stranded, and Los Angeles, where 500 are, to clear the backlog within 24 hours.
Mr Joyce said Qantas had spare engines to replace the affected engines on the three aircraft - two of which are in Los Angeles and the third in Sydney.
Asked if Qantas would seek compensation from Rolls-Royce, Mr Joyce said the airline was working with Rolls-Royce and Airbus to solve the current engine issues.
Earlier today, Mr Joyce said checks had revealed problems with three Rolls-Royce engines on its A380s, meaning the six aircraft would remain grounded for the time being.
"On three of the engines what we have found is slight anomalies," Mr Joyce told ABC Radio. "Oil where oil shouldn't be on the engines and we are just trying to check what could the cause of that could be.
"These are new engines on new aircraft, they shouldn't have these issues at this stage, so it's given us an indication of an area for us to focus into."
Mr Joyce said Qantas hoped to have an idea of when its A380s would return to service in the "next day or so".
AAP