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The discovery of five baby rats in a cabin compartment on a Qantas jet has caused a flight to be grounded.

Qantas's mechanical woes continue, with an aircraft flying from Adelaide to Melbourne forced into rapid descent after its cabin depressurised. Oxygen masks dropped in the Boeing 737 400 with 99 passengers onboard after its cabin lost pressure about 30 minutes out from Melbourne on Tuesday morning. 'The flight crew requested a rapid descent to 10,000 feet,' a Qantas spokeswoman told AAP. 'The aircraft landed without incident and no medical assistance was required.' She said the cause of the depressurisation was not known, but it could have resulted from an air conditioning fault. One passenger told ABC radio the depressurisation caused...

A QANTAS flight from Sydney to New York was diverted to Fiji due to an engine problem yesterday - the latest in a string of troubles for the Australian flagship airline. The incident follows an engine blowout on another Qantas 747, as it was seconds away from takeoff at Sydney Airport on Saturday. The two engine issues are the latest in a shocking run for the national carrier, which had to ground its entire A380 fleet in November after one of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines exploded in mid-air shortly after takeoff from Singapore.

THERE'S been another engine failure on a Qantas aircraft, this time as it was preparing to take off at Sydney Airport. Flight QF11 to Los Angeles, carrying 344 passengers... Passengers on the 747 described hearing "a loud bang" and then watching as black smoke poured out of the crippled engine. The captain then reportedly announced over the intercom that the engine had "cooked itself". A spokeswoman for Qantas said the plane was on the runway and cleared for take-off when it had a "low-speed engine failure".

<p>FEARS of jet fuel gushing from ruptured tanks gripped the pilots of the crippled Qantas A380 superjumbo after the emergency landing in Singapore last month.</p> <p>In the first account by a member of the flight crew, senior Qantas check-captain David Evans reveals the most dangerous period during the three-hour drama was during the 50 minutes it took to offload the 469 passengers and crew, reported the Herald Sun.</p>

THE crew of a crippled Qantas airliner averted disaster last month. As the crew of Flight QF32 began to reconfigure the damaged A380 aircraft for landing in Singapore, they were bringing in the superjumbo without many of the systems they took for granted and with only one engine functioning normally. Only the No 3 engine had reverse thrust, no leading edge slats were available, there was limited aileron and spoiler control and anti-skid braking was restricted, an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report said yesterday. The nose wheel steering was limited and the pilots knew the nose was likely to pitch...

NEW details have emerged revealing just how close Qantas flight QF32 came to disaster earlier this month. Turbine fragments flew out of the plane’s engine when it exploded in mid-air, severing cables in the wing, narrowly missing the fuel tank and taking out flight control systems during the November 4 incident, according to a preliminary report by Airbus. The pilots were forced to deal with an "unprecedented" number of issues during the two-hour ordeal, Vice President of the Australian and International Pilots Association, Richard Woodward, said. “The amount of failures is unprecedented,'' Mr Woodward, a Qantas A380 pilot who has...

Airlines give strongest sign yet that Rolls-Royce knew of engine fault before 1 blew out

SYDNEY (Reuters) – The world's fleet of Airbus A380 aircraft will need to replace around 40 Rolls-Royce engines to ensure safety after one such engine broke apart in flight this month, Australia's Qantas said on Thursday. That would represent about half of all Rolls-Royce engines currently in service on A380 aircraft, the world's largest passenger plane with a list price of around $350 million each. "We've been talking to Airbus and Rolls-Royce and we understand that the number (of engines to be replaced) is around 40," Qantas Chief Executive Alan Joyce told reporters. "We've already replaced three and there could...

(CNN) -- A Qantas Airways flight carrying 199 passengers was forced to turn back to Sydney, Australia, on Monday because of a technical problem, the airline said. Specifics of the Boeing 747's technical problem were not immediately clear, Qantas spokesman Simon Rushton said. The flight was bound for Argentina. The flight landed without incident and everyone aboard the aircraft was fine, Qantas said.

Rolls Outlines Trent 900 Modification Plan By Max Kingsley-Jones kingsley.jones@aviationweek.com LONDON Rolls-Royce says that last week’s uncontained failure of a Trent 900 on a Qantas Airbus A380 was caused by the malfunction of “a specific component” in the turbine area, which will be addressed by a modification programme across the fleet. Meanwhile Airbus boss Tom Enders has warned that the problem may impact A380 deliveries this year and next. Rolls says that the investigation and Trent 900 engine inspections launched in the wake of the QF32 incident on Nov. 4 has led it to draw two key conclusions. It confirms...

INVESTIGATORS probing the A380 engine saga found an oil fire may have led to the mid-air engine explosion last week that seriously damaged a Qantas jet, the Herald Sun reported today. Details of what is believed to have occurred were revealed in an emergency directive by the European Aviation Safety Authority to all airlines which bought super jumbos fitted with the now suspect Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine. Singapore Airlines and German carrier Lufthansa are the only other airlines flying Rolls-Royce powered superjumbos. In today's directive, the European safety regulator said that a preliminary study indicated an oil fire may have...

Australia's Qantas Airways has grounded its A380 fleet for at least another three days as it investigates oil leaks as a possible cause of the explosion which tore apart one of the super jumbo's engines last week. Qantas shares fell as its reputation as one of the world's safest airlines came under the spotlight and investors started counting the financial cost of grounding aircraft and compensating passengers.

The airline says the Airbus A380 aircraft, with 433 passengers and 26 crew aboard, made an emergency landing and all on board are safe and well. -- snip -- Christopher Lee told ABC Radio's PM program that there was an explosion about 15 minutes after take-off. "After leaving Singapore there was an explosion, there was a loud bang followed by another one, and then a rattling of the cabin," he said. "Some of the passengers then alerted cabin staff to the fact that there was an explosion, there was smoke or something to that effect. "At that [point] we were...

Qantas grounded its Airbus A380 fleet after one of the superjumbo jets blew out an engine Thursday, shooting flames and raining large metal chunks before making a safe emergency landing in Singapore with 459 people aboard.

Just coming in...plane crash in Indonesia...developing...

Only a headline so far.

Terrified passengers on a London-bound flight froze in their seats as a crazed man ran through the aisle of the Qantas jet screaming: 'You will all die!' Praying and yelling in a foreign language, the man threatened to kill himself and the passengers on the fully-laden jet several hours after it took off from Melbourne to fly to London via Hong Kong. Flight attendants managed to jump on the man and restrain him as he threatened to open an emergency exit door, shouting: 'It is God's will'. Passengers told of the flight of terror when they made calls to friends...

A jumbo jet pilot has told how he repeatedly had overwhelming urges to crash the planes he was flying. Bryan Griffin said that once he even had to 'immobilise' his arm to prevent him trying to down a Qantas passenger jet. His hand had 'involuntarily moved towards the start levers' on the journey to Singapore. The compulsion to cut out the engines was so strong, he had to leave the flight deck and did not return until he had calmed down. The pilot revealed during a compensation hearing how he was also afflicted by urges to scream and cry, ignored...

A QANTAS plane was just 400 feet off the runway at Melbourne Airport when the pilot was forced to abort a landing this morning, because of congestion. The 747 jumbo from Los Angeles was carrying 300 passengers when it had to pull out of the landing at the last minute. The pilot was forced to circle the airport until the runway was cleared.