Qantas has begun legal action against Rolls-Royce following the explosion of an engine on one of its Airbus A380s.

The Australian flag carrier said the legal action would provide a back-up in case a settlement could not be reached, and allowed it “to keep all options available to the company to recover losses, as a result of the grounding of the A380 fleet and the operational constraints currently imposed on A380 services”.

Earlier, air safety investigators in Australia said they had identified a serious manufacturing fault with some of Rolls-Royce’s Trent 900 engines.
Rolls-Royce said the Australian findings were “consistent with what we have said before”.

Qantas has resumed flying some of its fleet of superjumbos after grounding them for safety checks following the incident on 4 November. 

According to the investigation, a misaligned component of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine used on a Qantas A380 exploded last month due to an excessively thin wall of an oil pipe.

This caused “fatigue cracking”, which prompted leakage and ultimately a fire.
Rolls-Royce said in a statement: “We have instituted a regime of inspection, maintenance and removal which has assured safe operation.

“This programme has been agreed in collaboration with Airbus, our airline customers and the regulators.”

The investigation into the engine explosion was carried out by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB).

It said: “This condition could lead to an elevated risk of fatigue crack initiation and growth, oil leakage and potential catastrophic engine failure from a resulting oil fire.”