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Comment on Qantas Airbus A380 engine failure in 2010 (2023)parent

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Like Boeing, there was organizational dysfunction leading to a direct safety issue.

During the development of the A380, the German and French sides were using different versions of the CATIA PLM software (i.e. CAD), which prevented people from looking at a single unified model of the plane. One concrete problem it caused was major problems with the wiring harnesses, which led to a 2 year delay in the program, and 3 early A380's which couldn't be sold. (Airbus kept one for test, the other two got sent to museums)

That manifested in this accident because the wing wiring was routed through the engine disk burst axes (a hazard which is explicitly accounted for) with insufficient redundancy. That created the dangerous situation where they couldn't turn off the engine after landing.

Thanks for mentioning the A380 CAD snafu, it made me rewatch one of my favourite clips [0].

The guy taking his hat off makes me burst into nervous giggles every time lol.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1k80h9j/...

Here's the companion, "we promise we fixed it."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBbA9uKP-mA

That created the dangerous situation where they couldn't turn off the engine after landing.

Which is vastly preferable compared to all of the dangerous situations just prior to that landing.

The vastly preferable situation was to have redundant wiring that properly complied with regulations, which was retrofitted in an airworthiness directive (safety recall) after the accident.

They also required engine software that detected the sudden increase in speed associated with a shaft break and automatically cut fuel.

Sort of. Rolls Royce voluntarily developed this software modification in response to learning that their reasoning about it never being able to happen was incorrect and being unable to concretely account for how it happened. EASA, which was not even the relevant safety authority for this incident, upon learning of its existence, only then required it to be installed on all A380 Trent 900 engines.

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