Podcast

Qantas grounds six A380s after oil leaks

Updated: 2010-11-09 16:31

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Tests have uncovered oil leaks in three Rolls-Royce engines on Qantas' grounded Airbus A380s, the airline's CEO said on Monday, as engineers tried to zero in on the cause of an engine failure on board one of the carrier's super-jumbo jets last week.

Australia's national carrier grounded its six double-decker A380s, the world's newest and largest airliner, after an engine burst minutes into a flight from Singapore to Sydney last week, scattering debris over Indonesia's Batam island. The plane was forced to make a safe emergency landing in Singapore.

Engineers conducted eight hours of extensive checks on each engine over the weekend.

On Monday, CEO Alan Joyce announced that engineers have discovered oil leaks in the turbine area of three engines on three different A380s.

"The oil leaks were beyond normal tolerances," Joyce told reporters. "So Rolls-Royce and our engineers have looked at what we have gathered as an accepted level and they have passed that threshold."

"All of these engines are new engines on a new aircraft type," he added.

"The engines are not performing to the parameters that you would expect with this."

Because of this, he said, all of the airline's A380s will be grounded for at least an additional 72 hours.

"We are not going to take any risks whatsoever," Joyce said. "We want to make sure we have a 100 percent safe operation."

Questions:

1. How many engines have oil leaks?

2. What is the model of the airbus?

3. What is the name of the airline?

Answers:

1. Three.

2. A380.

3. Qantas.

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（中國日報網(wǎng)英語點津 Helen 編輯）

About the broadcaster:

Lee Hannon is Chief Editor at China Daily with 15-years experience in print and broadcast journalism. Born in England, Lee has traveled extensively around the world as a journalist including four years as a senior editor in Los Angeles. He now lives in Beijing and is happy to move to China and join the China Daily team.