UPDATE: ALL QANTAS A380S HAVE BEEN GROUNDED
Qantas have really had a rough past year, and it?s just become rougher. The airline has been forced to ground one of its A380s when a fuel leak turned into an issue that could not be serviced in an appropriate time frame. The flight, QF10 from London to Melbourne, was delayed by 13 hours as Qantas brought in a 747-400 to take the place of the A380. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that it is the second A380 incident in five weeks after another Qantas mega plane was grounded at Los Angeles.
The news does no favours to Qantas, especially as its golden route, Sydney to Los Angeles, comes under increasing pressure from competition. V Australia launched last week with a new fleet of Boeing 777-300ERs to take on the route. Add to this the fact that LAX continues to maintain that they are struggling to handle the A380 (Qantas is the only airline that serves LAX with the A380) and it?s not looking very rosy at all.
The salt in the wounds is that the other two A380 carriers, Singapore Airlines and Emirates (who each have more A380s in their fleet than Qantas) have had few troubles introducing the new plane.
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