Exactly one year after a Qantas A380′s engine exploded over Indonesia, another superjumbo has been forced to divert due to engine trouble.
Flight QF31 from Singapore to London was diverted to Dubai after an oil problem.
Pilots shut down the number four engine of the Airbus A380 about 90 minutes after takeoff, Qantas spokeswoman Olivia Wirth said.
“Engineers are assessing that particular engine,” she said.
QF31 left Singapore at 12.32am local time (3.32am AEDT) on Friday on 14-hour flight to London.
Four pilots, 21 cabin crew and 258 passengers were on board.
The aircraft landed safely in Dubai 4.45am local time without further incident, the airline said.
Celebrity Stephen Fry is believed to have been one of the passengers on board QF31. He tweeted to his 3.3 million Twitter followers: “Bugger. Forced to land in Dubai. An engine has decided not to play.”
Fry later tweeted that passengers were still on board and he didn’t not know if they would be kept on the aircraft while the engine was repaired or allowed to disembark and enter the airport.
Fry is returning to London after touring Australia with his TV program QI.
It is a year to the day that flight QF32 from London to Sydney was forced to turn back to Singapore after the A380′s number two engine exploded, sending fragments of the turbine disc and other engine parts into the wing and fuselage.
The airline grounded all of its A380 jets for several weeks after the incident.
The problem was eventually found to have been caused by a leak from a flawed oil pipe.
None of the 433 passengers or 26 crew members was injured.
Qantas said the engine explosion and subsequent grounding of the fleet cost it an estimated $80 million.
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