On 4 November Qantas
flight QF32, an Airbus A380 outbound from Singapore, ran into serious problems
when a turbine on its Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine suffered an uncontained
failure. We caught up with one of the five pilots onboard, who describes
how the crew professionally dealt with the incident, the sequence of events,
and how the most dangerous period was after they had landed. Captain David
Evans is a Senior Check Captain at Qantas with some 32 years of experience
and 17,000hrs of flight time. At the time of the incident he was in one of
the observers’ seat, and thus had a ring-side view of the drama as it
unfolded. The other flight deck crew were Richard de Crespigny (Pilot in
Command, 15,000hrs), Harry Wubben (Route Check Captain, 20,000hrs) Matt Hicks
(First Officer, 11,000hrs and Mark Johnson (Second Officer 8,000hrs). With
the Cabin Service Manager (Michael Von Reth) this team boasted some 140 years
of experience and over 71,000 flight hrs – a significant factor in the
successful outcome of the incident. We put a few questions to Captain Evans
on his amazing story.
