On 6 December 2023, an Airbus A380-842 aircraft, registered VH‑OQI and operated by Qantas Airways Limited, was undergoing a 3-day scheduled maintenance check at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), United States. 

On day one of the maintenance check, during a scheduled borescope inspection of the outboard left engine, a tool was left in the engine inlet. On the evening of 8 December, the aircraft was released to service and departed for Melbourne, Victoria. 

On 1 January 2024, the aircraft returned to the LAX maintenance facility for a 3-day scheduled maintenance check, where the missing tool was discovered in the outboard left engine low‑pressure compressor. The aircraft had flown 34 cycles totalling 293.74 hours with the tool in the outboard left engine.

What the ATSB found

The ATSB found that the tool was not located during the end of task foreign object inspections, which resulted in it remaining in the engine. The Qantas Engineering lost tool procedure was not commenced prior to the aircraft being released to service and the certifying engineer did not follow up on the lost tool, prior to releasing the aircraft to service. 

What has been done as a result

On 2 January 2024, a Qantas Engineering internal incident report was raised with an immediate action to brief staff on the importance of ensuring that all tooling is returned and actioned by tool store personnel. A Qantas Engineering internal investigation was completed and on 4 March 2024, the executive manager for Qantas Engineering released an internal safety directive for immediate action requiring all Qantas Engineering employees to meet the company tooling control requirements without exception.

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Australian Border Force (ABF) has been suffering from a computer system outage. There has also been a grass fire at Sydney Airport and a Qantas domestic flight returned to Sydney after an engine failure.

The ABF SmartGate outage lasted for 2 hours causing delays in arrivals and departures, with Sydney and Melbourne airports the worst affected. During the outage extra ABF officers were “surged” to manually process passengers between 10am and noon. The cause of the outage is still under investigation. ABF said no flights were impacted.

Local reports state that QF520, a flight from Sydney to Brisbane, was mid take off when passengers heard a loud bang. The plane ended up “circling” over Botany Bay before landing safely with 174 passengers on board.

Around the same time a grass fire started near Sydney’s 3rd runway. Both ARFF and Fire and Rescue New South Wales Fire (FRNSW) attended the fire. It’s not yet known whether the engine failure and fire are related. All flights in and out of Sydney were halted as a result of the fire.

Earlier today a Brisbane-bound flight made an emergency-return to Sydney Airport, landing safely just after 1pm This departure of aircraft coincided with a grass fire along the eastern side of the airport’s parallel runway, which was brought under control by teams from the Aviation Rescue Fire Fighting Service. It’s not clear at this stage if the two incidents are linked and investigations are continuing. With the safe arrival of the aircraft, Sydney Airport’s priority is to conduct a full inspection of its parallel runway and to return it to service as quickly as possible

Sydney Airport spokesperson

One of our flights to Brisbane experienced a suspected engine failure after take-off from Sydney Airport this afternoon. After circling for a short period of time, the aircraft landed safely at Sydney Airport. Our pilots are highly trained to handle situations like this and the aircraft landed safely after the appropriate procedures were conducted. We understand this would have been a distressing experience for customers and we will be contacting all customers this afternoon to provide support. We will also be conducting an investigation into what caused the engine issue

Qantas Chief pilot Richard Tobiano

FRNSW Superintendent Adam Dewberry told local media, “We’ve got a number of fire trucks on scene working to contain or extinguish a grass fire, a pretty large grass fire adjacent to the third runway. Fortunately due to the layout it is contained, it’s not going to go anywhere. But we do need to get this fire out so the airport can resume its operations again.”

A Sydney Airport spokesperson said “Sydney Airport’s main runway is operational, however, passengers should expect some delays and we thank everyone for their patience.”

In a further update, Qantas has confirmed the engine had an contained failure.

Qantas engineers have conducted a preliminary inspection of the engine and confirmed it was a contained engine failure. While customers would have heard a loud bang, there was not an explosion

Qantas spokesperson

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A Quantas A380 (registration VH-OQB) landed at London Gatwick early Monday, November 4 2024.

The aircraft flew from Sydney via Singapore as a charter flight #QF335 and landed at 07:18 GMT.

Less than 3 hours later, the A380 departed LGW Airport to Sydney via Singapore.

Seven months ago, another A380 charter flight was operated from Australia to London Gatwick.

It was the first time a Qantas A380 landed at London Gatwick.

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Passengers aboard Qantas flight #QF59 from Sydney, Australia to Tokyo Haneda, Japan were forced to watch intimate scenes from film known as “Daddio” .

Reddit user MariKontan documented the experience on the social media platform:

“After a one-hour delay, the pilot decided to take off anyway, but the only option left was for the crew to play a movie on every screen – and it was impossible to pause, dim, or turn it off. Here’s the kicker: the movie they played was extremely inappropriate. It featured graphic nudity and a lot of sexting – the kind where you could literally read the texts on screen without needing headphones.”

The movie was played on every screen in the cabin and couldn’t be switched to another movie.

Daddio is a 2023 film starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn about a woman and her taxi driver revealing personal revelations to one another on a ride to Manhattan. The movie is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for strong language, sexual themes, and brief, graphic nudity.

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