Qantas suspends A380 flights

QANTAS has suspended all of its A380 aircraft services after one of its jets made a dramatic emergency landing in Singapore, the carrier's chief executive Alan Joyce has announced.

He also said none of the 433 passengers or 26 crew was injured when the engine of the Sydney-bound QF32 exploded over Indonesia, forcing it to turn back, on Thursday.

"We have decided that we will suspend all A380 takeoffs until we are fully comfortable that sufficient information has been obtained about QF32," he told media in Sydney on Friday.

"We will suspend those A380 services until we are completely confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met."

The explosion occurred over the Indonesian island of Batam shortly after QF32 took off from Singapore's Changi Airport this morning.

Qantas said the Airbus A380 plane's second engine had "shut down".

Mr Joyce said the passengers had left the aircraft in Singapore and would spend the night in hotel accommodation.

"Qantas will be operating a replacement aircraft that will fly to Singapore tonight and will depart tomorrow with all the passengers on board," he added.

Mr Joyce said the airline's investigation into the incident "will take as long as we need to take until we are comfortable".

He said the A380 was a fantastic aircraft.

"This issue ... an engine failure has been one that we haven't seen before ... so we're obviously taking this very seriously because it's a significant engine failure," he said.

"It looks like it's an uncontained engine failure but it's too early to speculate and will involve us doing a detailed investigation with the manufacturer Airbus and the manufacturer of the engine Rolls Royce."

Mr Joyce said this particular aircraft was the first A380 for Qantas and was bought two years ago.

Mr Joyce said the airline did not have previous concerns about the engines.

"We do take take our safety reputation and our safety standards absolutely seriously and we're not going to take any risks with passenger safety."

Mr Joyce said there would be some disruptions for passengers as the investigation took place.

"There are two flights due to depart Los Angles tonight and one flight to depart Sydney tonight - they will be suspended," he said.

"We will be accommodating passengers in hotels, making sure they're looked after appropriately and we will be using the rest of our fleets to accommodate passengers on appropriate flights going forward.

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