ANOTHER Qantas jet engine failure

Just dumb luck that the engine failed on the ground. A couple of minutes later and it could have been a disaster. Losing power in the middle of a climb is VERY dicey. Do Qantas do ANY maintenance on their planes?

ANOTHER Qantas jet engine blew up yesterday, this time as the plane was just seconds away from take-off at Sydney Airport.

Flight QF11 to Los Angeles, carrying 344 passengers, was on the runway preparing to take off at 3.30pm when its number one engine suffered a complete failure. Passengers onboard the 747 described hearing "a loud bang" and then watching as black smoke poured out of the crippled engine. The captain then reportedly announced over the intercom that the engine had "cooked itself".

A spokeswoman for Qantas said the plane was on the runway and cleared for take-off when it had a "low-speed engine failure". "As it was taxiing for take-off, it had a low-speed engine failure of the number one engine," the spokeswoman said. "(It) was in the process of speeding up when the engine failed."

She could not confirm the report of the captain's diagnosis. "I don't have those details, but there was a noise and an indication in the cockpit ... it was a contained engine failure, there was no fire," she said.

The stricken aircraft remained on the runway for 30 minutes while engineers assessed it before it was cleared to taxi back to the gate under its own power. The spokeswoman said the passengers disembarked at the gate and a replacement 747 aircraft was scheduled to leave at 7pm. It finally took off at 7.38pm.

It was too early to tell what had caused the engine failure but engineers were "obviously inspecting it" she said.

Yesterday's incident is the latest in a shocking run for the national carrier, which had to ground its entire A380 fleet in November after one of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines exploded in mid-air shortly after take-off from Singapore.

The total cost of grounding its entire fleet of A380s, and replacing 16 of the A380 engines, has been estimated at $80 million.

The day after the A380 near-disaster, a Qantas 747-400 aircraft had a mid-air incident, with flames bursting from an engine just after take-off from Singapore.

SOURCE