Qantas Grounds A380s After Engine Incident

Qantas last night grounded its fleet of six A380s after an engine on flight QF32 leaving Singapore was ripped apart by an explosion.

The incident could have implications for the worldwide fleet of super-jumbos.

The airline was last night scrambling to find additional aircraft to carry passengers who were on the stricken super-jumbo and could not say when it would reinstate the A380 jets.

Parts of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine ripped through the A380's wing, Qantas's first aircraft named after aviator Nancy-Bird Walton, while others fell to the ground over the Indonesian island of Batam. Pieces of debris, the largest a hatch or hold door, fell on 12 locations in the city including the roof of an elementary school, where watching students narrowly escaped injury.

It's the first incident of this type to happen on any A380.

The aircraft was six minutes into the flight to Sydney and at 6000ft on the critical, high-energy climb when the engine came apart.

Three senior captains on the flight found themselves deluged with 54 error messages as the plane's sophisticated computers registered the extent of the damage to the aircraft.

Witnesses on the ground near Batam, on the Indonesian island of the same name, initially thought the aircraft had exploded and said they saw flames and smoke.