from Crikey ….. 

Geoff Dixon replaced by younger Qantas model 

Stephen Mayne writes: 

Outgoing Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon has just discovered that his new chairman Leigh Clifford, the former Rio Tinto CEO, is one of the true hard men of Australian business. 

Fancy turfing Dixon straight after the worst Qantas safety incident in history and not even giving him some quotes in today’s CEO succession press release.  

At 42, Irishman Alan Joyce will be the youngest CEO of a top 50 company and he was not Dixon’s preferred choice. 

Dixon got to the top in 2001 by courting former Qantas chairman Margaret Jackson and almost made a fortune out of last year’s private equity deal where board processes failed and conflicts of interest were rife. 

Jackson and her biggest board supporter, James Packer, walked the plank straight after the bid failed, although Clifford didn’t formally take over as chairman until after last year’s AGM. Packer was a top 20 Macquarie Bank shareholder while his great mate Nicholas Moore was driving the APA bid.

Packer is also known to be close to Dixon, having invited him onto the PBL board in early 2006, shortly after his father died. 

Clifford replaced Jackson knowing full well that his primary job was to win board support for a purge of those who failed most of the governance rules last year. 

However, given that all the Qantas directors supported the private equity process, the onus was on Clifford to rebuild the board before he could strike. 

So far, he has added three new directors -- Rio Tinto director Richard Goodmanson, former Allco director Barbara Ward and Paul Rayner, a Clifford associate from their days together in London. 

Former Qantas CEO James Strong and CommBank chairman John Schubert were said to be the two other Flying Kangaroo directors keen to move on Dixon. 

Strong didn’t appreciate the campaign Dixon ran with the board, and especially Jackson, to replace him as CEO in 2001 and was also miffed when Dixon and Jackson rebuffed his attempts to land the Qantas chairmanship last year. 

Finance director Peter Gregg was considered a likely successor to Dixon, but he was also part of the conflicted management team. Indeed, when asked if it was true he'd gone fishing in Ireland with Mark Carnegie, the Qantas adviser who stood to pocket a large slab of the $96 million in success fees if the APA deal went through, he replied as follows at the 2007 AGM: 

I like to fish and I regularly fish when I can get the opportunity. Yes, I did go fishing with Mark Carnegie a number of months after the deal collapsed, but I also do a lot of other things with Mark Carnegie like aiding him in some of the charities he is involved with for indigenous children and for children in overseas depressed countries, so I make no apologies of going fishing, but I do reject any insinuation that I did something that was illegal or under cover in this process. I don't think you have any right to make that suggestion. 

Alan Joyce was the least tainted of the internal candidates by the private equity process and his execution at Jetstar has also been Geoff Dixon’s most important achievement as CEO. He’s the right man for the job. 

Peter Gregg will presumably have more time for fishing in the future.

Airlines around the world 'mishandled' 42 million bags in 2007 and irretrievably lost more than a million of them, a pressure group has said.

The Air Transport Users Council (AUC) report said the problem was the worst it had been in recent years.

Some airlines were trying to improve baggage handling but passengers were not being fairly compensated, it said.

Complaints showed travellers without receipts for lost items were not being fully reimbursed, the AUC said.

In other cases, airlines were taking into account the depreciating value of items.

AUC chairman Tina Tietjen said: "If something goes wrong, airlines should be prepared to compensate their passengers fairly.

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see toon at top...

Not even officers from Israeli security service Shin Bet can escape the scourge of lost luggage it seems.

A bag belonging to agents travelling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was mistakenly put on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, not to Washington.

Alarmingly the bag contained four 9mm Glock handguns, which are now missing.

A Shin Bet spokesman told the AP news agency that it is not known whether the guns went missing before or after the luggage was put on the wrong flight.

The Israeli officers were accompanying Mr Netanyahu to Washington for White House talks with President Barack Obama.

Checked in

NBC News reported that the handguns had, in accordance with security procedures at New York's John F Kennedy airport, been placed inside checked luggage.

see toon at top...

Airlines are being accused of keeping millions of pounds for themselves which ought to be refunded to passengers.

Anyone who fails to take a flight they have booked should be able to reclaim the tax element.

But the consumer organisation, Which? says most airlines make it too difficult to get that money back.

"In some cases it costs at least twice as much to reclaim the tax as the tax itself," says Which?'s Rochelle Turner.

In most cases passengers who miss, or deliberately fail, to catch a flight, are unable to reclaim the cost of the flight itself.

Cost of claiming

But they should be able to reclaim the Air Passenger Duty (APD) which varies from £11 per person on a flight within Europe, to £110 for a long-haul first class flight.

A family of four flying economy from London to Miami currently pays £200 in the passenger tax.

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Hahahahahhaaaaaa........ Now, do the airlines pay the tax to the government whether YOU board or not? Yes, that is the question...  The next question is "should they or not?" Or is the extra tax paid by airlines to governments, calculated by PLANE rather than by PASSENGER? And do pigs fly?

Singapore Airlines has grounded three A380 airliners in Melbourne, Sydney and London amid concerns over their engines.

A spokeswoman says the airline will be changing the engines on the planes following precautionary checks carried out after last week's emergency incident involving a Qantas plane.

Singapore Airlines says flights out of the affected cities will be delayed, but it is trying to minimise the impact on passengers.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/10/3062357.htm?section=justin

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Singapore Airlines has announced that it will change the engines on three of its A380 planes.

Rolls-Royce engine will be replaced with new versions of the same model.

Last week the engine on a Qantas A380 exploded in mid-air, forcing an emergency landing in Singapore.

The airline said the move was "precautionary, as advised by Rolls-Royce," but said that oil stains found in its engines were "different to what Qantas had found".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11723778

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Rolls-Royce have won a massive deal worth 1.2 billion US dollars (£750 million) to supply and service jet engines for a major Chinese airline.

The British-based engineering firm also formed a carbon partnership with China Eastern Airlines, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 190,000 tonnes in its first year. The partnership will see Rolls-Royce provide a fuel management service for the airline's fleet of more than 300 aircraft.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/rollsroyce-wins-750m-jet-engine-deal-2129211.html

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Gus: A friend has been watching the Airbus pilot blogs and the latest on the RR Trent 900 engines Qantas uses in the A380. Apparently RR claims that because Qantas runs the engines at the upper limit of their power curve, higher levels of "resonant vibrations" are damaging the oil lines lubricating the moving turbine shafts, causing unexpected wear and allowing the whole turbine to move back allowing the blades to come in contact with the fixed compressor housing!!

Possibly easily fixed by Qantas by reducing thrust settings but still all the Trents have to be checked — oil lines repaired and shaft tolerances restored. The tricky question is how does Airbus get the A380 sitting at Singapore back to Toulouse for repair or right off??? Can't fly it!...

Bring new engines with better bearing loads and less vibrations. Please note that no official report has been released yet...

---------------------------------

The A380 can be fitted with two types of engines: A380-841, -842 and -843F with Rolls-Royce Trent 900, and A380-861 and -863F with Engine Alliance GP7000 turbofans. The Trent 900 is a derivative of the Trent 800, and the GP7000 has roots from the GE90 and PW4000. The Trent 900 core is a scaled version of the Trent 500, but incorporates the swept fan technology of the stillborn Trent 8104.[101] The GP7200 has a GE90-derived core and PW4090-derived fan and low-pressure turbo-machinery.[102] Only two of the four engines are fitted with thrust reversers.[103]

Noise reduction was an important requirement in the A380's design, and particularly affects engine design.[104][105] Both engine types allow the aircraft to achieve QC/2 departure and QC/0.5 arrival noise limits under the Quota Count system set by London Heathrow Airport,[106] which is a key destination for the A380.[14]

The A380 was used to demonstrate the viability of a synthetic fuel comprising standard jet fuel with a natural-gas-derived component. On 1 February 2008, a three hour test flight operated between Britain and France, with one of the A380's four engines using a mix of 60 percent standard jet kerosene and 40 percent gas to liquids (GTL) fuel supplied by Shell.[107] The aircraft needed no modification to use the GTL fuel, which was designed to be mixed with normal jet fuel. Sebastien Remy, head of Airbus SAS's alternative fuel programme, said the GTL used was no cleaner in CO2 terms than standard fuel but it had local air quality benefits because it contains no sulphur.[108]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380

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engines on Qantas and Singapore Airlines A380

Rolls Royce

Specifications (Trent 900)

General characteristics

Type: Three-shaft high bypass ratio (8.7-8.5) turbofan engine
Length: 4.55 m (179 in)
Diameter: 2.94 m (116 in) fan tip
Dry weight: 6,271 kg (13,830 lb)
Components

Compressor: Eight-stage IP compressor, six-stage HP compressor
Combustors: Tiled combustor
Turbine: Single-stage HP turbine, single-stage IP turbine, five-stage LP turbine
Performance

Maximum power output:
Overall pressure ratio: 37-39
Thrust-to-weight ratio: 4.93-5.63 (assuming 14,190 lb (6,440 kg) weight of engine and certified to 70,000–80,000 lbf/310–360 kN of thrust)

---------------------------------

Engine on Emirates A380:

Boeing/Pratt & Whitney fan

Specifications (GP7270)

General characteristics

Type: two-spool high-bypass turbofan engine
Length: 4.74 m (187 in)
Diameter: 3.16 m (124 in), fan tip 2.95 m (116 in)
Dry weight: 6,712 kg (14,800 lb)
Components

Compressor: hollow-titanium, 24 swept wide-chord hollow titanium fan blades, by-pass ratio of 8.7:1; five-stage low-pressure axial compressor; nine-stage high-pressure axial compressor
Combustors: low-emissions single annular combustor
Turbine: two-stage high pressure turbine, boltless architecture, single crystal blades, split blade cooling and thermal barrier coatings, axial flow; six-stage low-pressure axial flow
Performance

Maximum thrust:
36,980 kgf, 363 kN, 81,500 lbf
Overall pressure ratio: 43.9
Thrust-to-weight ratio: 4.73 (assuming 17,230 lbf weight of engine and 81,500 lbf of thrust)
--------------

see toon at top...

The Rolls-Royce brand is likely to be the biggest loser in the recent grounding of A380 superjumbos, aviation commentators say.

Singapore Airlines has today grounded three Airbus A380 planes to carry out "precautionary" engine changes following a mid-air engine failure on a Qantas-operated A380 last week.

Singapore Airlines says the A380s will be fitted with a new engine, while Qantas's fleet of A380s remains grounded after the airline found oil leaks in three engines on two different aircraft. Those three engines will also be replaced.

All the aircraft grounded in the past week have Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines.

The West Australian's aviation editor Geoffery Thomas says the Rolls-Royce brand, rather than the A380, is likely to cop some flak over the groundings.

"I think people are recognising that it's not the A380 that's the problem, it's the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine that has issues," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/10/3062855.htm

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Gus: as a "failed engineer" (I miserably failed the "pure maths" despite being great at the technology, methodology, finding solutions to curly problems and good at basic first and second year university maths), I know many of the pitfalls in fabricating things... From what I make out, engines such as the ones on the A380 are big powerful beasts pumping more than 85,000 pounds of thrust — each (40 tonnes of thrust each)... Thus places enormous loads on the axle, the bearings and "grease points". RR has good technology, though, on this one, the engineers at RR might have "miscalculated" the full power of their engines (see comment above this one). So far the Boeing/Pratt&Whitney combo is holding well and I'm sure the RR engines will be re-engineered to work better soon. Just unfortunate this problem occured in such a feat of construction... Imagine, a fully loaded A380 is nearly 600 metric tonnes in the sky... One can detect a difference in the muffled noise between the two types of engines — RR on QANTAS and B/P&W on Emirates.

I did comparisons once between a 747 and an A380. I forgot now, but if my memory is correct, the weight and wing surface ratios are basically the same on both planes, yet the wings on an A380 appear much larger because the aircraft is not much longer than a 747 and the wings on the A380 had to be much wider rather than longer because of airport space capacity. In order to achieve a magnitude of 1.6 times the size of a 747, an A380 needs to have structural strength near double. The engines consume a mix of kerozene and liquid gas and the A380s are more economical (30 per cent) than 747s per load.

Up to 40 Rolls-Royce engines on Airbus A380 superjumbos worldwide will need to be replaced, according to Australian airline Qantas.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce was speaking two weeks after a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on an A380 exploded in mid-air, forcing an emergency landing.

Qantas has grounded its six A380s since the incident.

The Trent 900 engines are used on A380s operated by Qantas, Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines.

Between them the three airlines operate 20 A380 planes, each of which has four Rolls-Royce engines.

Mr Joyce told reporters at Sydney airport the airline had already replaced three engines on its planes.

"We've been talking to Airbus and Rolls-Royce and we understand that the number [of engines to be replaced] is around 40," he said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11782579

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see toon at top, just for fun...

The pictures show the wing's skin peeled open, a severed fuel pipe, and a damaged drive motor.

The report reveals the extent to which the turbine fragments tore through the wing structure, severing wiring looms and punching through wing surface panels.

Richard Woodward from the Australian and International Pilots Association says the photographs show how strong the A380's wing is.

"I see this as a testimony to the strength and redundancy of the aeroplane to survive such bad damage and fly quite nicely apparently and come back and land," he said.

"It is absolutely a testimony to the aircraft and its structures."

The federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, Steve Purvanis, says the incident could have resulted in a fatal disaster.

"Definitely with fuel gushing out of the fuel tank there and some very hot components, certainly one that was hot enough to explode an engine, they were very lucky that fuel inside the wing didn't ignite," he said.

"The passengers and crew on board were probably unaware of how serious the situation was.

"I would say from the pictures that I've seen that they're very lucky to be alive today."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/19/3070934.htm

CASA's director of aviation safety, John McCormick, says Qantas has done everything by the book.

"If you think what Qantas has done here, they've grounded these airplanes, and in reality if we were concerned, the most serious action we could take would be to ground the aircraft," he said.

"So CASA in that respect would've only done what Qantas did. So Qantas is to be commended for their proactive action in doing that."

Mr McCormick says passengers should not be worried about getting on Qantas A380s again.

"We would not let it fly and neither would Qantas if we thought there were serious issues. But the airline is taking a cautious approach by only resuming Sydney-to-London flights," he said.

"It's voluntarily suspended its Sydney-to-LA route because the superjumbos may need to use full thrust for take-off.

"I will stress though there is no limit on the engine. The engine can be used at those thrust levels."

Mr McCormick says CASA has approved the airline's decision to return to the skies.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce says as the Los Angeles route normally uses a higher thrust power, "we think it's sensible to have that restriction".

A380 captain Richard Woodward says the restriction is likely just a precaution.

"I'd say it's a confidence-building exercise to get the airplanes back on a route that doesn't require full power, and they can monitor aircraft and we don't have to load it right up and fly all the way across the ocean using full power for take-off," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/23/3074573.htm?section=justin

as I have mentioned in a comment two up from this one:

Gus: A friend has been watching the Airbus pilot blogs and the latest on the RR Trent 900 engines Qantas uses in the A380. Apparently RR claims that because Qantas runs the engines at the upper limit of their power curve, higher levels of "resonant vibrations" are damaging the oil lines lubricating the moving turbine shafts, causing unexpected wear and allowing the whole turbine to move back allowing the blades to come in contact with the fixed compressor housing!!

Possibly easily fixed by Qantas by reducing thrust settings but still all the Trents have to be checked — oil lines repaired and shaft tolerances restored. The tricky question is how does Airbus get the A380 sitting at Singapore back to Toulouse for repair or right off??? Can't fly it!...

Bring new engines with better bearing loads and less vibrations. Please note that no official report has been released yet... (since then RR has accepted the "blame")

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has issued a new safety warning over Airbus A380 engines after a new manufacturing defect was discovered.

The warning comes ahead of the ATSB's preliminary report into the engine failure of Qantas flight QF32 over Indonesia last month.

The newly discovered defect, which relates to an oil tube connection in the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine, is believed to be the cause of the engine failure of flight QF32.

The problem is caused by the 'off-axis' boring of the oil tube that supplies the engine bearing with oil, resulting in a thinning of the material on one side that "could lead to fatigue cracking, oil leakage and potential engine failure from an oil fire", the ASTB said.

A380s with Rolls-Royce engines will again be required to undergo careful examination by the airlines that use them: Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/new-warning-over-a380-engines-20101202-18hie.html

Having investigated stratospheric flight in the late 1950s, I was quite impressed with the latest Airbus offerings for 2050...

One can remember the U2 of the 1950s, a spy-plane that flew at around 70,000 feet (21 kilometres) altitude... until one was shot down by the Russians with a long range rocket...

Several factors are at play at this high altitude...

A) airlift needs more wing surface

B) radiation from space is higher

C) the air is much drier. Fuel/air mix needs to be adjusted.

D) speed is subsonic for fuel economy ratio otherwise you end up with Concorde again...

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/seethrough-plane-airbus-reveals-aircraft-of-the-future-20110614-1g15w.html

The idea of the honeycomb frame is great but not new — though stronger. Building it out of composites would be a challenge but not impossible. The aerodynamics with minimum drag will have to be designed for a specific cruising speed. transparency of hull would give a sense of space. Nothing new here...

The bar is open. That's new...

Airbus A380 operators face a 30,000 man-hour repair programme to address wing-crack issues that have dogged the airliner which will require an eight-week downtime if implemented in one instalment.

The European airframer confirms that if airlines choose to undertake the repair "nose-to-tail" it will require around eight weeks to implement. However Airbus says that it expects most operators would opt to adopt the phased approach spread out over three two-year heavy checks which is less disruptive. In this case, it expects the repair would extend each two-to-three week heavy check by "a few days".

Emirates, which is the biggest A380 operator with 21 in service, is undertaking the repair to each aircraft in one instalment. It says the work will require 30,000 man-hours to implement. The Emirates fleet will be repaired in Airbus facilities or by other organisations on Airbus's behalf because the Dubai carrier does not have the capacity to undertake the work in house.

A380s featuring the new wing design incorporating more twist and a lighter structure will need to be modified slightly earlier as the wing-crack issue has "a slightly greater effect" on these wings. This revised wing design is due to be introduced on A380s being delivered next year.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/a380-wing-cracks-to-require-eight-week-repair-downtime-372813/

Boeing Co. says it has traced the improperly assembled engine-fire extinguishers on 787 Dreamliners to the manufacturing of bottles at a supplier's facility.

Dreamliner operators have been conducting inspections recommended by Boeing of engine fire-extinguishing systems after three jets at All Nippon Holdings Inc. were found to be improperly configured. An ANA 787 flight on Wednesday returned to its gate after the crew received a caution indication. Inspectors later found that the fire extinguisher nozzles were routed to the wrong engines.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324823804579015742142122488.html

Gus: in the Battle of supremacy of commercial aviation, the Europeans are quite quick at pointing out the troubles at Boeing... (I saw this article first in European press). It's part and parcel of competition... The Airbus 350 has just taken to the sky, problem free, while the Dreamliner is still having teething problems despite being commercially flown. I don't know about the Dreamliner, but I believe (I have inside info) in Europe, EADS is using retired engineers to triple check the building processes of their new planes... You may ask why and that would be a good question. The retired engineers have nothing to do but grow vegies or die from boredom... I believe EADS decided to tap the VAST experience of the old folks who were sticklers for slide-rules and numbers that made sense...