Airbus engine explosion 'Rolls-Royce fault'

Rolls-Royce repeatedly failed to spot the engine defect that caused one of its Trent 900s to explode mid-air in a Qantas A380 carrying more than 400 people over Indonesia, Australia's safety regulator reported yesterday.

The engine failure in 2010, which triggered a worldwide grounding of Airbus's then-new jumbo jet, is the subject of a 305-page report which concludes that the engine blow-out was the result of a fatigue crack in an oil-feed pipe, and reports that the pipe "had been made with a thin wall section and did not comply with the design specifications".