12 Jan 2011

Qantas to resume A380 flights to LA

6:03 am on 12 January 2011

Qantas will resume its A380 services to Los Angeles from Australia this weekend, after grounding the fleet due to trouble with its Rolls Royce engines.

The first flight will take off from Melbourne for Los Angeles on Sunday.

Qantas resumed limited A380 flights to London in late November. But trans-Pacific flights were suspended for longer as the journey requires greater engine thrust.

The airline stopped flying its six A380s, after one of the engines exploded over Indonesia on 4 November en route from Singapore-Australia.

It resumed A380 services to London and Singapore in early December, three weeks afterwards.

Chief executive Alan Joyce says after that consultation with Rolls-Royce, Qantas is now confident it can begin flying the A380 across the Pacific without any conditions on the use of maximum engine thrust.

The BBC reports the airline has replaced or modified at least 16 of its A380 engines.

The A380 is the world's largest passenger plane, a double-decker which can carry up to 800 people. Qantas A380s are set up to carry about 450.