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A380 superjumbo has its first glitch and passengers stranded

Sunday 24 Feb 2008 11:14pm

Airbus's A380 superjumbo which went into operation late last year has suffered its first glitch - resulting in 70 passengers being stranded in Singapore. The flight was due to fly from Singapore to Sydney on 19th February but the airline had to ground the flight overnight due to a problem with a fuel pump. A spokesman for Singapore Airlines said [quote] "It was a difficult delay. A problem presented with a fuel pump, and this is the sort of problem that doesn't show till engine start-up". A replacement pump didn't solve the problem so the airline had to lay on a Boeing 747-400 instead. A 747-400 cannot carry as many passengers as an A380, so 70 passengers had to be transfered onto flights later that day. The replacement flight did eventually leave 9 hours late. Ordinarily, the 70 passengers would have been put-up in hotel rooms to get some rest until their new flight was ready to fly. Unfortunately the timing coincided with the Singapore Airshow and hotel rooms were fully booked across the city. The airline said that the delay and technical problem was extremely unfortunate and he re-iterated the new A380's technical reliability of it operating 15 hours a day for the last 4 months at 100% reliability.

Browse tags: #SQ #SIN #SYD

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