KUALA LUMPUR: An AirAsia X airplane grounded in Perth, Australia after it was forced to turn back to the city’s airport following an engine malfunction while en route to Kuala Lumpur, may take several months to be cleared for release.
In a statement, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) said the investigation report will be released in several months.
Flight D7237, which was flying on Sunday morning with 359 people on board, was about 90 minutes into the journey when the problem surfaced.
“As a result of an in flight engine fault, the aircraft was subjected to moderate airframe vibration. The flight crew elected to return to Perth,” read the statement posted on ATSB’s website.
The bureau said it will be interviewing personnel involved, examining the engine damage, and downloading and analysing data and cockpit voice recorders.
Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Abdul Aziz Kaprawi said that the probe will involve the manufacturers of the aircraft’s engine (Rolls Royce), adding that there will be a thorough investigation not only of AirAsia planes, but other airlines which use the same engines as those on the A330 aircraft (flight D7237).
Aziz added that a preliminary report submitted by AirAsia to the Department of Civil Aviation shows that the airline had followed all mandatory maintenance and procedures required of the engine.
He said that AirAsia has been instructed to give its full cooperation to the ATSB in its investigation.
DCA director-general Datuk Seri Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said the airline will be providing a full status report after the ATSB wraps up its investigation and the airline has fully addressed the issue.
The engine must also be replaced before the aircraft returns to Malaysia, once the ATSB has wrapped up investigations.
Aviation expert Professor Dr Mohd Harridon Mohamed Suffian said roping in the manufacturer in the investigation is a good idea, as the ATSB had reported that Rolls Royce engines for Airbus have a propensity for similar issues, based on statistical analysis.
Harridon cited reports that one of the blades in one of the aircraft’s turbines had broken off.
“This would have caused an imbalance to the engine, and this in turn would have caused the engine to constantly and intensively vibrate. Even though the engine had been shut down, the turbine would keep rotating due to the windmill effect, as the aircraft is moving at a high speed of 300 knots on average.
“The windmill effect is akin to blowing high gusts of wind into the turbine and this wind causes the turbine to rotate. There were a couple of incidents within these couple of years regarding turbine blade failure in Rolls Royce engines, and some of them due to the fact that a particular batch of turbine blades were deformed materially during the manufacturing process,” he said in an interview with the New Straits Times yesterday.
Dr Mohd Harridon said that investigators must look at, among others, what took place during the flight to establish the cause of the turbine blade breaking off.
He also stressed that there should be thorough checks on the airplane’s maintenance records to establish if the proposals noted down after the checks had been followed.