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Nearly 400 airline
passengers sat on an Airbus A380 jetliner for 3 1/2 hours early Monday
when a Qantas Airways pilot reported a mechanical problem just before
taking off from Los Angeles International Airport, officials said.
Qantas Flight 12 was preparing to depart for Sydney just after 11 p.m.
Sunday when the captain reported the problem to the control tower and
then headed back to the airline gate, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for
the Federal Aviation Administration. All 398 passengers on board the
plane waited for 3 1/2 hours before the flight was canceled and they
were allowed back into the airport, said Qantas spokesman Michael
Abraham. The travelers were put up in hotels and are scheduled to leave
LAX at 9:30 p.m. today. "This was due to a break indication fault,"
Abraham said, declining to specify further. "It really is very
routine," he said. "It was just operational." Coincidentally, a second
Qantas-operated Airbus A380 reported mechanical problems just before
taking off from Melbourne to LAX, leaving 443 airline passengers
stranded on the tarmac for five hours Monday. Passengers on that flight
were also provided with accommodations and were scheduled to board
another flight bound for LAX at 11 a.m. today. Qantas launched flights
aboard the Airbus A380 between LAX and Australia in October 2008.
Abraham declined to comment on the Australian carrier's mechanical
problems on the new, double-decked airliners. This was the longest
stretch airline passengers had to wait on LAX's tarmac since Aug. 11,
2007, when a glitch on a single desktop computer shut down the U.S.
Customs and Border Protection screening system, followed by a second
power outage less than 24 hours later. More than 19,000 passengers were
affected by those outages, many of whom spent up to 12 hours trapped on
airplanes and at the customs screening area inside LAX's international
terminal. Last month, the Transportation Security Administration
announced that hefty fines will be levied on domestic airlines that do
not supply food and water to passengers after two hours on the tarmac,
or do not return to the gate after three hours. International carriers
such as Qantas are exempt from the new regulations, which are scheduled
to begin around May 1. 1/4/2010 |
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