An Airbus A380 problem, or a Qantas problem?

Rolls Royce has endured a bad 24 hours following the explosion of one of its engines on a Qantas A380 superjumbo yesterday. The suggestion had been that there was some kind of fault with the Trent 900 engine that powers the A380s that belong to Qantas and Singapore Airlines.

But news that another Qantas plane - a Boeing 747 - has had to make an emergency landing shortly after take-off from Singapore's Changi airport after developing engine trouble has thrown the spotlight back on the Australian airline.

The explosion of the A380 engine yesterday had already prompted Qantas to withdraw its fleet of six superjumbos from service pending an investigation.

Now, the suspicion that the problem could be a Qantas issue rather than an Airbus A380 issue is even stronger.

Although the airline has a 100 per cent safety record - with no crashes in its history - it has endured a torrid couple of years due to a series of technical glitches that have forced emergency landings and flight delays.

In April, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was forced to write to frequent flyers with an apology for a series of glitches which led to flight delays in the previous week. The issue had spiralled into a public relations problem for the airline, with allegations being thrown around in the Australian media that safety had been compromised by the outsourcing of maintenance to Asian countries.

In reality, some of the incidents over the past few years (see below) involved planes that are still serviced in Australia, but Steve Purvinas of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association today said in a statement that outsourcing of maintenance work is a safety issue: "The dramatic increase in the number of safety incidents involving Qantas jets coincides with an increase in the amount of work that is no longer carried out in-house".

Heavy maintenance checks on A380s are carried out in Germany, while other servicing is increasingly being performed in Singapore and Hong Kong, he said.

Purvinas told AAP: "We have seen some pretty horrid results of maintenance from the overseas facilities - things that aren't reported in the press."

"A bigger [incident] we have seen of late is, last year they had three engines on a 747 that weren't bolted correctly to the wings and they flew this aircraft for a month or so after a maintenance check in Hong Kong."

Qantas could not be reached for comment. But in April the airline said it undertakes around 90 per cent of aircraft heavy maintenance in Australia and that any work carried out overseas is overseen by Qantas engineers and certified to Civil Aviation Safety Authority standards.

QANTAS'S HISTORY OF TECHNICAL GLITCHESSeptember 2010: A Qantas Boeing 747 had to make an emergency landing at San Francisco airport when an engine exploded 15 minutes after take-off.

April 2010: A Boeing 747 flying from Bangkok to London had to return to Bangkok after an engine had to be shut down.

April 2010: A Boeing 747 flying from Melbourne to Los Angeles was delayed when crew noticed a crack in a cockpit window.

March 2010: Two tyres on a Qantas Airbus A380 burst on landing at Sydney airport.

March 2010: A Qantas Boeing 747 flying from Sydney to Singapore had to return after take-off when an engine had to be shut down.

December 2009: A Boeing 747 experienced an "extreme engine surge" on its way to Melbourne from Singapore and had to turn back.

November 2009: Two pilots flying a Boeing 767 into Sydney came within 700ft of the ground before realising they had forgotten to lower the plane's landing gear.

July 2009: An Airbus A380 had to abort its first attempt at landing at Heathrow after a glitch meant its' landing gear failed to come down.

January 2009: A Boeing 747 was grounded at Heathrow airport after crew found a defect in the cargo hold door.

January 2009: An Airbus A380 was grounded at LAX because of low oil pressure in one of its engines.

October 2008: About 15 passengers were injured when a Qantas Airbus A330 suffered a "sudden change in altitude" en route from Singapore to Perth. The plane made an emergency landing. ·