Qantas to suspend all A380 flights

Australian airline Qantas Airways Ltd. said Thursday that it will suspend all flights of its Airbus A380 planes.

The firm said that the suspension will remain in effect until the outcome of an investigation into an incident where engine failure forced one of its A380 planes to make an emergency landing in Singapore is known.

Qantas has taken delivery of six A380 aircraft from Airbus, out of a total of 20 on order. The aircraft operate flights between Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Singapore and London.

According to the carrier’s Web site, the 20-aircraft order is the second-largest order of A380 planes from any airline in the world.

“Qantas is willing to put safety before any commercial considerations,” the firm’s chief executive officer, Alan Joyce, said at a press conference in Sydney.

Joyce said that the firm is working closely with the plane’s manufacturers to understand what happened on Thursday.

Neither passengers nor crew were hurt in the incident, and a Qantas spokeswoman told Sky news that the airline wasn’t aware of any casualties from debris falling during the engine incident.

Some news agencies had earlier erroneously reported that a Qantas jetliner had crashed in Indonesia, citing witness accounts of smoke and debris from an aircraft.