Qantas said yesterday that it had reached a US$100 million settlement with engine maker Rolls-Royce over a mid-air blast that forced the grounding of the Australian flag carrier’s entire A380 fleet.
The deal led the airline to increase its profit forecast for the year ending this month despite being hit by natural disasters at home and abroad as well as soaring fuel bills.
“We have reached a compensation agreement with Rolls-Royce following the Rolls-Royce engine failure on flight QF32 in November last year,” said a “pleased” Qantas chief executive chief Alan Joyce.
“After extensive negotiations Rolls-Royce has committed to a settlement of around A$95 million (US$100 million),” Joyce said.
In November a Qantas A380 superjumbo that had just left Singapore was forced to return and make an emergency landing because one of its Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines exploded mid-flight.
The incident dented the carrier;’s reputation for safety, having never experienced a crash in the jet age, and forced it to initially ground all six of its Airbus double-deckers.
Subsequent investigations pinpointed a manufacturing defect that caused fatigue cracking in an oil pipe, resulting in a fire and potentially catastrophic engine failure. Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Germany’s Lufthansa all used the Trent 900 engine on their A380 superjumbos and dozens of turbines had to be replaced.
The carrier said the settlement signaled the end of its -compensation case in the Federal Court of Australia, adding that it “looks forward to a continued strong relationship with Rolls-Royce.”
Qantas yesterday revised its full year earnings outlook, forecasting a pre-tax profit of A$500 million to A$550 million in the 12 months to this month.
It had earlier predicted profits would be “materially stronger” than the figure of A$377 million recorded last year.
Disasters including earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, floods and cyclones in Australia and the Chile volcano had wiped out US$206 million, he said, with the full cost of the ash upheaval yet to be determined.
Historically high fuel prices were also eating into profits.
“We don’t have much leeway, we have to be excellent just to get a profit at all, let alone make the returns required to justify capital investments,” Joyce said.
He vowed “tough decisions” on Qantas’s international business, which is set to return a US$200 million loss for the 12 months ending June 30, pinning the airline’s future on Asia — the world’s fastest growing aviation market.
“As a nation we used to fly via Asia — now we fly to Asia, and the future will be all about travel to and within Asia,” he said, promising to unveil a new international strategy later this year.
There has been widespread speculation that Qantas is planning an Asian subsidiary, hoping to lower its cost base and tap the burgeoning travel market there.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained