Qantas: 40 Superjumbo Engines are Faulty

Up to 40 engines on Airbus superjumbos of the type that disintegrated in flight on a Qantas plane will need to be replaced, the Australian airline's chief executive said Thursday.

Three airlines - Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Germany's Lufthansa - fly A380s powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, with a total of 20 planes with four engines each.

On Nov. 4, one of the giant engines on a Qantas superjumbo caught fire and blew apart shortly after takeoff from Singapore, in what experts say was the most serious safety incident for the world's newest and largest passenger plane. The Sydney-bound flight returned safely to Singapore where it made an emergency landing.

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All six of Qantas' A380s have been grounded while extensive safety checks and fixes are carried out, and the airline says three Trent 900 engines have been removed. Singapore Airlines, with 11 A380s, and Lufthansa, with three, briefly grounded some of their planes after the Qantas scare but returned almost all of them to service after conducting safety checks.

Joyce was speaking to a small group of reporters on the sidelines of a function in Sydney on Thursday that was unrelated to the A380 issue. Qantas spokesman Simon Rushton confirmed Joyce's comments, but said he was referring to previous information made public by Airbus that up to 40 Trent 900 engines may need to be replaced.