Qantas pilots credited with saving the day in accident report

PILOTS of a crippled Qantas Airbus A380 superjumbo struggled with more than a dozen system errors after an engine blew apart and landed the plane in Singapore with barely any runway to spare, an Australian investigation showed.

In fact, the plane may have been so badly damaged that the five pilots, with a combined 72,000 hours of flying experience, may have saved the day.

“The aircraft would not have arrived safely in Singapore without the focused and effective action of the flight crew,” Martin Dolan, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s chief commissioner, said yesterday.