Deutsche Lufthansa AG and Singapore Airlines said they’ll keep their Airbus SAS A380s flying after Qantas Airways grounded its six-strong superjumbo fleet following an engine explosion in mid-flight.

 

Lufthansa is operating its four A380s as normal, spokesman Boris Ogursky said by telephone, as is Singapore Airlines, which has 11 of the planes, according to a statement. The pair are the only other carriers with superjumbos powered by the same Rolls- Royce Group Plc Trent 900 engines used on the Qantas jet.

 

Australia’s Qantas will keep its fleet out of service “as long as it takes” after one of the four engines on an A380 failed en route from Singapore to Sydney, Chief Executive Officer Alan Joyce said today. The pilots performed an emergency landing at Singapore at 11:46 a.m. local time.

 

Singapore Airlines was the first carrier to operate the A380 and has nine more on order, plus six options, according to its website. All will be powered by Trent 900 turbines.

 

Lufthansa, based in Cologne, Germany, has ordered 15 A380s, with those already delivered used for services to Tokyo, Beijing and Johannesburg. The Rolls engine passed compulsory tests “with flying colors” before delivery, the airline said in May.

 

Tests included water ingestion, detonation of an explosive and a bombardment with bird carcasses, according to the carrier.

 

Gulf carrier Emirates, the biggest A380 operator with 13 in service and the next due to arrive tomorrow out of 90 on order, and Air France-KLM Group, with four, both use an alternative engine, the GP7000 from the Engine Alliance of General Electric Co. and United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney unit.

 

“All of our A380s are operating as scheduled,” the Dubai- based company said in a statement. “The safety of our passengers and crew is always of paramount importance.”

 

Air France will carry on operating its superjumbos as normal, spokesman Herve Erschler said in an e-mailed statement.

 

China Southern Airlines Co., scheduled to be the sixth A380 operator, said it still plans to go ahead with deliveries of the Rolls-Royce powered planes from the end of next year.

 

“It’s too early to say whether there are any technical problems in the engine,” Yang Defeng, a spokesman for the Guangzhou-based carrier, said today in a telephone interview. “It has proven to be safe after so many years of flying.”