No injuries occurred to the passengers, crew, or people on the ground, despite debris from the aircraft falling onto houses in Batam.

[1] On inspection, a turbine disc in the aircraft's number-two engine (on the port side nearer the fuselage) was found to have disintegrated, causing extensive damage to the nacelle, wing, fuel system, landing gear, flight controls, and engine controls, and a fire in a fuel tank that self-extinguished.

The accident, at 10:01 am Singapore Standard Time (02:01 UTC), was caused by an uncontained failure of the port inboard (number-two) engine, while en route over Batam Island, Indonesia.

[8] The crew, after finding the plane controllable, decided to fly a holding pattern close to Singapore Changi Airport, while assessing the status of the aircraft.

The SCC pilot, David Evans, noted in an interview, We’ve got a situation where there is fuel, hot brakes, and an engine that we can’t shut down.

So, we had the cabin crew with an alert phase the whole time through ready to evacuate, open doors, inflate slides at any moment.

[7] The plane was on battery power and had to contend with only one VHF radio to coordinate emergency procedure with the local fire crew.

[2][18] Having entered service in September 2008, it was the first A380 delivered to Qantas and had four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines;[19] it was named Nancy-Bird Walton[nb 1] in honour of an Australian aviation pioneer.

[20] The pilot in command of the aircraft, Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, has been credited in the media as "having guided a heavily damaged double-decker jet to the safety of Singapore Changi Airport and averting what could have been a catastrophe".

[25] In 2016, Champion de Crespigny was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the aviation industry, both nationally and internationally, particularly to flight safety, and to the community.

[27] Immediately after the accident, shares in the engine's manufacturer, Rolls-Royce Holdings, fell 5.5% to 618.5 pence on the London Stock Exchange, their sharpest fall in 18 months,[28] and directly attributed to this occurrence.

[30] Both Qantas[11][31] and Singapore Airlines,[32] which uses the same Rolls-Royce engine in its A380 aircraft, temporarily grounded their A380 fleets after the occurrence and performed further inspections.

[41] Tom Ballantyne, a writer on Orient Aviation magazine, described the accident as "certainly the most serious incident that the A380 has experienced since it entered operations", and concerns have been voiced that this occurrence may be due to a "major problem", rather than being maintenance-related.

[43] Carey Edwards, author, former Royal Air Force helicopter pilot, and human-factors expert,[44] described the QF32 flight as "one of the finest examples of airmanship in the history of aviation".

[47] An airworthiness directive was issued by the European Aviation Safety Agency on 4 August 2010 that required inspection of the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine.

It also concluded that segregated wiring routes were cut by two of the three individual pieces of disc debris and as a result, engine number one could not be shut down after landing.

[51] On 10 November 2010, the European Aviation Safety Agency issued an emergency airworthiness directive, ordering airlines using the Trent 900 engine to conduct frequent and stringent tests – extended ground idle runs, low-pressure turbine (LPT) stage-one blade and case drain inspections, and high-pressure/intermediate-pressure (HP/IP) structure air-buffer cavity and oil-service tube inspections.

[48] On 3 December 2010, the ATSB issued a preliminary report that contained a key finding of a manufacturing flaw: An area of fatigue cracking was found within a stub pipe that feeds oil to the engine HP/IP bearing structure.

[9] Bearing lubricating oil leaked from the crack, causing the subsequent engine fire and failure of the IPT disc.

[54] The findings were determined to be a "critical safety issue", and the ATSB recommended immediate inspections of in-service Trent 900 engines.