Washed It!

Qantas grounded all six of its Airbus 380 superjumbos after one of them blew out an engine Thursday, shooting flames and debris and forcing an emergency landing in Singapore with 459 people aboard.

The carrier said the double-decker Airbus A380 landed safely with no injuries.

It was most serious midair incident involving the A380, the world’s largest jetliner, since it debuted in October 2007 with Singapore Airlines flying it to Sydney — the same route that Qantas flight QF34 was flying when it was stricken Thursday.

Qantas said there had been no explosion, but witnesses aboard the plane and on the ground reported hearing blasts.

After the plane touched down in Singapore, the engine closest to the fuselage on the left wing had visible burn marks and was missing a section of plate that would have been painted with the red kangaroo logo of the airline. The upper part of the left wing also appeared to have suffered some damage.

One passenger, Rosemary Hegardy, 60, of Sydney, said she heard two bangs and saw yellow flames from her window.

“There was flames — yellow flames came out, and debris came off. … You could see black things shooting through the smoke, like bits of debris,” she said.

In another seat, Tyler Wooster watched as part of the skin of the wing peeled off, exposing foam and broken wires.

“My whole body just went to jelly and I didn’t know what was going to happen as we were going down, if we were going to be OK,” Wooster told Australia’s Nine Network news.

Hegardy said the pilot informed passengers of the engine trouble and that the plane would have to dump fuel before it could land.

Witnesses on the western Indonesian island of Batam, near Singapore, reported hearing a large blast and seeing debris — including a massive red panel with a white Qantas streak — falling onto houses, an elementary school and a nearby shopping mall. No one was injured.

Indonesian police inspected massive chunks of metal the size of emergency exits while others carted away smaller, black twisted panels for future investigations.

The engine trouble happened 15 minutes after takeoff from Singapore at 9:56 a.m. and before the flight had time to approach Indonesia’s Mt. Merapi, which has erupted frequently over the past 10 days. The plane landed after one hour and 50 minutes.

“The shutdown of the Qantas engine had no connection with Mt. Merapi,” said Bambang Ervan, a spokesman for the Transportation Ministry. “It was too far from the volcano — the sky over Singapore and Sumatra island is free of dust. “

The flight is a regular service that flies between Sydney, Singapore and London. Qantas’ A380s can carry up to 525 people, but flight QF34 was carrying 433 passengers and 26 crew, all of whom were evacuated by a step ladder in an operation that lasted two hours.

Qantas spokeswoman Emma Kearns in Sydney said there were no reports of injuries or an explosion on board. The airline described the problem as an “engine issue” without elaborating.

“We will suspend those A380 services until we are completely confident that Qantas safety requirements have been met,” Qantas CEO Alan Joyce told a news conference in Sydney.

Joyce appeared to blame the engine, made by Rolls-Royce.

“This issue, an engine failure, has been one that we haven’t seen before. So we are obviously taking it very seriously, because it is a significant engine failure,” he said.

Qantas grounds its Airbus 380 superjumbo jets after engine blows out

Airline passengers can expect ticket prices to be 7% to 18% higher this holiday season than last year, as an economic recovery — however modest — spurs growing demand for air travel.

Travelers can also look forward to more crowded flights: The airlines have added few new planes or routes in the last several years.

“I expect prices to be quite high compared to the last couple years, as demand is strong and supply is weak,” said Rick Seaney, chief executive of the travel website FareCompare.

Already, airlines are packing more passengers per plane, with the nation’s top carriers recording 86.3% of all seats filled in June — the highest rate in 10 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

About 41 million Americans are expected to fly during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, making it one of the busiest travel seasons of the year.

Passengers took advantage of bargains last year, when airlines dropped prices to the lowest levels in decades to entice recession-battered travelers back into the air. But now, travel experts say, demand has begun to pick up, partly a result of pent-up demand and growing optimism about the economy.

“Travel demand for the peak travel days is increasing, driving prices higher as availability diminishes,” said Jack E. Richards, president and chief executive of Pleasant Holidays, a travel agency in Westlake Village.

For example, a nonstop round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to New York departing the day before Thanksgiving and returning the following Sunday was running between $641 and $881 on the major airlines. According to a spokesman for the travel website Expedia, those prices were about 20% higher than last year.

For travelers hoping to relax in the sun, a round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to Cancun, Mexico — departing the Wednesday before Christmas and returning the Monday after — cost about $561 to $939. Those prices were up about 31%, the Expedia spokesman said.

The prices are so high that Marilyn Fils, a frequent traveler from Tarzana, canceled plans to meet her daughter in New York for Christmas.

“I expected somewhat