Qantas Airways Ltd is seeking for financial compensation on losses it incurred due to the Airbus engine troubles that hounded the airline's numerous flights and forced its entire A380 fleet from flying for a number of weeks on November.

Qantas said that formal negotiations with Rolls Royce, maker of the Trent 900 engines powering most of the Airbus aircrafts on the national carrier's service, have been commenced to thresh out the details of its compensation claims, which experts said could easily run to more than $100 million.

The airline's stance has been clearly buoyed by recent decisions from the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) to demand for more safety check ups on Rolls Royce engines fitted on A380 superjumbos, citing manufacturing defects could cause engine fire and mid-air explosion.

Also, an Australian Federal Court decision took away any legal impediments on Qantas option to bring its compensation claim to a British court in the event that its discussions with Rolls Royce failed to arrive at an amicable settlement.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has affirmed that talks have begun as he allowed that recent developments prompted the airline "to keep all options available to the company to recover losses, as a result of the grounding of the A380 fleet and the operational constraints currently imposed on A380 services."

The new ATSB report has identified that a faulty pipe on Trent 900 engines, which supplies oil to the turbine area of the machine, suffer from inconsistent wall thickness and thin portion was vulnerable to fatigue cracking.

Rolls Royce seemed to affirm the safety investigation result and offered that the thin part of the oil pipe could liberate some oil and ignite engine fire, which could result to an explosion.

Joyce said that Rolls Royce staff currently involve in the new round of inspections virtually admitted to him that the pipe defect was the cause of the engine troubles and all parties concerned - the ATSB, Qantas and even Rolls Royce - had concluded that the whole issue was due to manufacturing defects.

Qantas also revealed that in light of the new ATSB report and safety directives, new inspections would now be required on A380s after every two flights and would be imposed on all Trent 900 engines being utilised on aircrafts around the world.

Rolls Royce engines are fitted too on Airbus planes in the services of Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa, which both announced new safety check ups on the faulty oil pipes, possibly adhering to ATSB's suggestion that inspections must be undertaken every 20 flights to properly monitor air safety measures.