Singapore Airlines has changed a Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engine on one of its Airbus A380 aircraft after the powerplant suffered from "surge and high vibrations" 20 minutes into a flight.

The aircraft, with the registration 9V-SKH, was en-route to Hong Kong from Singapore on 25 July when the incident happened.

As a result, the pilots shut off the engine and turned back to Singapore, an SIA spokeswoman said.

SIA's engineers, together with personnel from Airbus and Rolls-Royce, have inspected the engine and replaced it on 26 July.

The aircraft was returned to service on Wednesday and deployed on a Singapore-Sydney flight, the spokeswoman said.

The airframe was built in 2008 and the aircraft has accumulated 5,731h since it entered into service in 2009, as shown on Flightglobal's ACAS database.

The spokeswoman said investigations are ongoing and it is too early to say what led to the surge and vibrations.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news