Entire world A380 fleet now requires wing crack checks

All Airbus A380s are now to be inspected for wing-rib feet cracking rather than just the first 20 aircraft.
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The European Aviation Safety Agency has today extended its airworthiness directive for the checks, It had originally been directed at aircraft which had reached 1,300 cycles.

The cracks were found on a Qantas aircraft which had suffered extreme turbulance but the cracks were unrelated to the conditions. Subsequently cracks were found on two Singapore Airlines aircraft.

Airbus has developed an interim fix.

Seven aircraft from the Emirates fleet were identified in the original 20. Now all of the fleet will be checked.

The problems with the wing has been traced back to several conspiring issues in the manufacture including a particular alloy and the stresses as the skin is stretched over the wing rib.

Such problems are not unusual in the introduction of a new aircraft type and a refined and corrected by the manufacturer, Airbus said it will be introducing a permanent solution to the problem and they will be complete by the summer

Industry analyst Saj Ahmad said: "In the same way that production anomalies this week have highlighted incorrect shimming in the 787 Dreamliner, the recent woes for the A380 and its wing cracks should be seen as ironing out faults that sometimes simply cannot be found during testing and certification.
 
"Just as Boeing notes there is no safety issue to the 787s, likewise, Airbus is saying the same about the A380 and the cracking of components in the wing area. A fix is in the works and it's likely that as this fix is incorporated not just to in-service A380s, but that those on the production line will be retrofitted and we hopefully shouldn't see this particular occurrence again."

Speaking on Al Jazeera television earlier today, Arabian Aerospace editor, Alan Peaford, said despite the global interest in the two aircraft and their problems this would not be an issue for safety. "Both aircraft are safe and there are stringent checks to make sure they remain so. Like any new product to market there are bugs to be sorted out. The only challenge to the airlines that comes from the fix is that new brackets are likely to weigh an additional 90 kilos and while everybody is trying to cut weight that doesn't help."
 
Ahmad went on to say "it's a straightforward fix for Airbus and with less just a handful of A380 operators to date, ensuring repairs are done should be done pretty swiftly for the entire fleet at minimal cost. Whether this impacts airlines schedules remains to be seen.

 

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