Airbus Confirms Cracks Found In 48 Engines Of A400 Aircraft

Airbus has confirmed the adverse scenario regarding the failure reducing engine A400M military plane, in which some crack gears in thrusters whose propellers rotate clockwise.

This is, in two of the four engines fitted to the aircraft and the European consortium that manufactures Europrop. The other scenario is that all 48 engines mounted on the 24 aircraft delivered to customers have to be repaired.

This is because, in an extreme case, the motor may stand to shed flakes of metal product of those cracks that pass the oil cooling circuit of the engine. This is what happened earlier this year with a newly delivered to UK aircraft.

"We are in daily conversations with our suppliers and customers to solve this problem in a standardized manner. We work with all our capabilities to meet the needs of our customers, "said Airbus sources.

There are eight customers who have ordered 174 aircraft and, in addition to the 24 already released, this year Airbus is expected to deliver 20 more aircraft. Spain should receive the first A400M this year and that plane is a priority for Airbus, andalucia informacion reported citing Airbus sources as saying Tuesday.

Now the next step is how to fix these problems in the assembly line of the A400M that is located in Seville. The question is two-fold: first, Europrop must repair the 48 engines that already fail and installed on 24 aircraft already in operation; and second, producing at the same time and corrected engines for new aircraft are being assembled.

This creates an overload of work for Europrop and mismatches in the assembly in Seville. In order to channel this unexpected, San Pablo plant studies to install a temporary hangar-a Recovery Center in the international jargon that strengthen the capacity of engine assembly.

There are now A400M aircraft being assembled that they will not receive the engines under the deadline. This provisional center is configured as a 20 duplicate station (station 20 of the assembly line is where the engines are assembled, the last before painting the plane).

General Electric (Avio) has informed Airbus that in the second half of this year, it will provide more engines originally planned to address this oversubscribed. To get an idea, the 20 aircraft that Airbus plans to deliver this year require 80 engines, compared to 48 in which the PGB be repaired on an accelerated basis.