Reuters has reported this morning that Qantas had decided to ground one of its A380s as a result of discovering the same types of cracks within the wing structure that have plagued other A380s recently.
As a result the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)has issued a directive to now require inspections of ALL A380s regardless of age. Previously the EASA had required inspections only on certain A380 that had met certain criteria based on their age and flight cycles. The EASA has not issued a deadline for these inspections at this point.
I previously wrote about these developing issues and if you’d like to get caught up on them please read my other posts here and here.
Personally, if I were the decision maker within the EASA I would order an immediate grounding of the A380 fleet and order inspections and repairs to take place immediately. Heck, if I am a decision maker within an Airline, I would ground my fleet until I was assured that my passengers would not be at risk. Call me an alarmist, but I’d rather be safe than sorry in this scenario!!
Even though they have always stated that these issues are not putting passengers in risk, how can they be certain? Anytime you have the word ‘crack’ and ‘wing’ in the same sentence has to cause alarm!
What I’m afraid of here is that the EASA may be factoring in economics in its equation which could jeopardize passenger safety. Grounding a fleet obviously would cost millions upon millions in service disruptions.
I’d rather have airlines cancel flights or re-tool their timetables in the short term and fix these issues beyond reproach, versus having to read about a passenger airliner disaster that could have been prevented.
@Erik, was it raining? Pilots have to hit the runway harder to avoid aqua-planning.
I don’t think passengers are at risk at the moment. It’s not blind trust in the manufacturers and authorities, of course, but I think in this case, with all the stuff around A380 (delays, previous tech glitches…) they know they can take the risk of a serious accident. It could well be the end of Airbus.
I have taken 3 flights on the A380 – 1 on LH, 2 on AF. Now I know that 3 is not a good sample size, but 2 of my flights had very hard landings, both coincidentally at JFK. My 1 LH flight had a hard landing that was within the first few weeks of A380 service – people were kind of nervously laughing because it was like a big rock had fallen from the sky. It would be interesting to know if the pilots have a tendency to make harder landings with the A380, presumably that would cause more stress. The contrast in takeoff/landing experience is ironic – when the big bird takes off, it is so smooth and relatively quiet.
@LH Flyer
The cracks are supposedly not on critical parts of the wings, hence the not so urgent nature of the checks. They are supposedly on only ‘some’ connecting parts. The reality is, there are quite a lot of these connectors and they discovered cracks on less than 1% of these on the aircraft inspected so far.
Not disagreeing with your post at all, just giving some perspective.
@ Jerry – I don’t disagree with your comments at all….but to me, cracks on structual items traveling at 38k feet and 500miles per hour become significant potential problems. I agree, no new plane is with a few bugs.
Boeing 787 had issues found as well, and no flights are grounded either
I’ll take their words for it, for now, plus one’s gotta any new airplanes time to iron out its issues
e.g. Basement cement crack sounds bad, but it can be nonimpacting crack anyway. A crack doesn’t mean water will leak, or a windshield crack doesn’t mean windshield will break