Airbus A400M to fly at Paris airshow

Airbus said Wednesday its A400M would take part in the flying display at the Paris airshow next week, just over a month after one of the planes crashed in Spain killing several on board after a massive engine failure.

Airbus said its military aircraft will perform the same routine it has demonstrated at airshows since 2010 every day next week at the air show just outside Paris.

"We have complete confidence in the A400M and we are delighted to fly our demo as planned. We want to share our pride in the aircraft with all the passionate aviators at Le Bourget," said Airbus head of military aircraft Fernando Alonso.

Four people were killed and two were seriously injured when an A400M on a test flight crashed into a field just north of the Seville airport on May 9.

An analysis of the black boxes revealed that three of the aircraft's four engines failed, Airbus said, after earlier warning about a technical bug in the units which control the engines.

Airbus group's chief of strategy Marwan Lahoud told German daily Handelsblatt that the engines of the plane were poorly installed during final assembly, which could have led to the engines malfunctioning and crashing.

"The black boxes confirm it. There was no structural fault, but we have a serious final assembly quality problem," he told the paper after receiving the first results of the analyses of the flight recorders.

Spain, Britain, Germany, Turkey and Malaysia grounded their A400M planes, which are assembled in Seville, after the accident.

The development of the massive transport plane has been plagued by setbacks that led to years of delays and costly overruns.

The first aircraft was delivered in 2013, and a total of 174 have been ordered.
Source: AFP