Airbus A380 Wing Crack Repairs Could Top $600 Million

Airnation.net Newswire

The push to reduce weight when designing the Airbus A380 a decade ago have led to flaws in the design of the Superjumbo. The wing cracks that have plagued the plane will now likely cost $600 million to fix.

EADS subsidiary Airbus reported the cracks in January, leading to checks on the worldwide fleet of A380s, which authorities say are safe to fly.

Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said the discovery inside the superjumbo’s wings, where new lightweight carbon-composite materials and traditional metal meet, showed the difficulty of pushing technical boundaries in the ultra-competitive industry.

“Certainly when it was designed some 10 years ago, it was an innovation. We thought it was a great idea to make wings lighter with a hybrid (of) carbon-fibre ribs and metal ribs. It was supposed to bring a lot of weight reduction, and to a certain extent it did,” Enders told a group of aviation journalists.

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