Air France Seeks Compensation for A380 Wing Crack Issues – Report
Air France Airbus A380
Air France is seeking compensation from Airbus after the French carrier’s Airbus A380 fleet was grounded for the widely publicized wing crack inspections that took place this year.
Reuters reports:
‘The carrier wants compensation for the loss of revenue from grounding its fleet as well as inspecting and repairing wing cracks, which have led to delays and flight cancellations, Les Echos said on its website without citing sources.
European air safety regulators this year ordered checks for A380 wing cracks in the entire superjumbo fleet after engineers found cracks in almost all planes inspected.
The plan to inspect and repair Air France’s superjumbo fleet would be equivalent to idling one of the jets for a year and a loss of revenue of between 30 and 50 million euros ($64.53 million), according to the newspaper.’
Air France-KLM have not commented on the report.
Category: Airnation
This problem seems to have been put on the back burner for now. There are 80 A-380′s in service now. The problems still exist and have been repaired per the AD issued by EASA.
I believe there is more to come on this problem and it could be more costly with major wing design changes
An interesting read is this article by an engineer.
http://theconversation.edu.au/the-airbus-a380-wing-cracks-an-engineers-perspective-5318
Time will tell!
Rich Wyeroski