A400M completes May 12 flight test Spanish Defense Ministry will probe the May 9 crash of a production Airbus A400M airlifter during a ...
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| A400M completes May 12 flight test |
Spanish Defense Ministry will probe the May 9 crash of a production Airbus A400M airlifter during a flight test in Seville, Spain.
Both the black boxes of the crashed MSN23 has been recovered. The aircraft was the third one slated for Turkey, whose assembly began in Seville in November 2014.
The Spanish military authorities has asked Airbus Defense and Space on 12 May to temporarily suspend flight tests of production aircraft as a precautionary measure and pending the accident investigation.
Airbus said the A400M flight test program will continues unless or until any evidence is found which would suggest that it is not safe to fly.
The first test flight since the accident took place on Tuesday 12 May. Development aircraft MSN4 took off from Toulouse at 14:45 and landed at Seville 1hr 50min later. This was a regular test flight which was scheduled before the accident. Fernando Alonso, Head of Airbus Defense and Space Military Aircraft was on board acting as flight test engineer.
Assembly of the A400M for customers continues as planned at the Seville Final Assembly Line. This also applies to other plants such as the wing line at Filton, UK and the fuselage production line at Bremen, Germany.
AD&S owns five A400M test aircraft of which three are currently in service and the other two have been retired. These five aircraft have accumulated more than 2700 flights and over 7500 flight hours. Customers have additionally accumulated more 2,000 hours on aircraft in service.
