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A team of Australian engineers are concerned about cracks that they’ve found in the wings of some A380s. But why is Airbus doing nothing about it?
The BBC reports that the engineers found small cracks in the wing ribs of the gigantic planes operated by Singapore Airlines and Qantas Airways. Singapore Airlines also says that it has already had to replace the wings of two of its A380s.
The team of engineers are calling for the whole fleet of A380s to be grounded for investigation. Speaking to the BBC, Steve Purvinas, secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, said:
“We can’t continue to gamble with people’s lives and allow those aircraft to fly around and hope that they make it until their four-yearly inspection.”
But Airbus are reluctant to cooperate. They’ve issued a statement admitting that minor cracks have appeared, but deny that it’s anything to worry about:
“We confirm that minor cracks were found on some non-critical wing rib-skin attachments on a limited number of A380 aircraft. We have traced the origin. Airbus has developed an inspection and repair procedure, which will be done during regular, routine scheduled four-year maintenance checks. In the meantime, Airbus emphasizes that the safe operation of the A380 fleet is not affected.”
It’s not the first time something’s gone wrong with an A380: a particularly scary-looking engine explosion in 2010 prompted concern, too. If I were Airbus, I’d be thinking long and hard about those little cracks. [BBC]
Image credit: MiqsPix/flickr
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I would love to know Jamie Condliffe’s credentials for aircraft engineering, as he seems to think he knows better than Airbus themselves.
What makes him (or anyone else in the media) an expert on this? Shouldn’t we trust Airbus on this?
Perhaps these buys have Boeing shares or something???
i doubt any,
however i study it at university and here is my opinion,
cracks happen, hell, small things go wrong all over aircraft all the time, fortunately that’s why we can sometimes spend longer than doctors getting fully qualified.
airbus know what they are doing, if they say the small cracks are fine THEY ARE FINE!, that’s because they have done thousands of hours of material testing.
aviation is a cheap target for the media,
and in my opinion, gizmodo needs somebody who actually knows about aviation to write their articles, because currently their writers seem very uninformed — i at this stage would offer my services, just to see the quality of the aviation articles rise, because i enjoy reading them
I do wish everyone would sod off and leave Airbus alone. Their engineers designed the plane. They have NO interest in a major disaster occurring, it would potentially hammer their sales. If it was an issue, they would tell people to deal with it. It clearly isn’t. Stop trying to tell people who know way, way more about this than you what to do.
“If I were Airbus, I’d be thinking long and hard about those little cracks.”
Poppycock! Come on Gizmodo UK, you can do better than that.
What is it about the media and aviation dramatics? Only this morning a UK newspaper was trying to pin turbulence to the A380′s safety record.
And Jamie, FYI Airbus don’t make aircraft engines and neither do Boeing. The engine which exploded was manufactured by Rolls Royce – they acknowledged there was a design flaw and rolled out upgrades and additional maintenance checks.
I can live with ongoing updates with my mobile phone, but not sure if I’m happy with mainstream aircraft engine makers doing this – I think it would be better to have them 100% perfect when getting fitter to planes – but that’s just me, I have a nasty reaction to falling out the sky in flames.
If you want 100% safety from flying, don’t fly.
There are a million and one components in engines, and you can’t guarantee perfection, in the same way for cars, or bridges, or any other mechanical product. All we can do is life them, generate safety margins, and keep a close eye on things.
In general, it works. A disc exploded, but the other three didn’t, and the plane landed pretty happily. Hell, someone once landed one a river. They are very well put together, and they have excellent safety procedures. Why do you think someone caught the cracks? Because the maintenance schedule was sufficiently well structured.
I know I will not get 100% safety, but 99.99% is desirable rather an engine that was know to have been made wrong and the buck being passed, nit cool.
The wings have to pass tests ensuring they can carry the necessary loads sustained in flight.
I watched a documentary on the BBC about the construction of the A380 and there was footage of a test wing which had been constantly flexed for I think 5 years. The amount of flex and movement it had undergone would have equated to about 75 years of use.
The engine parts such as the fan blades are actually hand shaped and need to be astoundingly accurate, we’re talking sub millimetre accuracy and once the blades have been cast, they’re scanned for any possible defects.
These things ARE thoroughly tested, but no matter how well made something is, and how thoroughly it’s tested. Things do go wrong.
I’ll address the (unrelated) uncontained engine failure (explosion) that occured in first.
This was caused by an error during the manufacture of an oil pipe where the pipe was made too thin and hence cracked leaking oil in to the engine.
The leaking oil resulted in a fire that weakened the Intermediate Pressure Turbine Disc (think of something similar to the flywheel in your car but rotating about 3x the speed). The weakened disc then failed, fell apart and threw itself out of the engine.
The engine, the oil pipe and the turbine disc are all manufactured by Rolls-Royce. Blaming Airbus is similar to blaming Ford when your Bridgestone tires are improperly made.
So now we can ignore the mud stirring last line we can get on to the main point of the article.
The first thing to know is every engineering structure has cracks in it. This includes everything from your house, to bridges, buildings and aeroplanes. In aircraft the majority of cracks come from manufacturing and occur at the atomic level (really really small!) and so are nothing to worry about.
However over time, through a process called fatigue, these cracks can grow. The phenomenon is well understood and is accounted for at the design stage so that the aircraft can continue flying safely even with relatively large cracks in it. Every four years aircraft undergo a “D-Check” where the aircraft is fully investigated for cracks of this nature and they can be repaired. Had the cracks not been spotted by chance now they would not have affected the aircraft in any way until its next D-check when they certainly would have been discovered and repaired.
In summary this is a non-issue and happens regularly on all aircraft. There is no decrease in safety of the aircraft and, until they invent teleportation which will obviously be infallible, flying will remain (one of) the safest ways to travel.
Some links:
Australian Transport Safety Bureau report on uncontained engine failure:
http://www.atsb.gov.au/newsroom/news-items/qantas-airbus-a380-singapore.aspx
A picture of an A330 undergoing D-check, note that during this check all of the floor will eventually be removed in additon to the seats, windows, internal panels, overhead lockers, luggage racks, air hostesses etc.
http://www.airteamimages.com/big57026.html
A technical definition of fatigue:
http://aviationglossary.com/aviation-terms/fatigue-failure/
Good comments, I agree cracks are over rated, being concerned on this is like stating that a plaster wall has cracks so therefore the house is falling down.
But that Rolls-Royce engine fail is a major concern.
Logged myself in just to give this a thumbs up