The European Aviation Safety Agency, which is based in Germany, has recently issued a notice that all airlines which are operating the Airbus A380 are going to have to perform safety checks on the aircraft to make sure there are no cracks inside the wings of the plane.
This is the second safety directive that has been directed towards the super jumbo from Airbus and they have been directed at all of the Airbuses currently in service. When the first directive was issued, there were around 20 of the aircraft in service but this new one applies to nearly 70, which shows a marked increase in the take-up of the aircraft since its launch.
20 planes were examined by inspectors and cracks were found inside the wings in many of them. Fortunately, repairs can be made to the aircraft to put it back into service quite quickly. The directive states that those operators using the aircraft are going to have to perform checks that do not do any harm to the aircraft. The checks will be conducted by using electrical currents which makes it far easier than the previous visual checks which had to be conducted previously.
There has been no comment from Airbus about the new directive but they have said that they will be commenting on it once it has been officially published. The company has, however, stated that the repairs of the cracks will mean that the aircraft will remain functional for its entire estimated lifespan.
Just last week, the airline Qantas decided to take one of its aircraft out of service because cracks were found in the aircraft wings. The inspections which are being conducted by Airbus are stated to be just precautionary and that there is no threat to the safety of passengers.
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