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American Civil Aviation orders inspection of Airbus A380 engines
An FAA directive, the first since the September 30 accident, requires companies to visually inspect the engines of 120 Airbus A380s.
Two weeks after the failure on one of the four engines of an Air France Airbus A380, the American Civil Aviation Authority, the FAA, issued this Friday a first directive ordering a "visual inspection" of all GP7200 engines in service on some 120 aircraft, or around 60% of the A380s in service. The remaining 40% fitted with Rolls-Royce engines are not affected.
Mandatory inspection
This mandatory inspection must be carried out by the airlines within 2 to 8 weeks, depending on the age of the engines. It will focus more specifically on the fan dawn, at the entrance to the reactor, which had literally disintegrated in flight on the Air France A380, on September 30, for a reason still unexplained. Entering service in May 2011, the engine in question had completed 3.257 cycles (landings and takeoffs), apparently without problems until then.
An intermediate measure
This directive, presented as an intermediate measure pending the first results of the technical investigation conducted by the French Bureau of Investigation and Analysis (BEA), should not result in long immobilization of the A380s, which could disrupt the programs of flight. At Air France, where 14 engines have already been inspected, the procedure takes no more than two hours. The FAA does not impose, at this stage, an in-depth examination requiring the disassembly of the engines, except naturally if faults or damage "outside tolerance limits" were to be discovered during this inspection.
No impact on the flight program
This is rather good news for Air France, whose ten A380s are all equipped with GP7200 engines from the Engine Alliance, the joint venture between General Electric and Pratt & Whitney. So far, the company, which already has to manage one less A380, has managed to maintain its entire flight program, even if some A380 services to Abidjan and Shanghai are likely to be made by other device models. It is also probably a relief for Emirates. The Dubai company has no less than 90 A380s equipped with GP7200 engines in its fleet. Any measure that would force it to suspend the operation of its very large aircraft would have disastrous consequences for it.
Pending the documents to be examined
For the time being, the American and European authorities do not seem to plan to go any further in the protective measures, before knowing more about the causes of this unprecedented break in the dawn of the fan. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), in charge of the certification and control of airplanes in Europe, leaves the hand to its American counterpart for the time being, at the origin of the primary certification of the American engines of the A380. As for the BEA, which officially recovered responsibility for the investigation only a week ago, it is still awaiting the engine debris spotted in Greenland, in the area above which the accident (because it is indeed an accident in the typology of civil aviation). The Danish authorities would wait until they had collected enough debris before sending everything to the BEA. But the snowfall in Greenland delayed the recovery of the parts.
Conveying more complicated than expected
In addition, the decision to dismantle the defective engine and send it to Cardiff, in the European center of excellence of the engine manufacturer GE, for it to be examined in depth, turns out to be more complicated than expected to implement. . According to a BEA spokesperson, the operation as well as the transportation of the device to France, could require "several weeks" of preparations. If it is likely that the aircraft will depart on three engines, with a fourth engine not started to balance the aircraft, the arrangements for this conveyance have not yet been decided. Contrary to the information published in recent days, it is in particular possible that the A380 does not return directly to France, but that it is directed towards an airport in the United States or Canada, in order to limit the duration of the flight.
Uh visual inspection is not systematic before each flight? I believe that this is the job of the cabin crew ...