A400M crash blamed on three frozen engines reveals Airbus

On May 9th, 2015 an Airbus Group SE A400M military cargo plane crashed just outside Seville, Spain, shortly after take-off, killing four of the six test flight crew on board. Subsequent to thorough examination of events by Spanish air accident investigators, it has been confirmed by Airbus that the accident is believed to have been caused by three of the four turboprop engines power freezing as the result of the incorrect configuration of engine software. This tallies with Airbus’ initial thoughts and warning issued to those who had already been supplied with the military aircraft to check on the ‘Electronic Control Unit,’ part of the digital system used to control the large turboprop engines.
It is understood from flight data recorded that three out of four of the plane’s turboprop engines became stuck at high power shortly after take-off. In a statement Airbus confirmed that the three engines “did not respond to the crew’s attempts to control the power setting in the normal way.” The pilots did manage to succeed in reducing power, but only after setting the thrust levers to the ‘idle’ mark, but when they then tried to increase power, they found that the engines power level had frozen again. So far this is the only fault that has been identified by the air crash investigators.
Immediately after the crash Spain halted all further test flights of the plane until the cause of the crash had been confirmed. It is anticipated that after the confirmation of early suspicions, the door will once again be opened for test flights to recommence. Today’s statement potentially clears the way for deliveries to resume but investigations into the precise sequence of events are expected to continue for some months. However there are allegations that a number of safety protocols were supposedly ignored during the final assembly of the A400M military plane, online news site El Confidencial said on Tuesday. “Several protocols were ignored,” it claimed, citing unnamed aeronautical sector sources. It then added that the Full Authority Digital Engine Control (FADEC), “should have been tested before, in a simulator, to check if everything worked.” This system specifically controlled the plane’s engines. In addition the same sources claimed the protocols were bypassed as Airbus was in a hurry to make up for delays in the development and delivery of the military plane.
According to Airbus group’s Chief of Strategy, Marwan Lahoud, the units which control the engines of the plane were poorly installed during final assembly, which could have led to the engines malfunctioning, he told German daily, Handelsblatt. At the weekend Fabrice Bregier, Chief Executive of the plane-making unit of Airbus Group, said it was “either a weakness in the test procedure of planes before they fly, or a problem that results from the implementation of these procedures”. However an Airbus spokesperson made it clear yesterday in a statement: “We will need the full results of the investigation in order to have the full picture, so as long as there is no further communications from (the investigating authority) CITAAM it is too early to draw any conclusions from the accident. […] Like all accidents, it will certainly be a combination of issues and not one single cause”.