A400M crash: engine control unit problems confirmed
More information has been released about the recent fatal crash of Airbus A400M MSN23. Airbus Defence and Space, part of the Airbus Group and manufacturer of the A400M military transport aircraft, as well as of other types, on Wednesday reported that it had issued an Accident Information Transmission on Tuesday to all A400M operators. This updated the Alert Operator Transmission (AOT) issued on May 19 and which instructed A400M operators to urgently carry out one-time specific checks on their aircraft’s engine electronic control units.
It also reported that preliminary analysis of the readouts of the cockpit voice recorder and the digital flight data recorder – together, popularly known as black boxes – has been done by the Spanish military aircraft accident investigation agency, CITAAM. Specialists from Airbus Defence and Space provided technical advice.
The Airbus statement reported that CITAAM had confirmed problems with control of the engines. “[E]ngines 1, 2 and 3 experienced power frozen after lift-off and did not respond to the crew’s attempts to control the power setting in the normal way, whilst engine 4 responded to throttle demands.”
In an attempt to reduce power, the power levers were set to the flight idle position. The power did indeed reduce but on engines 1, 2 and 3 subsequent attempts to increase power failed. They remained on flight idle despite the attempts of the crew to regain power. Airbus pointed out that this situation was “consistent with those three engines being affected by the issue addressed with our AOT”.
“Preliminary analyses have shown that all other aircraft systems performed normally and did not identify any other abnormalities throughout the flight,” noted the company. “Accordingly, Airbus Defence and Space does not have any additional specific recommendations beyond those specified in our AOT of May 19th.”
MSN23 crashed on May 9 some 1.6 km from Seville’s San Pablo Airport, in Spain. Four members of the crew were killed while the other two were injured, one critically. It was destined for the Turkish Air Force and was on a production test flight. The investigation is continuing.
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