Airbus defends the safety of Air France’s crashed airplane

While in the Atlantic Ocean the corpse search continues (16 bodies have been recovered to date) and the recovery of rest of the ill-fated airplane of Air France, on land a debate has opened up on the safety of the A330 Airbus model. The top person in charge of sales of the manufacturing company, John Leahy, ratified yesterday the reliability of the apparatus in a meeting of airlines that took place in Kuala Lumpur. “The plane is very trustworthy”, he said restrictively.

The people in charge of the airlines with A330 airplanes in their fleet listened to him expectantly. They wanted a meeting with the company to know what to abide by, and they obtained it the annual congress of the Association the International of Aerial Transport, that took place in the capital of Malaysia.

The focus of attention has been deposited in the last hours in the speed sensors. Before the accident of the flight that covered the route of Rio de Janeiro to Paris, in which 228 people perished, Airbus issued an official notice to its clients where they informed about the defects in the speed sensors of the model and recommended modifications.

Air France, in fact, explained this past weekend that they had accelerated those changes. Suddenly, the sensors have become one of the most reasonable causes of the accident. Nevertheless, too soon and too speculative to conclude such a thing, the French investigators have stressed,

In any case, a minority union of pilots of the French airline asked their associates to not take off while the company has not changed these sensors on the Airbus A330 and A340. “The company has assured that it was going to change the sensors in the next weeks. We want to protect to our crews and our passengers, a reason why we cannot wait for that term”, said yesterday the threatening union delegate Christiphe Presentier to a French radio. The success of the reunion is yet to be seen.

The union person in charge also indicated that the past year problems in Air France and other companies related to the speed sensors were registered already. The Office of Investigation and Analysis (IT SEES), person in charge of the investigations on the accident, indicated that these sensors could send contradictory information on the speed of the fallen flight. The incoherence of that data could have stopped some electronic systems from working, like the autopilot, SEES, according to him.

At the moment, 600 airplanes of A330 are in circulation between several airlines and, according to John Leahy, the manufacturer has requests for 400 apparatuses more. “It is the spine of the industry”, he emphasized.