Airbus Adjusts A380 Maintenance Plan to Take Account of Aging | Aviation International News

Airbus Adjusts A380 Maintenance Plan to Take Account of Aging

Airbus has found some slow-forming cracks in the A380 after fatigue testing.

Some of the long-serving A380 airliners have now logged over 40,000 flight hours.

By Ian Goold • Senior correspondent

June 19, 2017

Extensive fatigue testing of the Airbus A380 widebody airliner has demonstrated what the European airframer says is "remarkably slow" crack propagation, such that there is "no need to inspect [airframe structures] for fatigue damage" during normal aircraft life, says the manufacturer. Nevertheless, with "lead" aircraft approaching ten years of operation since service-entry in October 2007, Airbus has optimized other maintenance schedules for the very-large aircraft (VLA).

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