Airbus and Italy’s Leonardo are investigating a defect that triggered a quality alert covering about 500 A321neo aircraft, after a technician scraped paint off part of a fuselage and found cracks in the protective primer underneath.
The planemaker confirmed the problem on Friday, shortly after the trade outlet Air Current published its report. Engineering teams from both companies are now working at TESI, the coatings supplier and a Leonardo subcontractor, to support the corrective work and establish the root cause, which has not yet been identified, Reuters has learned.
Leonardo told the agency that TESI is a supplier, but declined to say whether the company is involved in work for Airbus. The flaw concerns reinforcing rods known as stringers inside one section of the forward fuselage of the A321neo.
Two suppliers, one coatings line
For that fuselage section Airbus relies on two suppliers: Leonardo and its own operation Airbus Atlantic, formerly Stelia, which is also responsible for the entire nose section of the aircraft. Leonardo, by contrast, works with a single coatings supplier, a detail analysts have singled out as a point of vulnerability.
Airbus said roughly 500 aircraft are caught up in the repair action, including 250 at different stages of production, and that safety is not compromised.
Airlines that keep taking deliveries will get two years to fix the affected part, rather than the standard four-year maintenance interval. The job is expected to take up to nine days, of which two to three days are needed for the core repair, according to Reuters. Some analysts had feared a worse outcome, but the parts will not have to be pulled out of the fuselage panel.
Pressure on delivery targets
A second fuselage defect in under a year could put added strain on Airbus as it tries to accelerate deliveries and meet its goals for the second half of the year, analysts say. In their view the case has revived questions about quality control and about fragile links in the supply chain, which they still do not consider to be under control.
– The supply chain is still not under control. We thought it was, but it isn’t – said aviation analyst Rob Morris.
– It takes just one company and suddenly there’s a problem – added aviation analyst Rob Morris.
Źródło: WNP.pl, Fot. Michael Derrer Fuchs / Shutterstock
