A380s to be grounded for eight weeks to fix cracks, retrofit brackets

EUROPEAN plane manufacturer Airbus will modify its superjumbo A380 by early 2013 to fix crack problems on its wing-rib feet (or brackets) that it claims are created by composite material issues, reports Massachusetts-based Design News.

The process will ground aircraft currently in service by up to eight weeks with a short-term fix of replacing brackets to take five days to be done on a third of superjumbos in service.

The Airbus retrofit that will cover modification of the 30 A380s it plans to deliver end of year will cost US$330 million. It will involve replacing up to 2,000 brackets per wing with 7010 Aluminum rather than the composite material without creating extra payload, said the report.

For those at assembly line, the re-design will not be approved by the European Aviation Safety Agency until next year and therefore only on those finished aircraft in 2014.

The delayed retrofit will cost the Toulouse-based company in slow delivery and numbers of A380s and its single-aisle A320, said the report.

According to Design News, the A380 cracks and Boeing's fuselage problems in its Dreamliner 787 design is at fault rather than the composite materials itself.