Qantas Airways and Korean Air will carry out inspections for wing cracks on their Airbus A380 superjumbo planes earlier than previously scheduled, after European air safety officials ordered global checks, warning of a safety risk if the defects were not fixed.
Singapore Airlines has been carrying out precautionary inspections of its A380s since January 20 and has been forced to repair eight aircraft, the airline said.
Australia's Qantas has already grounded one A380 for a week after discovering 36 separate wing cracks after a turbulent flight from London.
"The A380 is still our most popular aircraft and we have not seen any impact on ticket sales. These things happen with various aircraft. There are no broader concerns about the A380 now," said a Qantas spokesman.
The European Air Safety Agency (EASA) said the widespread A380 defects could pose a safety risk in the world's biggest passenger plane if left unremedied.
"This condition, if not detected and corrected, may lead to a reduction of the structural integrity of the aeroplane," the EU agency said in its directive to airlines.
While aviation experts agree the wing cracks are minor defects, of more concern is the fact that the problems are arising so early in the life of the $390 million, 525-seater aircraft, which went into commercial service in 2007.
AVIATION UNIONS CONCERNED
Under the new directive, first reported by Reuters earlier on Wednesday, the seven airlines currently operating A380s must carry out Airbus-sanctioned checks and preliminary repairs on every plane before its 1,300th flight.
The first round of checks covered one third of the fleet and applied only to jets that had exceeded that number of flights.
"We've been calling for the fleet to be grounded so that the aircraft can be checked immediately. What they've put in place to day is far better than the four-year wait that we were going to have to have," said Steven Purvinas, federal secretary of the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.
The cracks are on L-shaped parts which fix the wing skins to their underlying frame. The parts are "not a primary load-bearing structure," Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath said.
The first round of A380 inspections had initially focused on 20 aircraft operated by Singapore Airlines, Air France and Dubai's Emirates — which had logged the most A380 flights in the four years since the plane entered service.
They will now be carried out on all other airlines that fly the A380s — Qantas, China Southern, Korean Air and Lufthansa.
Lufthansa's longest-serving A380 has made about 900 flights and the compnay said it could carry out checks during normal maintenance.
Boeing this week reported a manufacturing flaw on its 787 Dreamliner, the world's first commercial jet built mostly from composites, nine weeks after entry into service.
