Spain’s National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) has released airworthiness certificates of Airbus A-400M prototypes, which was earlier suspended after the accident last month.
The new development comes after the initial technical meeting between INTA and the representatives of the Airbus Company.
INTA will conduct further meetings to release the remaining certificates after receiving the additional information requested from the company to establish the maximum security guarantees for flights.
Following the accident, Airbus is currently planning to resume the production test flights of A400M military aircraft soon, in an effort to quickly complete the delivery under existing orders.
On 9 May, a new A400M aircraft that was carrying six people crashed in a field near to Seville’s San Pablo airport during its first flight, killing four people on board. The remaining two crew men were seriously injured and hospitalised.
The aircraft was due for delivery to the Turkish customer in June this year.
Countries including Britain, Germany, Turkey, Malaysia and Spain had grounded their A400M fleets as a precautionary measure.
The preliminary analysis conducted by CITAAM revealed that its engines 1, 2 and 3 experienced power freeze after lift-off and did not respond to the crew’s attempts to control the power setting.
CITAAM carried out the analysis of the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) readouts.
The agency said the engine failure is connected to suspected software problems. The investigation will now focus on software installation errors.
Airbus delivered the first A400M plane in 2013 as part of €20bn programme. The company received orders for some 194 aircraft from eight countries across the world.
Image: An Airbus A-400 M military aircraft. Photo: courtesy of Spanish Ministry of Defence.
