The Airbus A400M military transport plane that crashed during testing on 9 May in Spain suffered a triple engine failure, Airbus has confirmed.
The preliminary analysis conducted by CITAAM has revealed that the 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.
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This engine failure is connected to suspected software problems. The investigation will now focus on software installation errors.
CITAAM, along with representatives from Airbus Defence and Space, completed the analysis of the digital flight data recorder (DFDR) and cockpit voice recorder (CVR) readouts.
A statement from Airbus stated that the preliminary analyses have revealed that all other aircraft systems performed normally and did not identify any other abnormalities throughout the flight.
In May, Airbus Defence and Space sent an alert operator transmission (AOT) to all A400M operators, asking them to perform specific checks on the aircraft fleet.
It asked operators to carry out one-time specific checks of the electronic control units (ECU) on the engine of their aircrafts.
The Airbus A400M military transport plane crashed during testing near Seville in southern Spain, killing four people on board.
The aircraft, which was on its first flight, was due for delivery to the Turkish customer in June this year.
Following the incident, countries including Britain, Germany, Turkey, Malaysia and Spain grounded their A400M fleets as a precautionary measure.
