easa orders a380 inspections, page-14

Yep all 380s to be inspected.
I still remember GD saying these new planes wouldnt need maintenance.
GLTA@QF


Wing cracks inspection now compulsory and more intensive for all A380s
February 8, 2012 – 11:00 pm, by Ben Sandilands
The  European Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, is later today issuing a new airworthiness directive ordering that all 67 Airbus A380s currently in service be inspected for internal wing cracks affecting the brackets which hold the wing skin to its internal structure.

The previous AD, issued on 20 January, only extended to the 20 A380s that had performed the most flights.

EASA has also called for the inspections to use equipment that will detect cracks that have not become visible to the naked eye, while the original directive required only visual inspections.

A spokesperson for EASA said that cracks had been found inside the wings of almost all of the first, and most flown, of the 20 A380s to be checked. As a consequence it was decided to immediately inspect the entire fleet of operational A380s, and replace those brackets found to have cracks.

There are 4000 such brackets inside the entire wing  of an A380, and the cracks that are of greater concern are the second type discovered, which tend to occur in the middle of the each half of the wing, near a fuel tank divider.

The replacement of any faulty brackets is expected to take about five days.  The EASA spokesperson said factors in the cracks occurring related to the use of a less flexible grade of aluminium in some of the brackets, as well as stress unintentionally built into them during the manufacturing process.

As reported when the first AD was issued on 20 January, Airbus is proposing a two step remedy for these type 2 cracks as well as the more minor type 1 cracks, shown in diagrams and with an explanatory text in this bulletin from Doric Asset Finance.

In the first stage, cracked brackets will be replaced with new components. In the second stage a permanent fix will involve the use of a different grade of aluminium and a revised manufacturing process to avoid locking in unintended additional stress.

Airbus repeated its previous guidance that none of the cracking found in the wings posed any safety of flight concerns for a considerable period of time.  However it was considered desirable to remove the risk of long term loss of structural strength at an early stage of the service life of the giant jet, rather than later.

Before today’s new AD was issued, Qantas had found and was repairing cracks in two of its A380s. It found type 1 cracks in its first A380–which had been severely damaged in November 2010 by the disintegration of one of its Rolls-Royce engines as it was climbing away from Singapore at the start of a flight to Sydney–during its subsequent extensive repair and reconstruction at Changi Airport.

That jet is due back in service next month.  More recently Qantas also found minor cracks in another A380 when it was undergoing a routine inspection following an encounter with severe air turbulence, but said these were, like those on the jet damaged near Singapore in 2010, the result of the manufacturing process and not caused by in-flight stresses.

This second A380 will return to service in about a week’s time, sooner than the jet being rebuilt at Singapore.