A400M Turns a Corner

摘要

The European "big players" recently had reason to celebrate reaching 100 A400M deliveries with the 10th out of 27 A400M aircraft supplied to the Spanish Air Force. The aircraft MSN111 performed its ferry flight on 24 May from Seville to Zaragoza, where the Spanish A400M fleet is based. In the same week, the A400M global fleet also achieved the 100,000 flight-hours landmark performing missions worldwide for all eight customer nations. This represents a significant boost in activity, with 40,000 hours added since late 2019. The A400M programme was formally launched in May 2003, with partner nations Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Turkey and the UK committing to a combined total of 170 aircraft, with four for export customer Malaysia. Since its maiden flight on 11 December 2009, the loss of a prototype and several long-lasting issues seem to have been forgotten. Obviously, Airbus overcame the production faults affecting 14 propeller gear boxes (PGBs) produced by Italian supplier Avio Aero and a necessary interim PGB fix to resolve the problem (those PGB-retrofitted units reportedly have had no problems since), or input pinion plug cracking which released small metallic particles into the oil system. Some issues still remain, including the low- and high-pressure turbine discs of the Europrop TP400-D6 engines, once underestimated as made by - as Airbus' Tom Enders once said himself - "an inexperienced consortium", or the subsequent US$1 Bn charge over delivery issues and export prospects in 2016. A so-called "re-baselining-contract" signed with the European launch nations in 2019 reduced the final assembly of the A400M to its current rate of eight to nine per year, thereby safeguarding manufacturing until 2030. In this context, it was agreed to extend the entire delivery by six years. Instead of the previous target of 2020, all 174 on the books are now due to be delivered by 2026. Nevertheless, the engine still seems to resemble a kind of burden for the operators, since Airbus is working with the consortium and the EU-regulators to re-certificate a new standard for the power plant. This is expected to happen this July - also enabling Airbus to establish new, "less conservative" maintenance schedules. Nevertheless, company officials do not deny they are not where they want to be on supportability, fleet availability and maturity. Airbus therefore calls for a "maturity drive", which will run until 2023.