By Christopher Bjork
Investigators have recovered the two black boxes from the Airbus
Group NV military transport plane that crashed near the southern
Spanish city of Seville on Saturday, the government said.
Spain's public-works ministry said the black boxes of the Airbus
A400M military airlifter were located Sunday morning and have been
handed over to the judge in charge of the investigation.
The devices, which are designed to withstand crashes and fires,
should contain a full audio recording of the communications between
the crew and of thousands of datapoints about how the aircraft's
systems performed.
The aircraft had begun a descent shortly after taking off from
the Seville airport Saturday and came down in a field about a mile
north of Seville's airport. Four of six Airbus workers that were on
board died in the accident, while the remaining two were sent to
the hospital with serious injuries.
The flight was that particular aircraft's first. Investigators
will examine whether system failures occurred, suggesting a
manufacturing problem, or if there was a design issue not seen in
the 5 1/2 years since A400M transport planes began flying. The
actions of the crew will also be reviewed closely.
Investigators will also rely on information from air-traffic
control to piece together the events. Plane-tracking website
Flightradar24 said the aircraft crashed at 12:57 p.m. local time
after reaching a maximum altitude of 1,725 feet and then descending
at a constant speed of about 160 knots, or 184 miles an hour.
The aircraft, which was due for delivery to the Turkish air
force in June, took off at 12:45 p.m. local time and crashed about
15 minutes later, according to Airbus.
The crash is the first of this A400M model, which Airbus
assembles at a plant in Seville.
Spain's air-accident authority, CIAIAC, which is overseen by the
public-works ministry, is leading the probe into the cause of the
crash. Airbus said it will aid the investigation, and the Spanish
Defense Ministry is assisting, the public-works ministry said
Sunday.
The U.K. Defense Ministry said it had temporarily stopped flying
its two A400M transport planes as a precautionary measure until
more is known about why the aircraft went down. The German air
force, which has one such plane, late Saturday followed suit.
Malaysia also grounded its plane, though France said it was waiting
for more information.
"We will do all it takes to support the authorities in their
investigation, which has just been launched," Airbus Chief
Executive Tom Enders said on Saturday.
The crash comes during another difficult period for the A400M
program. Airbus has struggled with development and production of
the four-engine turbo-propeller plane, and the program has run over
cost and behind schedule. Mr. Enders has apologized for the
problems in building the plane.
Airbus in January replaced the head of the military aircraft
unit because of sustained technical and production problems. The
company's 2014 full-year results included a EUR551 million ($618
million) charge related to problems building the plane.
Airbus has sold 174 of the military cargo planes, which cost
about $170 million each, with orders from eight countries. The
first was delivered to the French air force in 2013, a decade after
its development began. Turkey, the U.K. and Germany are among the
countries to have received A400M planes.
The plane maker was starting to aggressively promote the plane
in export markets around the world in the hope of securing more
orders. Malaysia is the sole export customer at this point.
Airbus officials have said the company won't make money on the
plane unless it secures additional deals after the development
program ran billions of dollars over cost. Airbus at one point
considered abandoning the program.
Airbus also has had to contend with recent accidents in its
civil airplane unit, after an AirAsia A320 jetliner crashed in
December and a similar plane operated by Deutsche Lufthansa AG 's
budget arm Germanwings went down in March. Neither crash has been
linked to faults at Airbus. Investigators into the Germanwings
crash suspect the co-pilot of deliberately crashing the plane. An
accident report on the AirAsia crash in Indonesia is pending.
Write to Christopher Bjork at christopher.bjork@wsj.com
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