Airbus: Wing will pass test

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Charles Campion, the head of Airbus’ A380 program, downplayed the failure of the big jet’s wing during stress testing recently, telling Air Transport World http://www.atwonline.com/news/story.html?storyID=4129 that there are alternate ways of proving the wing can withstand 150 percent loads, even though during the test it ruptured short of that.

Key Quote (from Campion): “‘I’m extremely confident the tests will prove satisfactory to get certification but the engineers are now crunching the numbers. We’re looking at the loads, the test setup and exactly what happened to the wing to see exactly what must be done to demonstrate’ the 150% level. … He added that he is uncertain if the wing will need reinforcement, but if it does, the failure was ‘in a place where it will only add a few kilos … and it could be done easily to meet our certification target.’”