By Tim Hepher and Allison Lampert
PARIS, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Airbus engineers have found defects on a wider set of A320 fuselage panels as they prepare to inspect hundreds of jets for a flaw that the company’s chief executive says is hurting deliveries.
A presentation to airlines seen by Reuters showed that the total number of planes needing inspections for recently discovered quality problems on metal panels at the front of some planes was 628, including 168 already in service.
This figure also includes 245 in assembly lines, according to the presentation, of which industry sources said about 100 are earmarked for delivery this year. A further 215 are in an earlier stage of production called Major Component Assembly.
Additionally, some panels at the rear and other parts of the jet have been found to have similar thickness problems, though none are on planes currently in service, the presentation showed.
“We confirm the population of aircraft potentially impacted is both in production and in service,” an Airbus spokesperson said, while declining to comment on specific figures.
The detailed figures, earlier reported by Bloomberg, refer to the population of jets to be inspected, with instructions to be issued to airlines in coming days.
Reuters first reported the industrial quality problem earlier this week. At the time, industry sources said it had already been discovered on several dozen undelivered planes.
Unlike the emergency recall of thousands of Airbus A320s for a software change over the weekend, the fuselage problem is not being treated as an immediate safety matter, sources said.
AIRBUS ‘ASSESSING THE SITUATION’
The data is evolving and decisions on how it might impact Airbus’s December deliveries will be taken in coming days, CEO Guillaume Faury told Reuters on Tuesday. He confirmed that deliveries had been hit by the issue during a “weak” November.
Airbus is due to publish November data on Friday but Faury’s remarks leave a question mark over targets for the year, which some analysts have said look increasingly hard to reach.
“We are assessing the situation … and we are trying to understand the nature of the impact it has on our operations,” Faury told Reuters, adding that more may be said in coming days.
While one airline source estimated inspections would take a few hours, repairs are likely to take much longer.
The Air Current reported that any repairs could take three to five weeks, raising the prospect of displacing work out of the usual sequence in a costly process needing more labour.
The affected parts have the wrong thickness following a process of stretching and milling carried out by Seville-based Sofitec Aero, the presentation showed.
The company – one of two suppliers for the affected parts – did not respond to several requests for comment. It was first identified by the Wall Street Journal.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Michael Perry)
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