Friday, September 4, 2009

US ORDERS SENSORS REPLACED ON AIRBUS PLANES

       US airlines must now replace speed probes built by France's Thales on some of their Airbus planes, amid fears the instruments contributed to the crash of an Air France jet in June.
       The US Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) order, which affects Airbus A330 and A340 jets, was published on Wednesday and takes effect on Tuesday.
       The FAA has given US carriers until January to replace the sensors, also known as pitots, with new ones built by the US firm Goodrich.
       "We have reviewed numerous airspeed anomalies recently reported and we have determined that an unsafe condition exists," the FAA decision read.
       Investigators believe false data from speed monitors could have contributed to the June I crash of Flight 447 in the Atlantic that killed all 228 people on board, the worst disaster in Air France's 75-year history.
       The French accident investigation agency BEA confirmed that the older version of the Thales speed monitors gave false airspeed data to the cockpit of the flight from Rio to Paris before it plunged into the ocean.
       The BEA has said the faulty sensors were a contributing factor but not the cause of the crash, which was yet to be explained.
       Meanwhile, Air France KLM plans to train pilots on how to respond if an aircraft's speed probes, or pitot, fail to function and give incoherent speed readings, the airline's biggest union in France said.

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