Airlines: Airbus planes are safe despite crash

Airline bosses today dismissed safety fears regarding the Airbus A330, saying they were confident despite last week’s Air France jet crash.

Emirates airlines President Tim Clark said the Dubai-based company has a fleet of 29 A330-200 planes that have been flying since 1998.

“It is a very robust aeroplane. It has been flying for many years, clocking hundreds of millions of hours and there is absolutely no reason why there should be any question over this plane. It is one of the best flying today,” he said during a global aviation conference in Malaysia.

Gulf Air Chief Executive Bjorn Naf said he was “not concerned at all” over the safety of the carrier’s fleet of 10 A330-200 planes.

Bahrain-based Gulf has no plans to cancel the 20 A330-300 planes and 15 A320 jets it ordered last year, he said.

Investigators are uncertain what caused Air France Flight 447 to crash in the Atlantic Ocean while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on June 1, killing 228 people on board. It was the worst aviation accident since 2001.

Airbus executive John Leahy said that the A330-200 was a “reliable” plane and that it was too early to conclude otherwise until investigations were completed.

Investigators are considering the possibility that the plane’s external speed monitors – called pitot tubes – may have iced over and given dangerously false readings to cockpit computers in a thunderstorm.

David Epstein, Qantas Airways General Manager for Government and Corporate Affairs, said two companies manufacture the external monitors suitable for the A330 planes – France’s Thales Group and US-based Goodrich.

The Air France plane uses sensors made by Thales while Qantas uses those by Goodrich for its 28 A330 planes, he said.

“We are not concerned because it’s a different system in our aircraft,” he said, adding that Qantas would stick to its scheduled delivery of two more A330-300 planes by the end of the year.

Total orders for the A330 twin-engine passenger planes so far are 956, of which 669 have been delivered. Some 614 jets are operating worldwide – 269 of the larger A330-300 series and 345 of the shorter fuselage A330-200 jets, it said.

India’s Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyal echoed similar sentiments, saying he was confident of the safety of its 12 A330-200 planes.

“No, I am not concerned. We are OK,” he said. “We will be guided by whatever Airbus tells us.”

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Idris Jala said the carrier has changed the speed sensors on its three A330-200 planes in September last year as recommended by Airbus.

“This plane has very good safety record in the past. Let’s not jump the gun, we need to wait for the full analysis,” he said.