The United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force has ordered 22 of the Airbus A400M Atlas airlifter military transport planes and has received two so far. Those two will be temporarily grounded while Saturday’s crash in Seville, Spain, is investigated. The crash occurred during a flight trial of the plane, killing four crew members and seriously injuring the other two.
In a statement issued Saturday, the Airbus defense and space division confirmed that all the crew were company employees of Spanish nationality. The company said it would send a team of technical advisors to the scene of the crash “to provide full assistance to the official committee in charge of the investigation.”
The crashed plane was the third destined for a Turkish customer. The four-engine turboprop A400M can be fitted out as a refueling tanker, a cargo plane, a medical transport or a troop transport for up to 116 people or paratroopers. The planes are built at the Airbus plant in Seville. A total of 174 have been ordered and 12 have been delivered.
The plane was designed to meet the needs of European Union military forces and of the 12 delivered so far, the United Kingdom has two, Turkey has two, Malaysia has one, Germany has one and France has six. The United Kingdom has ordered a total of 22, Turkey has ordered 10, Malaysia will get a total of four, Germany has ordered 53 and France has ordered 50. Other orders include seven from Belgium, one from Luxembourg and 27 from Spain.
The plane made its first flight in 2009 and entered service came in 2013. The first delivery was four years behind schedule and more than €7 billion over an original budget of around €13 billion. Airbus took a €551 million charge in the fourth quarter of last year related to production problems with the aircraft and replaced the head of its military division in January of this year. In early April the company upped its production rate on the A400M from 1.5 to 2.5 aircraft per month in an effort to overcome the long delays in the program.
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