European aviation giant Airbus and Italian security giant Leonardo have opened an investigation into a glitch at a privately held coatings firm that triggered a quality alert affecting 500 of the planemaker’s best-selling A321neo jets.
The flaw, which Airbus confirmed last Friday following a report in the aviation media outlet Air Current, was discovered when one of the planemaker’s technicians scraped paint from a fuselage part only to find gaps in the protective primer underneath.
As per Reuters, teams of engineers from Airbus and Leonardo are now working at coatings supplier TESI, a Leonardo subcontractor south of Naples, to support recovery efforts and find the cause of the problem.
Leonardo, from its part, has confirmed TESI is a supplier but did not mention whether it is involved in its work for Airbus.
“The problem involves strengthening rods called stringers in one section of the forward fuselage of the A321neo and has raised fresh questions over quality controls and points of vulnerability embedded in the supply chain,” analysts quoted by Reuters said.
For the aircraft forward fuselage manufacturing-related works, Airbus has two suppliers, Leonardo and its own in-house supplier, Airbus Atlantic, formerly known as Stelia, which also has overall charge of the front part of the aircraft.
However, Leonardo has one supplier for the fuselage coatings.
As per the Airbus, about 500 A321neo planes are carrying the same fuselage coatings, with 250 of them currently undergoing various stages of production.
“Airlines continuing to take delivery will be given two years to repair the affected part—rather than the usual four-year maintenance cycle—with work expected to take up to nine days, including two-three days for the core repair job,” sources said.
The affected parts won’t be requiring removal from the fuselage panel.
The primer is designed to prevent corrosion that can appear over time in the lowest point of a plane’s fuselage, known by the nautical term “bilge”—an area where moisture builds up.
While the primer’s absence does not pose an immediate safety risk on a new jet, analysts see the incident, considered the second fuselage glitch in less than a year, as a potential new pressure on the planemaker’s efforts to speed up deliveries and meet targets in the second half of the year.
“The supply chain is still not under control; we thought it was, but it isn’t. It just takes one company and suddenly you have a problem,” aviation analyst Rob Morris said.