Airbus said Monday it would carry on with test flights of its A400M military transport plane despite the crash of one of the aircraft in Spain that killed four employees. Workers at Airbus factories around the world observed a moment of silence for the victims of Saturday's crash, the first of an A400M military airlifter.
"We maintain our confidence in the plane," the head of the company's military aircraft division, Fernando Alonso, told reporters at the factory in the southern city of Seville where Airbus assembles the A400M. He said he would take part in the next test flight of the plane on Tuesday in Toulouse in southern France where Airbus's headquarters are located.
The A400M plane that crashed in a field and burst into flames just north of Seville's airport was several minutes into a test flight before it was due to be delivered to Turkey in July. Three passers-by helped emergency services workers pull two of the plane's six crew members alive from the wreckage. The pair, an engineer and a mechanic, are in hospital in serious condition. German newsweekly Der Spiegel reported that the plane experienced multiple engine failure, citing comments by one of the crash survivors.
The seriously injured survivor has so far only been questioned about the crash "very briefly", it said. The A400M, a large, propeller-driven transport aircraft, was launched in 2003 to respond to the needs of seven Nato members - Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey. Difficulties in the development of the plane's giant turboprop engines are among the causes of the sustained delays in building the A400M aircraft, which is designed to meet the needs of military and humanitarian missions.
In addition to production and delivery delays, the programme has also run 30 percent - or 6.2 billion euros ($7 billion) - over budget. Earlier Monday, Malaysia became the fourth country to ground its A400Ms while it waits for the causes of the accident to become clearer, following similar decisions by Britain, Germany and Turkey.