Following an incident with a Cathay Pacific aircraft earlier this week, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has ordered inspection of Airbus A350-1000 engines worldwide.
Cathay Pacific Incident
Reports show that on Monday, one of Cathay Pacific’s Airbus A3501000s had suffered an incident returning to Hong Kong. This led to the aircraft and the airline cancelling several flights in order to perform inspections of its A350s. Now, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency has ordered inspections.
Florian Guillermet, Executive Director, EASA in a statement has said:
“This action is a precautionary measure, based on the information received from the initial investigation of the recent Cathay Pacific serious incident and on the airline’s findings in its own subsequent inspections.”
Earlier today, the directive was given and EASA has given operators of the A350-100s between 3-30 days to perform inspections. Cathay Pacific, having already started its own inspections, is excluded from this directive. The regulator unless found to be damaged, will not require that any parts be removed.
Hong Kong Investigations
Sources close to the initial investigation earlier said that a hose between a manifold and fuel injection nozzle was pierced. Investigators need now, to determine whether this caused the fire or it was a consequence of the incident. Airbus was not initially planning on recommending worldwide inspections, but after this was revealed this changed.
Ultimately the decision lies in the hands of regulators, and although Airbus did not want to recommend every aircraft be inspected, the decision taken by EASA. Singapore Airlines and Japan Airlines have begun their own precautionary inspections of all of their A350 aircraft.
