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🇮🇸 Iceland /Technology

A Forgotten Tool Delayed Airbus A330 Deliveries for Months

From Morgunblaðið · () Icelandic

Translated from Icelandic and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire From a news agency Outcome reported
  • Airbus slowed A330 deliveries for several months after identifying a quality problem involving the aircraft’s horizontal tail stabilizer.
  • An anonymous company source said a forgotten tool caused the problem but posed no safety risk.
  • Airbus said A330 deliveries had resumed, while the company still targets a record 870 aircraft deliveries this year.

A forgotten tool inside an Airbus aircraft delayed deliveries of the company’s A330 wide-body jets for several months, according to a source within the manufacturer who spoke to AFP.

Airbus recently identified what its spokesperson described as a “unique quality issue in the horizontal tail stabilizer” of an A330. The spokesperson did not mention the missing tool, but said the problem required inspections of A330 aircraft still moving through production. Those checks slowed monthly deliveries during the summer.

unique quality issue in the horizontal tail stabilizer

· Airbus spokespersonThe spokesperson described the problem identified on an A330.

“The cause has been identified and deliveries of A330 aircraft have resumed,” the spokesperson said. Airbus delivery figures through July 31 showed that the company had delivered no A330s to customers since the end of May.

The cause has been identified and deliveries of A330 aircraft have resumed.

· Airbus spokespersonThe spokesperson said Airbus had restarted A330 deliveries.

The anonymous source did not specify what kind of tool had been left behind or at which production site. The source said it had not created any safety concerns. “It was just a simple quality issue, nothing serious,” the source said.

The A330 accounts for about 5% of Airbus’s annual deliveries, far less than the popular single-aisle A320 family. Airbus is targeting a record 870 aircraft deliveries this year. Production is also expected to increase in the coming months, with a second A320 assembly line at the company’s plant in Blagnac, Toulouse, in southwestern France.

It was just a simple quality issue, nothing serious.

· Anonymous Airbus sourceThe source said the forgotten tool caused no safety concerns.
About this summary

Originally published by Morgunblaðið in Icelandic. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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