Plans to begin flight testing the Western world’s most powerful turboprop – the A400M’s mammoth Europrop International (EPI) TP400 – have slipped again, this time by up to two months.
Despite the setback, Airbus Military insists it is on track to deliver the first of the new-generation transport aircraft to the French air force by October 2009.
Some mechanical components connecting the engine to the gearbox have had to be redesigned because they were subjected to “loads greater than the designers thought” during TP400 ground tests, says Airbus Military senior vice president commercial Richard Thompson.
The company’s executive vice president military programmes, Juan-Carlos Martinez Saiz, adds: “These are simple problems with simple solutions. We are optimistic we will recover.
“It’s not in the critical path of A400M’s first flight whatsoever,” says Saiz, “but it is a setback and something we have to fix. It’s a matter of having a new part, which has been designed and is in manufacture.”
Under the original schedule EPI had been due to deliver the first TP400 for flight testing in November 2006, but the handover is now expected to take place in July. The flight trials are to be performed by Cambridge, UK-based Marshall Aerospace using a modified Lockheed Martin C-130.
Saiz admits: “We don’t have many margins in the schedule. We have eaten most of them up.” The EPI consortium comprises ITP of Spain, Germany’s MTU Aero Engines, the UK’s Rolls-Royce and Snecma of France. About 400hr of TP400 ground tests have been completed to date.
The A400M project has already suffered a delay of at least three months to the start of final assembly in Seville, Spain, after an EADS audit identified several programme elements as “critical risks”. First flight of the A400M is scheduled for the first quarter of 2008.
Source: Flight Daily News
