Airbus admits 'assembly quality problem' after A400M crash

Analysis of the flight recorders of the A400M which crashed in Spain on May 9, killing four, indicated there were no structural faults but assembly quality problems, a senior Airbus executive said in a newspaper interview to appear on Friday.

"The black boxes confirm it. There was no structural fault, but we have a serious final assembly quality problem," Airbus group's chief of strategy Marwan Lahoud told the German daily Handelsblatt after receiving the first results of the analyses of the flight recorders.

In a statement released ahead of publication, Handelsblatt wrote that the units which control the engines of the turboprop A400M military cargo and troop transport were poorly installed during final assembly, which could have led to the engines malfunctioning and the plane crashing.

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