Airbus may be asked to issue a ground order for their world-wide fleet of long range aircraft starting tomorrow. Preliminary findings of the Air France Flight 447 disaster are expected to show the cause due to faulty airspeed sensors. Bad weather will be cited as contributing to the crash, but not the main cause.
Interesting to note is that over 1,000 Airbus 330 & 340 aircraft are still flying and until this recent crash, no one has been killed in one.
However, there is history of pilot and computer reports of malfunctioning speed sensors with these aircraft. Apparently, the commonality is icing situations where the plane's pitot tubes reported inaccurate data to the flight computer regarding the speed of the aircraft. This in turn caused the autopilot to disengage leaving the pilots with a difficult struggle to keep the plane in the air.
The United States National Transportation Safety Board may call for modifications to these aircraft before allowing them to be used by U.S. based carriers or foreign airlines that operate in the United States.
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