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A software bug may have cause the May 9 crash that grounded Airbus' troubled A400M military transport aircraft.
Airbus has sent an alert to customers instructing them to conduct “specific checks of the Electronic Control Units (ECU) on each of the aircraft's engines”.
Spiegel reports that the bug caused three of the transport's engines to shut down during the pre-delivery test flight. The crash killed four crew.
That A400M was to be delivered to Turkey. Following the crash, Britain, Germany and Turkey grounded their A400M fleets, but France did not.
According to Spiegel, three engines shut down after receiving “contradictory instructions” from the flight control system. The pilots tried to return to Seville airport, but the aircraft struck a power pole, crashed and burned.
A military plane crash in Spain was probably caused by computer files being accidentally wiped from three of its engines, according to investigators.
Plane-maker Airbus discovered anomalies in the A400M's data logs after the crash, suggesting a software fault.
And it has now emerged that Spanish investigators suspect files needed to interpret its engine readings had been deleted by mistake.
This would have caused the affected propellers to spin too slowly.