Tail strike specific to Cathay, says Airbus
Airbus has ruled out issuing a worldwide safety alert following an incident in which a Cathay Pacific plane's tail struck the runway during takeoff, saying it believes the causes were specific to the Hong Kong airline.
An investigation by Cathay Pacific's Corporate Safety Department found the tail strike in Auckland on January 20 on an Airbus A340-300 carrying 145 passengers occurred because of underinflated shock absorbers on the airplane's main landing gear.
It recommends that Airbus fit pressure gauges to landing gear, issue guidelines to engineers to check for underinflated shock absorbers and consider fitting tail-strike indicators to A340-300s.
But an Airbus spokesman at the company's headquarters in Toulouse, France, said the factors that led to the Auckland incident were 'not widespread' and were 'specific to the Cathay fleet'.
About half Cathay Pacific's fleet of 15 Airbus A340-300s were found to have underinflated landing-gear shock absorbers when they were checked following the tail strike which occurred as the Cathay jet left Auckland for Hong Kong.
Tail strikes are potentially catastrophic, as the tail is near the rear pressure bulkhead which, if ruptured, can lead to depressurisation of the passenger cabin.
