A400M military Airbus plane crash due to software fault

A military Airbus A400M plane crash in Spain was caused by software fault as “torque calibration parameters” had been accidentally deleted during a software installation from three of its engines, according to investigators.

This would have caused the affected propellers to spin too slowly.

The aeroplane crashed near Seville, during a test flight on 9 May, killing four crew members on board.

Several countries that had already accepted deliveries of the plane – including the UK – grounded them following the accident.

However, Airbus has announced it plans to fly one of its own A400M aircraft at the Paris Air Show next week.

Each engine is run by a separate computer called an Electronic Control Unit, which digest the pilot’s inputs and make the engines they control respond

efficiently to its optimum capacity by turning force generated by each engine – the torque – which is used to make the attached propellers spin.

Without the files, the ECUs cannot make sense of this data.

This would explain why three of the plane’s four engines did not respond properly to the crew’s attempts to adjust their power settings shortly after take-off.