Airbus denies A380 model has technical defect

[TallDutch]

Paris, Feb 10 (Xinhua) The European plane manufacturer Airbus has denied reports alleging the A380 model, the world's largest passenger plane, has a technical problem with its emergency evacuation chute.

All A380 evacuation chutes must be reviewed 'after several flights' only, the German daily newspaper Stern reported Saturday.

More info can be found here
http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/ ... 6246/cs/1/ (http://story.irishsun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/88176adfdf246af5/id/326246/cs/1/)

[Matt Molnar]

I meant to post this the other day...if true this could be a pretty major problem given the size of the chutes and the difficulty of repairing them.

From what I understand, because they are so large, Airbus had to develop a new inflation method involving a cartridge containing special gas rather than regular air as used in conventional chutes. The alleged problem is that the chemicals in the cartridges degrade more quickly than expected, rendering the cartridges unable to inflate the chutes. Every plane has 16 chutes, and to replace the cartridges requires unfurling and repacking every chute.