Black Boxes Found After Airbus Crash in Spain -- Update

By Christopher Bjork 

Investigators have recovered the two black boxes from the Airbus Group NV military transport plane that crashed near the southern Spanish city of Seville on Saturday, the government said.

Spain's public-works ministry said the black boxes of the Airbus A400M military airlifter were located Sunday morning and have been handed over to the judge in charge of the investigation.

The devices, which are designed to withstand crashes and fires, should contain a full audio recording of the communications between the crew and of thousands of datapoints about how the aircraft's systems performed.

The aircraft had begun a descent shortly after taking off from the Seville airport Saturday and came down in a field about a mile north of Seville's airport. Four of six Airbus workers that were on board died in the accident, while the remaining two were sent to the hospital with serious injuries.

The flight was that particular aircraft's first. Investigators will examine whether system failures occurred, suggesting a manufacturing problem, or if there was a design issue not seen in the 5 1/2 years since A400M transport planes began flying. The actions of the crew will also be reviewed closely.

Investigators will also rely on information from air-traffic control to piece together the events. Plane-tracking website Flightradar24 said the aircraft crashed at 12:57 p.m. local time after reaching a maximum altitude of 1,725 feet and then descending at a constant speed of about 160 knots, or 184 miles an hour.

The aircraft, which was due for delivery to the Turkish air force in June, took off at 12:45 p.m. local time and crashed about 15 minutes later, according to Airbus.

The crash is the first of this A400M model, which Airbus assembles at a plant in Seville.

Spain's air-accident authority, CIAIAC, which is overseen by the public-works ministry, is leading the probe into the cause of the crash. Airbus said it will aid the investigation, and the Spanish Defense Ministry is assisting, the public-works ministry said Sunday.

The U.K. Defense Ministry said it had temporarily stopped flying its two A400M transport planes as a precautionary measure until more is known about why the aircraft went down. The German air force, which has one such plane, late Saturday followed suit. Malaysia also grounded its plane, though France said it was waiting for more information.

"We will do all it takes to support the authorities in their investigation, which has just been launched," Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders said on Saturday.

The crash comes during another difficult period for the A400M program. Airbus has struggled with development and production of the four-engine turbo-propeller plane, and the program has run over cost and behind schedule. Mr. Enders has apologized for the problems in building the plane.

Airbus in January replaced the head of the military aircraft unit because of sustained technical and production problems. The company's 2014 full-year results included a EUR551 million ($618 million) charge related to problems building the plane.

Airbus has sold 174 of the military cargo planes, which cost about $170 million each, with orders from eight countries. The first was delivered to the French air force in 2013, a decade after its development began. Turkey, the U.K. and Germany are among the countries to have received A400M planes.

The plane maker was starting to aggressively promote the plane in export markets around the world in the hope of securing more orders. Malaysia is the sole export customer at this point.

Airbus officials have said the company won't make money on the plane unless it secures additional deals after the development program ran billions of dollars over cost. Airbus at one point considered abandoning the program.

Airbus also has had to contend with recent accidents in its civil airplane unit, after an AirAsia A320 jetliner crashed in December and a similar plane operated by Deutsche Lufthansa AG 's budget arm Germanwings went down in March. Neither crash has been linked to faults at Airbus. Investigators into the Germanwings crash suspect the co-pilot of deliberately crashing the plane. An accident report on the AirAsia crash in Indonesia is pending.

Write to Christopher Bjork at [e-mail]

Access Investor Kit for Airbus Group

Visit http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=NL0000235190

Access Investor Kit for Fugro NV

Visit http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=NL0000352565

Access Investor Kit for Airbus Group

Visit http://www.companyspotlight.com/partner?cp_code=P479&isin=US0092791005

Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires