By Christopher Bjork in Madrid and Robert Wall in London
An Airbus Group NV military transport plane crashed near
Seville, southern Spain, killing four of the people on board, the
Spanish government said Saturday.
A government official in Seville said the aircraft was carrying
six people and crashed in a field about a mile north of Seville's
airport, catching fire upon impact. Two people were sent to the
hospital with very serious injuries, she said.
An Airbus spokesman confirmed the crash of an A400M transport
plane that was due for delivery to the Turkish air force. The
European plane maker has dispatched technical experts to the scene,
he said.
Earlier in the day, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said as
many as 10 people were feared killed in the crash. He said the crew
appeared to be Airbus workers, not military personnel. Airbus
personnel typically perform a series of test flights of planes
before the aircraft are delivered to customers.
The crash is the first of an A400M military airlifter, which
Airbus assembles at a plant in Seville. The company said it was
coordinating with relevant authorities and had activated its crash
crisis team.
It is the second big military airplane tragedy in Spain this
year. In January, a Greek combat jet crashed on takeoff during a
military exercise, killing the two pilots and eight people on the
ground.
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.
Airbus has struggled with development and production of the
four-engine turbo-propeller plane. The program has run over cost
and behind schedule. Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders has
apologized for the problems in building the plane.
The crash comes during another difficult period for the program.
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, with orders
from eight countries. The first was delivered to the French air
force in 2013. 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. 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 copilot of deliberately crashing the plane. An
accident report on the AirAsia crash in Indonesia is still
pending.
Write to Robert Wall at robert.wall@wsj.com
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