Emergency services at the site of the crash in Seville. Photo: AP
At least four people have been killed and two seriously injured after an Airbus A400M military plane crashed during a test flight in southern Spain.
Airbus Group NV said an A400M military transport aircraft being tested ahead of delivery to Turkey crashed minutes after taking off from Seville, Spain.
Among the six people on the plane, all Spanish employees of Airbus, four were killed and two seriously injured, an official for the Spanish government office in the region of Andalusia said.
The accident occurred about 1pm local time, about 1.6 kilometres north of Seville's San Pablo Airport. Airbus said it's investigating the circumstances of the disaster and has dispatched a special team.
The incident is the first crash of an A400M. Television news coverage showed the aircraft, which carried the manufacturing serial number 23, completely destroyed and a large plume of black smoke rising over the scene. Photos supplied by the local government indicate the plane went down in a field, with wreckage strewn across a wide area and fire services on site to extinguish the blaze.
The airport was closed to traffic for about an hour after the crash.
Spanish state television TVE said the pilots had communicated with the control tower, saying their plane was in difficulty.
Speaking on Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands, where he was attending a campaign meeting, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sent his condolences to the victims, Spanish news agencies reported.
Aviation sources confirmed the plane was one of Airbus' new A400M troop transporters, which are assembled at a factory in Seville.
"It's a human tragedy, but an accident like this does not indicate a design flaw that would jeopardize the program" said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group, an aviation advisory firm based in Fairfax, Virginia
The four-engine turboprop transporter is assembled in Seville, southern Spain, and the aircraft has started service with armed forces in France, Germany, Turkey and the UK The model that crashed was close to being delivered to Turkey.
The group sent a team of experts to the crash scene.
If confirmed as an accident, it would be the first since the aircraft, which was fraught by development and shipping delays, went into service.
Spain's leader praises men who helped plane crash survivors
By HAROLD HECKLE
May. 10, 2015 4:16 PM EDT
Emergency services personnel work in the area after a plane crash near Seville airport, in Spain, Saturday, May 9, 2015. A military transport plane crashed near southwestern Seville airport Saturday, killing its crew, Spain\'s prime minister said. It is unclear if any others were injured. Mariano Rajoy said up to 10 crew members were aboard the brand new Airbus A400M aircraft that was undergoing flight trials at the airport. (AP Photo/Miguel Angel Morenatti)
MADRID (AP) — Spanish authorities on Sunday praised the bravery of farmworkers who helped pull two survivors away from the burning wreckage of an Airbus A400M military transport plane that had crashed near Seville airport.
The plane, which was undergoing flight tests, destroyed a high-tension electricity pylon as it smashed into a field Saturday, killing four people on board. Airbus spokesman Kieran Daly said it had been carrying six crew: two pilots, three flight test engineers and a technician.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy posted a photograph of himself on Twitter talking to a farmer who had helped save the injured crewmen, calling him "a hero for us all."
Spanish state television TVE and regional newspaper Diario de Sevilla on Sunday featured interviews with Francisco Miranda Escudero, who described how he and three other men had seen two people emerge from the broken fuselage and jump four to five meters (13-16 feet) to the ground.
"The flames were horrifying and the continuous explosions tremendous," Miranda Escudero said as he explained how he and Manuel Iglesias — the man in Rajoy's photograph — had pulled the injured away from the explosions.
He said the two owners of the field also ran over to help drag the men to safety.
The A400M was developed by Airbus to replace aging Hercules transport planes. The machine that crashed had been due for delivery to Turkey in June.
Britain, Germany and Turkey temporarily grounded their A400M planes after the crash pending investigations but France's air force spokesman Colonel Jean-Pascal Breton said "we don't have any reasons to ground the fleet at this stage."
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian later told reporters that the A400M aircraft would only be authorized for use in the most urgent operations.
___
Associated Press writer Thomas Adamson in Paris contributed to this story.
Britain and Germany ground military transport plane after four killed in Spain crash
Britain, Germany stop flights of Airbus A400M military transporter after four test crew killed
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 10 May, 2015, 11:05pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 10 May, 2015, 11:17pm
Reuters in Seville, Spain
Firefighters try to extinguish a fire from the Airbus A400M after it crashed in a field near the Andalusian capital of Seville.Photo: Reuters
Britain and Germany have grounded Europe's new troop and cargo carrier after an Airbus A400M military transport plane crashed outside Seville, killing four test crew.
The aircraft was due to be delivered to another Nato customer, Turkey, and was on its maiden test flight when it crashed in a field 1.6km north of Seville's San Pablo airport. It was the first ever crash of an A400M.
Airbus said four Spanish employees had been killed and two surviving crew were in hospital in serious condition.
Part of crashed Airbus A400 military plane.Photo: EPA
The newspaper El Pais said the crew had detected a fault and asked permission to land, but hit an electricity pylon while attempting an emergency landing.
Tracking data from the Flightradar24 website indicated the plane had wheeled to the left before coming down.
An Airbus spokesman declined to comment on possible causes. Airbus said it had sent a team to investigate.
The crash delivers a fresh blow to Europe's largest defence project, which is still struggling to overcome delays and cost overruns that led to a bailout by European governments in 2010.
Britain and Germany said they were suspending A400M flights while they awaited more information on what caused the crash. A plume of black smoke rose from the site, where hardly anything was left of the plane amid black, scorched earth. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy asked for maximum transparency from Airbus on the reasons for the crash.
"An incident like this is not the best for our industry... It remains to be seen if it was purely circumstantial or if a mistake was made," he said, adding that the Spanish defence minister would meet his German and French counterparts to discuss the incident.
The A400M Atlas was developed for Spain and six other European Nato nations - Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Turkey - at a cost of €20 billion (HK$173.8 billion), making it Europe's biggest single arms contract. It entered service in 2013 after a delay of more than three years.
The launch nations have ordered a total of 170 A400Ms. Malaysia, the plane's only export customer, has ordered four.
The planes are assembled in Spain, which has long sought to emerge from France and Germany's shadow within Europe's largest aerospace company.
Problems in delivering the planes on time, and with all the required military features on board, resurfaced last year, triggering a management shake-up.
After receiving stinging criticism from both Germany and Turkey over the delays, Airbus hoped it was finally turning the corner, with an executive saying last week that it hoped soon to get a second export customer.
There was no immediate word on whether the accident would result in the halting of test flights, which could mean further delivery delays, nor whether the A400M would be grounded by its other current operators: France, Malaysia and Turkey.
The aircraft is designed to put troops and heavy equipment into remote battlefields or carry out humanitarian missions.