Hamburg - Germany's air safety agency (LBA) has ordered checks on the A330 and A340 series of Airbus planes after finding that cracks have formed around small holes inside the airliners' wings.
German airline Lufthansa, which flies 26 of the planes, said on Wednesday that it had already checked six of them and found cracks in several.
There are nearly 600 of the planes in service around the world.
"The alert was justified," said Lufthansa spokesperson Michael Lamberty. But he said the cracks did not constitute a safety risk.
| 'All these planes can continue to fly' |
The airworthiness directive follows a December 23 lead from France's aviation safety agency, and is expected to be picked up by other safety bodies such as the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Airbus chief operating officer Gustav Humbert told reporters: "The cracks were discovered in the ribs of the wing during routine maintenance checks of A340 planes. We informed the air safety regulators.
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"It's nothing dramatic. All these planes can continue to fly."
According to the directive, cracking was observed near two fuel-pipe holes in number-six rib of both left and right wings.
An LBA spokesperson stressed that the directive was not in the top category of urgent, which would ground all the planes immediately.
German airlines are required to check their A340 planes for possible damage within the period of the next 250 takeoffs or 1 100 flying hours, by the end of March at the latest.
An official at the LBA, in Braunschweig, northern Germany, added that directives were a common event, with one or more per year for every major model. - Sapa-dpa
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