Incident to the Airbus A350 registered F-HTYO operated by Air France on 28/05/2023 en route
Failure of weather radar in climb, turn-around, damage to radome, airspeed indicator probes affected and overweight landing
On 28 May 2023, the crew of the Airbus A350 registered F-HTYO, operated by Air France, were carrying out flight AF291 between Kansai international airport (Osaka-Japan) and Paris-Charles de Gaulle (France).
During the climb, the occurrence of weather radar faults (WXR fault) led the crew to perform an in-flight turn-around. While flying through FL 300 in descent, the radome collapsed on itself.
The airflow disturbances caused by the substantial damage to the radome impaired the pressure measurements of the probes located at the front of the aeroplane and resulted in discrepancies in the airspeed indications. These discrepancies changed throughout the flight depending on the aeroplane’s angle of attack, and especially during the approach upon extension of the slats and the flaps; when the aeroplane was configured to CONF 1, the pilots observed fluctuations in the airspeed indications on the PFD lasting several tens of seconds and decided to disconnect the autopilot (AP) and the autothrust (A/THR).
The crew performed an overweight landing without any incident.
As a result of the investigation, Airbus updated the maintenance tasks associated with the inspection of the radome and the handling of weather radar faults as well as Airbus A350 operational documents (FCOM and FCTM).
Air France implemented measures to draw the attention of:
• pilots to the operation of the New Air and Inertia Automatic Data Switching (NAIADS) system;
• maintenance technicians to the risks of damage to the composite structure of radomes and the need to strictly apply maintenance procedures.