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According to a new announcement, Airbus may be forced to ground its worldwide fleet of long range aircrafts. This huge blow could be dealt to Airbus after accident investigators publish what they think caused the Air France 447 crash on June 1 off the coast of Brazil. This crash killed at least 228 people.

Most experts say that they think that the French accident bureau will report that it was faulty speed data and electronics that caused the Airbus 330 to stall during the tropical thunderstorm. Of course, the European Aviation Safety Agency is likely to be asked why they did not take action to address these problems. If experts are right, the problems that they think could have caused the crash are very common and well known problems on both the Airbus 330 series and the 340 series.

Airbus first came out saying that the problem was with the speed sensors, which is also called pitot tubs. Just this week, it was found out that, in 1994, almost 36 reports of incidents very similar to the one that brought down the 447 flight had been reported.

Out of the 50 bodies that did get recovered form the Atlantic Ocean, only 11 have been able to be identified. The search for the remaining bodies has now been called off, but some ships continue the hunt for the missing black box. However, the beacon on the black box is thought to have already expired.

It is likely that the fate of flight 447 would have been unsolved had it not been automatically transmitted back to Air France’s maintenance base. In the final four minutes of the flight, it was reported that ice particles or water had blocked up three pitot tubes.

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