The news from Seville has not been good. The southern Spanish city is home to the Airbus A400M turboprop airlifter production line. The aircraft has suffered delays since the project got underway in 1982. Foot-dragging over order sizes by the four development partner countries of Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Spain has not helped things. The most pressing issue now is to resolve the technical problems being encountered as the first prototype is assembled. Amassing the necessary flight hours on the aircraft's Europrop TP-400 engine has been difficult following setbacks integrating the engine on to a Lockheed Martin C-130K test bed by Marshall Aerospace in the UK.
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