Planemaker Airbus appealed for patience in speculating on the cause of the Atlantic plane disaster as Boeing came to the defence of its European rival's A330 passenger jet, according to Reuters. An Air France A330 jet crashed in the Atlantic en route from Brazil to Paris on June 1, killing all 228 people on board the Airbus in the worst aviation disaster in eight years. "It is safe to say that the aviation community is still under some shock," Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders told journalists. "And it certainly doesn't provide consolation to the families that if we look at the statistics of flying compared with 30 years ago, the statistics show that the A330 is one of the safest aircraft that has ever gone into service." Enders was speaking on Saturday in a briefing ahead of the June 15-21 Paris Airshow along with the head of Airbus parent EADS. Contents of the briefing were embargoed for Sunday. The crash has cast a pall over the world's largest aviation event, adding to economic pressures which have forced airlines to cancel or defer plane orders and travel fears over H1N1 flu. EADS Chief Executive Louis Gallois appealed for media calm over the cause of the crash. "Please be patient," he said. "Such an inquiry is long and we should not launch into ideas because it is an issue for families, colleagues and friends. They don't know if what they are reading in newspapers is true or not." Enders said Airbus personnel had been deployed on rescue ships searching the Atlantic for bodies and wreckage and were ready to give expert help on the jetliner if required. Interviewed ahead of the Paris airshow, Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney defended the advent of electronic flight control technology and said the A330 was a proven aircraft. "The causes of the accident are unknown, and I don't think there is any link with a serious fault with the aircraft," McNerney was quoted as saying in a joint interview with several European newspapers. "The A330 is a reliable and proven aircraft," he added. Shortly after the June 1 crash, Air France said the plane could have been struck by lightning, suggesting a massive electrical failure and rekindling a debate over to what extent computers should be left to operate an aircraft's moving parts. However Airbus last week ruled out an electrical or cockpit instrument shutdown and attention now focuses instead on whether the pilots knew at what speed they were heading into a storm. Investigators have said the aircraft sent out automated warning messages to maintenance crews including one suggesting the speed readings were unreliable, raising uncertainty over whether the jetliner's speed sensors may have been faulty. Airbus pioneered electronic fly-by-wire technology with its A320 family of short-distance aircraft from 1988. Boeing took a similar step with its Boeing 777 in the mid-1990s but pilots say the two makes of plane are still flown in very different ways. Airbus last week denied a French report it was thinking of grounding the global fleet of almost 1,000 A330s and A340s, a sister model, to change speed sensors and said the jets were safe.
