COLOGNE, Germany, July 31 (UPI) -- Airlines flying Airbus aircraft must replace airspeed-measuring devices implicated in a June crash, aviation safety regulators mandated Friday.
A Thales pitot probe -- a pressure measurement instrument used to measure fluid flow velocity -- may have been a cause of the June 1 crash of Air France Flight 447, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
"The European Aviation Safety Agency plans to propose an airworthiness directive mandating that all A330 and A340 currently fitted with Thales pitot probes must be fitted with at least two Goodrich probes, allowing a maximum of one Thales to remain fitted to the aircraft," the agency, based in Cologne, Germany, said in a statement.
An airworthiness directive is effectively an order to the planes' operators. The agency said it would be issued within the next 14 days.
The agency described the move as precautionary, based on pitot tube data analyzed in recent weeks, the Journal said.
The agency plans to ban all uses of the model probe installed on the Air France jet that killed 216 passengers and 12 crew members, agency spokesmen said.
