Locking building gates to protect wildlife just adds more risk for Airbus and its employees Airbus recently ran into unforeseen challenges at its plant in Mirabel, near Montreal. The plant, which was handsomely churning out A220 Airbus airliners for a European airline when the incident happened, this time around was rather quiet. The crew jumped into action, efficiently quarantining that particular jet and inspecting it top to bottom.
The mother raccoon was originally seen ascending the landing gear of a plane that was on the production line. This sighting and others like it created a din of outrage over what kind of havoc the animals might have wreaked. After the initial detection of the baby mammals, workers had to stop or shift from their routine duties to focus on efforts to address it.
Along with the quarantine requirements, MAF staff examined the plane for any indications of insect invasion. Reports showed that there were several violations such as urine-stained cages and wire chewing. This inspection process was extremely labor intensive and time consuming due to the nature of having to open everything back up and visually assess the aircraft integrity.
“A guy came face to face with the raccoon after having entered the plane,” recounted one factory worker, highlighting the unexpected nature of the encounter. The raccoons played up to their stereotype of going through trash cans for food. Each time this behavior would play out it just made the production environment more complex.
Despite these disruptions, an Airbus spokesperson confirmed that “the aircraft is pursuing its assembly process.” The company is determined to continue meeting its production schedule while vigorously managing incidents that develop unexpectedly on the production floor.
