There are more than 2,500 planes from the Airbus 320 family, which includes the Airbus 318, 319 and 321 models, in operation worldwide. Aviation safety officials Thursday said the planes have a good safety record.

Howard Plagens, a senior air safety investigator with the
National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating Wednesday's incident, called problems with landing gear "common."

At a news conference Thursday at LAX, he said he believed that passengers had no reason for concern about the safety of the Airbus fleet.

Two causes for the misaligned front wheels have been found.
A problem with misaligned wheels on a 1999 America West flight into Columbus, Ohio, was caused by a faulty seal on a valve. That design flaw had been known before the flight because of a previous incident and had been the subject of an advisory to airlines using the Airbus 320 planes. The fix had not yet been made on the aircraft involved in the emergency landing. After the flight, federal safety officials issued an order that required the repair.

The plane used in Flight 292 on Wednesday received its last routine maintenance Sept. 20 in New York, when a sensor that tells the pilot whether the airplane is off the ground was replaced. Investigators have yet to review all of the jet's maintenance records.

In those two cases, as well as two flights in other countries, the problems were traced to improper installation of a hydraulic shock absorber.

That problem also led to advisories to airlines, detailing mistakes that maintenance workers could make in installing the hydraulic shock absorber. The advisories warned that failure to comply with proper installation instructions "is dangerous for aircraft safety."

[news.yahoo.com]