"Cracks have been found on the wing ribs of at least three Airbus A380s belonging to Singapore Airlines and Qantas Airways.
Both carriers said the cracks were discovered in the 2nd quarter of 2011, and that they have been repaired and posed no danger to safety."
Ridiculous to find cracks this soon in operation, sounds like they were found during routine phase maintenance and will likely be found in the same general area on all A380 manufactured to date.
The way a wing used to be built was to stress, inspect, beef up and repeat.
Like I mentioned before Airbus had engineered this aircraft to the tightest weight restricting tolerances they could, the largest indication of this was their failure to meet the initial wing load testing. I can not find word one on the INTERNET about their solution and the successful test that deemed the wing capable. It was big news one day.. And then the big delay due to cabin entertainment wiring pushed the aircraft delevery schedule MONTHS! This was all you could read about day after day!!!!
I am sure there is no serious risk but this will mean beefing up those ribs, this will probably result in creating another stress point, beef it up and so on until the aircraft weighs more than they would have been happy selling it for in the first place.
Who knows I could be wrong, time will tell. You can be damn sure Airbus and their customers will keep it as quiet as possible though.