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Building the A380
Gavinsblog writes "The Independent has a report on the construction
of the Airbus A380. Amazingly, a ship is being custom-built to ferry parts
for assembly, a custom fleet of trucks are also to be used - with roads widened
to suit. Oh and the assembly building is the size of two soccer pitches, and the
height of an olympic swimming pool."
Last time I checked, olympic swimming pools weren't very high. In fact, they actually went down into the floor.
... how many poor people could eat a year with $260m.
perosnally, i don't see the benefit of a huge plane like this. somebody convince me.
We gave you the mobile phone, and now the world's biggest/best passenger plane. So what have the Americans ever done for us?
Ok the plane is big and the people have to herded in. BUT, imagine like how planes are routed along certain times the amount of traffic at customs?
HOLY MOLY! In the mornings (Europe) or afternoons (America) there is going to be a whole slew of people moving through customs. Make the security checks look like a walk in the park....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
/me is shocked.
I will not say "this is 133t" about a huge unneccesary airplane, because I think it is a waste of money that could be spent better elsewhere. Therefore I am modded -1:flamebait?
I don't care about the -1, prolly someone will find this comment inflammatory as well... I was genuinly expressing my feelings on the subject...
I guess I'll never understand the logic of this place
Who measures things in soccer pitches olympic swimming pools? What sort of standards are these? I was just getting used to meters, had a basic understanding of fathoms, and had heard of rods, but what the heck are these new units?
30M ~= 1 olympic size swimming pool?, so is it 60 meters tall? ~190 feet tall?
And just how long exactly is a soccor (soccer!) pitch (field!). My reports show between 100 and 130 yards (Arph! yet another measurement!).
Let's all get together and use either metric or english systems please. Your preference, I don't care because I can translate easily enough between those two.
ADVENTUR>You are in a maze of twisty little passages.
The preceding comment has been reviewed and declared to be compliant with HIPPA Phase II regulations.
When I first read th title it sounded strange that IBM had to build a new ship to manufacture a new computer.
But now that I've read the article, I see it's about building airplanes. However I thinks it's kind of amusing that the airplane parts get thier own rest stops on the highway.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Planes this big are used to deliver all the printed Slashdot comments to Africa so that people without internet access could still read them.
Then again, maybe Osama ordered this one?
Uh-oh. They'd better rethink that 7,500-ton roof...
Hopefully it'll have custom jumbo-size seats to accomodate today's wider, fatter traveller!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
http://www.airbus.com/airbus4u/photo_album.asp
This raises the interesting question of what happens when a large plane is damaged at a smaller airport. Somewhere like Gatwick. As far as I can see, they've only got two options: a) repair the plane with the limited facilities available or b) chop it up and remove it as scrap metal.
Does anyone have stories to tell about planes that landed too hard, and had to be scrapped because repairs couldn't be carried out on the spot?
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
What is the point of writing an article about the world biggest passengerjet and the buildings it is assembled in, when you have no photos?
Lazy-ass journalists.
I have a good job, and do live in the Western world. Still I can't ignore what is wrong with this society. Our wealth is at the cost of others, it will always stay like this when we keep on pushing down the poor and say they should work harder.
;-)
It's very easy to judge from a luxurious armchair.
Anyway, I think this discussion is getting way off-topic, and I don't want to pick a fight (unlike what some moderators tend to believe).
Let's just say you're right, and I'm wrong, nkay
Ballmer: Developers, developers, developers, developers!!!
Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...
But the more people on a plane, the more that die when it comes spiralling down. Reminds me of the saying "The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
Anyhow, I'd be interested in seeing what kind of engines this behemoth will be using.
-kidlinux.
> At the peak of production, when Airbus is building four A380s a month, the main roads into Toulouse from the north-west will be clogged 12 nights a month with this slow-moving procession.
I'd bet that Airbus would kill to be able to use a CargoLifter airship. This is exactly what they are designed for. Can quietly transport 160 metric tons of any size and shape, for drop off at any location.
Oh dear. Looks like they are going bankrupt.
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
just marked you as "friend". good to see others with some sense of reality
Now the Eurpoeans are building something so ridiculously big that no Americans want it.
Talk about role-reversal.
Isn't the standard length of swimming pool 50 m?
and the height of an olympic swimming pool.
How high is that in Libraries of Congress?
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
Guess I'll wait to check the number of passengers before getting on.
so in principle we do not disagree at all...
accept for this conclusion at the end of your post:
"Its not a perfect world, but at least its moving in the right direction, thanks to Capitalism."
How do you know? Perhaps it is 'despite Capitalism, due to the hard work of the Chinese people'.
I'm sorry, I'd love to continue this discussion, but I have to get back to the lab to work...
Take care Pharmboy,
Meneer de Koekepeer
Compare this with the space elevator. The estimated initial cost ($10 bn) is about the same as that of the airbus. Govt. spending on the space elevator: $570,000. Benefit of the space elevator: It would possibly have an enormous impact on the destiny of mankind.
If only governments wouldn't be so shortsighted...
Considering the "height" of any swimming pool, it seems to me rest of the dimensions of this building would be more suited for the worlds largest indoors go-cart track. :-)
http://www.airbus.com/product/a380_backgrounder.as p
I have done some work in Toulouse for Airbus, and been at both the Central training sites and also Airbus France itself, which is next to the airport. It is incredible walking out of an office across a hanger with two A319s into another office: it is strange to do that when so often at airports the aircraft are always outside, not inside what appears beforehand as an office building! But when I saw the giant hanger that is going to be the assembly area for the A380, it is just astonishing. It was about a month ago, so the roof hadn't been added, but even so it made me realise that the 'little' models in the reception really were not representative of just how big this aircraft is going to be. I've seen the one of the guppy transport craft take off from Toulouse as well, and I didn't really beleive that could get in the air, let alone the A380. It will be really impressive (for someone that really has never been that interested in aeroplanes) to see it fly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some background info from a world trade law student:
One: European governments are subsidizing Airbus development costs, which according to the U.S. violates WTO rules on subsidies. Of course, neither the EU nor the Bush administration can really be considered champions of unrestricted free trade.
[rant] Although economists and common sense agree that free trade results in a net wealth benefit (note that this doesn't imply a "fair" distribution of that wealth), special interest groups that have much to lose from free trade (unproductive industries, unions) find it easier to exert political influence in favor of protectionism than the average person-on-the-street, who stands to lose a few cents a day on account of a specific protectionist measure, of which he is generally not even aware. [/rant]
Two: There is of course no economical or technical reason at all to distribute this kind of megaconstruction project all over Europe. It is estimated that all the silly moving around of pieces increases construction cost by a two-figures percentage. The reason, of course, is a political one: every nation wants a piece of the cake...
While Airbus' new assembly buildings for the A380 superjumbo airliner are impressive, don't forget that Boeing had to do the exact same thing some 37 years ago when the 747 airliner project was launched.
In a way, Boeing's project was more ambitious because they had to do the following:
1. Expand what was then a small regional airfield (Paine Field) to accommodate the production line for the 747, including new longer runways.
2. Expand the parking ramp to enormous size to accommodate 747's in the final completion stage after being rolled out of the assembly line.
3. Build the world's roomiest assembly buildings and a huge paintshop building that could paint a completed 747.
4. Upgrade the ship ports in the nearby city of Everett, WA to accommodate 747 parts, including fuselage sections.
5. Build a special railroad spur line to the assembly plant, with one of the steepest gradients ever attempted for a non-cog line railroad.
And all that construction mentioned above had to be done with the Pacific Northwest's notoriously rainy weather.
What Airbus is doing at Toulouse and Hamburg are pretty much just extensions to their current large assembly plants--nothing akin to what Boeing had to do from scratch to create the 747 assembly line.
Since when does a single company need a $5 billion subsidy from the government?
Since Europe wants to underbid America,Inc. for its planes it has to offset the effect of military purchases from US plane makers.
It already takes longer to go through the airport security than to fly between airports. (Just because the stupid idiot airlines INSIST on having unsecured cabin doors, [wrap the pilots in a kevlar cage and we could run a turkey shoot in steerage, uh, economy class.])
I definitely __never__ want to fly in one of those bloated turkeys. (I know turkeys don't fly.) With any (bad) luck they'll be running some M$ software.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This is where the 2000 opening of San Francisco International Airport's (SFO) new International Terminal has proved to be much more visionary than people think.
Because the terminal was built in the late 1990's when what was then the Airbus A3XX project was well-advanced, the architects of the new terminal were able to design gates at the end of Concourses A and G (the two concourses that are the International gates) to conform to the 80 x 80 meter (262 x 262 feet) standard for parking gate space used by the A380. Even the Federal Inspection Service (Customs and Immigration) areas were expanded so they could easily accommodate the influx of 500+ passengers per plane. A recent US General Accounting Office (GAO) report on accommodating larger airliners at US airports notes that SFO only needs to spend about US$70 million to make the airport fully A380-compatible, with the primary cost being runway exit ramp widening to accommodate the wider stance of the A380.
In short, once the A380 starts its flight testing phase don't be surprised that the plane is a fairly frequent visitor to SFO because SFO could be used as a reference standard for A380 airport compatibility.
Custom-built ships to ferry parts. Custom fleet of trucks. Roads widened for the trucks (custom set of roads).
Hate to say it, but sounds like a bunch of dot-com flunkies are on this project.
Close enough.
And I'm not even going to try Cyrillic...
There were more US casualties during the Anzio invasion than MacArthur's troops suffered during the whole Pacific war (I don't remember if that included the 1941 loss of the Phillipines or not).
There were a helluva lot more resources and troops sent to Europe than to the Pacific. The first US jet fighter - the P-80 - first saw combat action in Italy, IIRC. The US air forces in Europe could - after 1944 or so - put 1000+ bombers over Germany day after day after day. You could probably count the number of 1000+ bomber raids on Japan on one hand.
I think US Airways also has them.
Although I wonder if US passengers will avoid riding Airbus's or if carriers will avoid buying them after the latest round of anti-American tantrums coming out of Chirac and Schroeder.
In England football (soccer) pitches are a common unit of measurement, but heights are either measured in double decker buses or Nelson's columns.
For larger areas than football pitches, Waleses are used.
- Brian.
This was done mostly the work of the Soviet Union, when you where busy chasing Japan out of the pacific.
You will never convince America of this, but it is more true than false.
On the other hand:
1)The USSR tried to be partners with Hitler
and was forced by Hitler's attack, kill,
enslave policy to defend itself at all
costs. We only tried to be suppliers and
not fighters.
2)The US supplied billions of dollars in
war material to the USSR to help them
fight the Germans.
Conclusion: Russian lives and American dollars defeated Germany, and I'm not the first to say so.
This report is riddled with holes. For example everyone knows that the standard unit for length in sensationalist reporting is the football field, not the soccer pitch. And the standard unit for height is the Empire State building, not the olympic swimming pool. Also conspicuously absent is any comparison to the width of a human hair, or to how many times we could go to and from the moon of we laid something-or-other end to end. Very disappointing...
A thimbleful is all that exist in the world right now.
When someone figures out how to mass produce carbon nanotube cables, then I'll give this space elevator a bit of merit.
Of course there are dozens of other very major hurdles that need be jumped prior to this thing being built. But right now the "plan" relies on fundamental parts that no one in the world knows how to build in quantity.
Until they figure this out, at best the elevator is wishful thinking, at worst a complete hoax.
Per se, democracy means "people's power", from ancient Greek, and it's de facto meaning in politics is a system in which every citizen has an equal opportunity to affect (or decide not to) the decisions made in the name of the community -essentially, everyone has a vote on everything. The reason democracy has failed so far is that after it's birth, communities grew faster than information transportation technologies, rendering the concept of equal vote useless. Now, as we are approaching the time when the whole world can be reached instantaneously, we might yet again see the real democracy rise. I'm also predicting communism will be successful when the information technologies get advanced enough.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
I've seen it with my own eyes. The thing is that like chickens (which also fly) they don't go very far. However, I believe turkeys fly further than chickens.
Aerospaceweb.org
Marc Schaeffer's page
Studies (and intuition) show that it is more fuel efficient to fly short trip and refuel, than it is to pack a plane full of fuel for a long trip.
While moving lots of people in a single trip is more efficient, moving lots of fuel is not. It makes me wonder if they'll be able to afford to fly this pig on anything but an ocean route.
And for a second there I thought they were talking about building some new sort of Amiga.
--riney
One of the reasons that commuter plane went down in North Carolina a while ago appears to be that it was overloaded - with fat passengers.
Notice the recent changes to FAA rules that allow an airline to ask a passengers weight? It seems the assumption of 160 lbs or whatever it is isn't enough...
Metric IS English.
You can't argue with me on this one; I am English. Top trumps.
England, part of the United Kingdom, has been metric since the 1970's and before, with the exception of road signs and beer.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
You've forgot the fastest comercial plane : concorde ....
-SLK
I remember few years ago, i've heard that event 'pint' has be converted as a regular value in liter.
Anyway, quite funny that in north america, only the US is still under the old UK system and do not yet use the metric system...
Quick reference: 1 Nelson Column = 185 ft
1 Washington Monument = 169 m
1 football pitch = 360 ft * 246 ft
1 football field = 110 m * 49 m
1 Wales = ~8000 square miles
1 Texas = 700,000 square kilometers
I think that you can use a Fourier transform, but according to Heisenberg, you cannot precisely measure both the data storage capacity and the height of a swimming pool at the same time.
Sigs are bad for your health.
This is the plane that is actually used to ship regular boing slices from europe factory to toulouse for final arragement.
...
see http://www.airbustransport.com/rel08_01_98.html
But unfortunatly the A380 is so big, that building a A380 compliant beluga is quite a complex task !
-SLK
www.eclipseaviation.com But our avionics package is better (dollar for dollar)
how many people could eat with the $10 billion+ that the US will spend on war with Iraq. Oh, but then the poor defence contractors would starve if they didn't.
A380 is not a single plane but an product offer.
... let's wait the first in flight test ;-)
In fact it can go from : A380 economical target (the most seats), to A380 highend for long distance where cabins can be setup for overnigh travel for instance...
Some of them have alredy been booked to became flying casino for game restrictive area.
The most interresing stuff around that project is that it enable to make quite versatile business plan and adapt your fleet to the targeted market.
So, a win-win, or a flop
-SLK
The economy is in the shitter.
Several airlines are in bankrupcy, and many are talking Chapter 9 liquidation.
Many fleets of 747s are being grounded and being replaced by the lower-capacity 777... including in Pacific Rim routes. They just can't afford to fly that many empty seats, and that large of an aircraft is just less efficient than a two-engine.
So why is Airbus gambling that the world needs an enormous airplane? It seems like extreme fiscial irresponsibility, especically considering they're government-funded! America certainly won't be buying, and I doubt much rest of the 100 plane order will go through if the economy continues to degrade in the rest of the world.
It almost reminds me of the Spruce Goose. Have fun paying off your new boat anchor, Europe. Welcome to recession.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
for its econnomy, and US air company are "encouraged" to use Boeing ;)
... but facts are now here, Aribus is cheaper and safer.
;)
... heard that china will lauch a man in space before end of this year ?
... in a way, EU and US should cooperate one another or they will be endanger within the next 2decade !
Airbus, was for long time quality lowered by FAA allegations
Now, Bush administration have decide to strike back and do massive founding of aircraft industry. Thank's to the multi-year credits skyrocketeering ! God bless the congress for the multi-billions
Anyway, while US and EU are sandbox kidding, china is silently moving to be the next big player
US and EU are microbs compared to china
-SLK
This sure is costing the European taxpayer quite a bit of money. They have to pay to widen roads? They're fronting the development costs. They'll sure be screwed if this thing doesn't make money.
Also, there is a Concorde in the front yard. Not having been "lucky" enough to fly on the thing, it was my first time seeing it. They're amazingly small.
The whole project struck me as insanely inefficient, though. Parts are manufactured all the hell over the place, purely for the purposes of making different governments "feel good". Special trucks are the least of the oddities; the first thing the consortium had to build was a fleet of special guppy planes to hall aircraft parts from Germany, England and Spain into Toulouse. I can't imagine that this is at all cost-effective, and I wonder whether they'd survive without generous gov't assistance (of course, you could easily say the same thing about Boeing, given their huge defence business.)
Bigger trains...bigger plains....it's frustrating.
The primary reason that mass transportation used a large single unit to transport a large quantity of people was that it required only a few people (pilots/conductors) to direct the vehicle. This was far cheaper than transporting a few people at a time.
Nowadays, we have the technology to direct the vehicle with computers. We could create something like a cross-country monorail system that ran small computer-controlled vehicles. You get to the station when you want, you immediately hop into the first available pod, punch in your target station, and it goes right away.
Yeah, something like this would be incredibly expensive to build, but really cheap to use. Like the difference between sending your files by postal mail versus using the internet.
Transporting shipments would be quicker and cheaper too.
True, it probably wouldn't work for travelling overseas. But you could use the high-speed pod system to get to the coast, and take a plane overseas.
Here in Chicago, the Metra train system wants $1.1 billion to add a train line from Joliet to O'Hare. An overhead pod system might actually cheaper, and far more useful. There's no chance of it with Metra though. They build what they know.
You're right, and I can see the headline now:
NASA Probe Lost:
Scientists forget to convert football fields to ice hockey rinks
You're right, we should standardize on our field measurements. I suggest we use the current world record for the discus toss, since the Greeks are sort of the father of sports and that's probably the most famous of them all. Now if only I knew how far that was...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
No, how high is a Mountain in China?
Yes...
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
You're being a little short-sighted, aren't you? A fleet of airplanes like the A380 will last at least 30 years, if not 50. The design and construction started many years ago and cost billions of dollars. You think that should all be abandoned because of this little blip, of couple of years of bad economy?
You'll note from your own post -- 747's are being grounded. Why aren't they being sold? For the same reason.
Yes, I know lots of planes are fly-by-wire, and therefore "controlled" by a computer. But they still have a human pilot that can respond to things the computer wasn't preprogrammed to handle, and even very recently fly-by-wire airliners have flown into the ground because the computer control system wouldn't let the pilot do what was necessary to save the plane and passengers. Remember the Airbus that flew straight into the trees when the computer wouldn't let the pilot control it because it was too close to stalling?
Although it's tough to imagine a computer taking up militant Wahhabist Islam and murdering thousands...
But will the Americans let it land? Remember when the Concorde SST was introduced? Too noisy, oh my poor ears... Funny how America is always the voice of sweet reason and fair play competition - when it's winning. But when it's losing, watch out!
Mod parent up!!!!
Maybe it's recession now, but nobody knows what will happen in the future...
Wow that's a big plane. It will surely take more than one Muslim to blow it up. Or maybe not - maybe it's so bit that it would be easy to hit with a shoulder-launched SAM. Great.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
How big is a soccer pitch in terms of a football field?
The market for the jumbo's is declining. People want point to point. The Mid size is where it's going to be over the next 15 years, and that's exactly where Boeing is heading.
People don't want 18 connecting flights. They wan't direct routes. That's part of the reason the market for the jumbo's is shrinking and the market for the 777's is thriving, especialy as you mention in Asia. But since the European's effort is really just a welfare project they don't care if it's sucessful.
[Warning: Flamebait for those who jump the gun]
Below is a quote that I found to be a very useful answer to all the flamewars going on (as to who is better; Americans or non-Americans).
This is how to read it:
If this doesn't solve the problem of flamewars, I have lost all hope for humanity. (Ha! Ha! Ha!)
So, please stop this pointless banter and start talking about some technical details instead.
Thank you.
Grim Reality
2003-02-22 17:39:48 UTC (2003-02-22 12:39:48 EST)
Many fleets of 747s are being grounded and being replaced by the lower-capacity 777... including in Pacific Rim routes. Actually, that is not quite accurate. The airlines are grounding 747 becuase they cost more / passenger than does the 777. The 747 engines and airodynamics are inefficient compared to the 777. It is for this reason, that the 380 will make a huge dent in the market. Southwest will not be buying these, but United, American, etc will buy fleets of these. Or better yet, if Boeing will pull their head out of their ass, they will buy the BWB's. These aircrafts will be super efficient, and fun to fly in.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I've been to Lake Titicaca in Peru and seen the two warships on what is the highest lake in the world. If correctly I recall, the ships were built part by part in the UK, shipped by ships and then train and alpaca over about 5 years across the Andes, and then built on the lakeshore. Still functional (although they had to change the engline to one which works on Alpaca droppings). Recommended visit.
-/elad
my awe at such an engineering feat is separate from my concern of aircraft getting so large (for commercial passengers that is) yet still relying solely on aerodynamic lift only. Perhaps when other methods are introduced that can replace and/or complement aerodynamic produced lift then I would not be as concerned but for now that is only the stuff of fiction
This is the first part of an article from Aviation Week last December. This group of retired airplane designers has some interesting ideas on reducing the cost of transporting passengers.
--
Thinking Outside the Box Without Getting Too Far
16-Dec-2002
By James R. Asker
For decades, it seems two types of new civil aircraft have been discussed. Those that actually get developed tend to offer modest, incremental improvements on existing technologies arranged in patterns that are familiar. Then there are those that involve radical departures from the familiar long silver tubes. Typically, these remain "paper airplanes" never getting past a set of interesting drawings and studies.
There's nothing wrong with evolving a product line. Airbus, Boeing and the engine makers have been making commercial aviation safer and more efficient for decades doing that. Nor am I saying that radically different aircraft never go into production and airline service. The supersonic Concorde was certainly a dramatic departure from the state of the art.
But it seems all too rare that an aircraft comes along that shakes up assumptions about what passenger airplanes must be like but that is not so radical that it can't succeed commercially. The Boeing 747 comes to mind. There are so many inefficiencies in other areas of the process of getting people from one place to another by air that seem ripe for improvement. And almost all of them are related to things that take place on the ground. There's a lot more time wasted on the ground than in the air.
That's why I am intrigued by the approach of a group of veteran engineers who call themselves the Reston Elders and have been working for several years on designs to bring a little radical change to air travel. Chas Willits, a member I met more than a decade ago when he was working at NASA's old space station program office in Reston, Va., candidly describes the group as "a bunch of old guys with a lot of experience."
The Reston Elders' design philosophy involves approaching aircraft and ground facilities together as elements of the air transportation system, looking at unexamined assumptions, concentrating on areas in which the biggest savings can be had and then trying to apply existing technologies to lower costs and increase passenger satisfaction--and airline profit margins.
The specific goal they have laid out for themselves is to design a family of passenger-friendly air vehicles and associated ground equipment that could allow a doubling of air transport capacity at one-third less manufacturing cost and half the current average seat-mile operating cost.
How do you cut seat-mile costs? Labor is the biggest single component of costs. Give labor tools that allow workers to be more productive and costs go down. If you can both reduce the number of ground workers and cut the time required to ready an aircraft for its next flight, allowing higher asset utilization, you have attacked the problem from two directions.
So the Elders aimed for a system that allows even a 600-passenger aircraft's turn time to be kept under 30 min. "The idea is not to be a carbon copy of Southwest Airlines," Willits says. "But we need to move in that direction."
To accomplish that, the group would build aircraft that can "crab taxi" so that it is parallel to the loading pier, easily allowing multiple loading ramps (see drawing). More importantly, it would allow a dramatic change in baggage handling. Airports/airlines would provide baggage carts at curbside to all passengers free, as some in Europe now do. There's a type of cart that can go on escalators. After clearing security, passengers would bring all their bags to the gate, where they would place them in containers. The containers could be loaded and unloaded on the aircraft via conveyor belts, eliminating baggage handling labor and vehicles. Fueling would be done by a system that pops up from the pavement, as done now in Stockholm and Singapore.
Getting vehicles off the ramp would reduce air pollution associated with airline activity by 20% and eliminate what the Elders claim is a $5-billion annual bill for airport "fender-benders."
The Reston Elders have ended up with designs for a family of constant cross-section subsonic aircraft having two decks with double-aisle, six-to-a-row seating in 250-, 364- and 528-coach seat variants. The 528-seater would be 208 ft. long and have a wingspan of 200 ft.
No center seats would enhance safety and comfort. Even with the comfortable 34-in. seat pitch planned, the pressure shell would use only 110 cu. ft. per passenger, a more efficient use of the volume than that of the Boeing 777-300, which uses 145 cu. ft. per passenger, according to Willits.
Obviously, to be able to park parallel to existing terminals' piers, the aircraft have to have a high-wing design. Placing the engines over the wing, with other refinements, would achieve about 10-dB. noise reduction on the ground because noise is reflected "up and out" off the wing, allowing 24-hr. operations at all airports. It would also virtually eliminate ground-sourced foreign-object damage. The aircraft would use full-span flaperons and caster landing gear, as on a B-52, which would allow for no rotation at V 1 and wings-level landings.
The main assembly building, where Boeing's widebody jets (747/767/777) are built, is the largest building on the planet. Its footprint is nearly 100 acres -- enough to accommodate Disneyland (the one in California) with room to spare. As you drive along the outside of the building, you pass a series of hangar doors, each one of which is the size of an American football field on its side -- 300 feet wide and close to 100 feet tall.
The scale of the place is so gigantic that once you're inside, you can find yourself subject to interesting optical illusions. Looking at a plane sitting at the far end of the assembly line, you think, "That can't possibly be as big as the plane right next to me." But because your brain underestimates the distance, it also underestimates the size of what it's seeing. (This is a common perceptual effect that is, in part, responsible for the famous "moon illusion" that makes the moon look bigger when it's near the horizon than when it's closer to the zenith.)
Some other interesting stats include the number of employees on-site (24,000 in three shifts) and the annual electric bill (US$18 million).
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Interestingly, one of the other shows in the series - Dubai: City of Dreams - is an account of the massive infrastructure project being undertaken in the UAE. The show doesn't mention it, but another part of that project is the expansion of Dubai International Airport which will accomodate multiple A380s at Concourse 2. In fact, according to this article, Concourse 3 was added to the plan specifically to handle the increased passenger throughput from the A380.
They're going to need planes the size of the A380 anyway by 2010 for this reason: slot control restrictions at many airports for air and noise pollution control reasons.
That means fewer flights per day into many airports, and the only way to accommodate future passenger growth with few flights per day into airports is to buy bigger planes. This will lead to Boeing finally building an airliner using blended-wing body configuration, which will allow 600-800 passengers per plane flying at Mach 0.86 up to 9,000 nautical miles.
The benefit of this aircraft is obvious:
so CNN can report huge death tolls when it crashes, which in turn creates high ratings, which in turn means CNN presstitutes are paid more and go buy a brand new benz, which gets the benz salesman and big commission so he can go buy himself a whore, and then the whore has some extra cash to get a sattelite dish so she can watch CNN. And the cycle of Kaptialism continues...
I thought the standard american (US that is) unit of measurement is the football field.
On my last trip to Florida this was the running gag of the journey. (Sightseeing tour in the harbour of Maimi: "This cruise-ship is more than two football fields long!")
The highlight was when we vitited Kennedy Space Center, a lady asking us how long a football field was ("I want to tell my son how large this building is")
I have flown in 4 777s and had a very pleasant flight. The DC-10 also was a pleasant flight. I have not had the pleasure of flying in a 747 or any of the Airbus widebodies, but the widebodies have been much more pleasurable than any of the smaller hollow tubes I have flown in.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Sounds pretty small compared to Boeing's facilities in Washington.
Domesticated turkeys (those raised by turkey farms) cannot fly. Wild turkeys, however, can fly for short distances at up to 55 miles per hour. Wild turkeys are also fast on the ground, running at speeds of up to 25 miles per hour.
m l#Anchor-Can-54980
See http://www.honeysucklewhite.com/faqs/fun_facts.ht
There have been several projects around like what you describe for 10-20 years, but they have been languishing in relative obscurity for lack of funding. The best example I can come up with on the web is:
http://www.skytran.net
Actually, Airbus is designing the A380 so it meets the extremely strict British Quiet Craft 2 (QC2) standard, which is actually 2 dB quieter than the extremely strict ICAO Stage IV standard for engine noise emissions that will come into force in 2006.
In short, the A380 will be quieter than today's A320 small jet for takeoffs and landings!
Geez, if the US wanted oil contracts they'd simply tell Saddam "Give us the oil contracts and we'll lift the sanctions."
Ummm, no. The AWACS is built on a Boeing 707 airframe, which is much older and smaller than the 747.
What you might be referring to is that a predecessor to the 747 was the losing entry (Lockheed won, I think) for the C-5, the US military's Really Big Cargo Plane.
Boeing was paid by the Department of Defense to create a prototype design to meet DOD requirements. They lost. Boeing then used the design as a basis for the 747, but note that Boeing absorbed the huge cost of making the 747 acceptable to the US Federal Aviation Administration, which has a far different set of requirements.
The original development was a "work for hire" at the request of the DOD. Every other Boeing aircraft has been internally funded by Boeing. That is a far cry from "here's 4 billion Euros, go build an airplane that competes with the Yanks" tactic of the European governments. Airbus has been a subsidy child since day one.
The US, I think, holds the upper hand here. If nothing else, the US could slap a tariff on the A380 (say, 100% of selling price), or just not certify it to operate in the States. Either action could be a fatal blow to the program. Of course, the EU would have the same options when the next Boeing aircraft is developed, igniting a major trade war.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Or as my friends in the aviation business like to refer to them as:
SCAREBUS
... and postponing the consequences of whatever caused them to have no food to eat. What a sensible policy.
-the us airline industry, (another example would be the past "civilian" nuclear industry), is a 'stealth' way to have larger military funding/budgets without appearing to be so, and to keep aviation designers and technicians employed, just as much as for "moving civilian cargo and passengers".. They will continue to be susbsidised well past any rational civilian economic benefit angle, which is already close to just being break even and not profitable. And I am guessing it's the same with airbus and the EU, who want to become a superpower once they are more fully integrated. And china is just on track for building the worlds largest military, this is SO obvious, their merchant marine and "civilian" aircraft are a 100% part of the PLA aggregate, and any advanced tech they accrue in those fields is perfectly dual use, as are the ships and planes themselves.
I would find it hard to believe that any really large business decision being made around the world now does not have a component of carefully considered military use and planning connected to it, which planning then revolves around this decade's and the next decade's planetary resource wars.
Since Airbus is a European consortium with production lines at various places they already have quite some experience in moving big parts. The construction major parts for A-340s resulted in a modified A-300 called 'beluga'.
I wasn't talking about computer controlled planes. If it's a plane, even a single person unit, it's not efficient, and you have all the issues of scheduling.
I'm talking about single-unit pods being transported over rail lines across the country or even in place of current commuter trains.
Theoretically, you could get across the country pretty quickly in a system like this. It could accelerate slowly, up to a constant speed of 300-500 mph or so. True, a plane will go 800mph, but you have the drawback of having to make the plane's schedule, a 2 hour wait at the airport, and any layovers or transfers that might be required.
It could easily be entirely computer controlled, and safe. Something like this would be at small risk of terrorists, as hijacking or crashing into buildings isn't possible. If someone managed to destroy a track, or damage the computer system, the pods would simply stop.
Existing transportation beurocrats aren't interested in these alternative systems because it's not in their interest.
"Remember the Airbus that flew straight into the trees when the computer wouldn't let the pilot control it because it was too close to stalling?"
If the plane is so close to stalling that the computer won't accept pilot input, what do you think would've happened if it had? (hint: They would've hit the ground even earlier)
Besides, IIRC the problem was that the pilots accidentally made the plane think they were landing, or something else... But that's a different argument. (And I have no idea if I'm right)
My Sig: SEGV
This article fails to mention the Superman Standard. Article 3 section B in the Superman code (under Airplanes) states that:
In case of catastrophe, all aircraft must have a support system capable of supporting the craft by two bare hands. All systems must be marked with a yellow diamond with a red 's' that meets FCC regulations and have two hand markers.
So what have the Americans ever done for us?
Well we changed the name of your country from Deutschland back to France in 1944, in case you don't remember.
Personally I think the FAA and the NTSB should ban the operation of the Scarebus in US airspace due to the flimsy plastic vertical stabilizers that sheer off when you wiggle the rudder a wee bit in a little turbulence. I consider them unairworthy.
The only three things the French are good for:
1)cooking
2)putting their hands in the air
3)putting their legs in the air
American: "Hey Frenchie, Sprechen Sie Deutsche?"
Frenchman: "No."
American: "You're welcome."
Some background info from an unemployed economist:
t .html]
Point One: First a disclaimer-"Although economists and common sense agree"- economists are never able to agree about even the most trivial issues (as for having common sense, the less said about that, the better). Second, its a tit for tat argument, as the US government has not exactly been very rational with the economics relating to its tanker deal, where it'll pay Boeing more cash to lease 100 tankers than it would spend if it took outright ownership of them. [http://www.pogo.org/p/contracts/ca-020509-bailou
Point Two: The concept that applies here is comparative versus absolute advantange. The basis of all trade is to make use of the relative advantages that different countries/regions/people have when it comes to producing goods (after accounting for relevant transport costs). It makes rational sense to allocate the construction across Europe as it exploits the respective skills of different regions in the best way possible, e.g. the Brits make the best wings, so they build them, while the Germans design the most suitable fuselages, which leads them to have that contract.
Anyway, you forget that the "Europe" you mention is the European Economic Community, so the goods used to make the A-380 are sourced from the common European market. Would you complain about "importing" OJ from Florida if you were living in Alaska? Not likely, as oranges seem to grow easier in one place than the other.
What's with the separate construction sites in four countries? I realize that the program is somewhat of a welfare thing, to help Europeans get jobs and such, and keep Europe competitive with the US and Boeing.
But wouldn't it have saved them a lot of money to simply build a huge, single factory rather then hauling this stuff all over the continent and Britain?
It would make sense to me to build the whole thing in france and offload some of the other construction jobs to other nations.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
But at least there was some logic in helping the Italians in Greece.
You euros might like mobile's more then us, but the cell phone is all american.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
How about that we just mark anyone who has anything to say about rich people, poor people, millionaires, people too stupid to hire sober customer support agents, donkey saddles, hillbilly gardening tactics, or nuclear powered vibrators down as a -1 for being offtopic.
I like big planes. They make me feel safe. The airbus is a nice model of airplane. One day I would like to fly in one.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
From Everett, WA the home of the world's (currently) largest building.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Wings by British Aerospace
Fuselage by Messerschmidt
Assembly and system integration by Aerospatiale
Engines by (God help us) . . . Fiat
Southwest will not be buying these, but United, American, etc will buy fleets of these.
LOL.
Maybe you haven't noticed, but these two airlines are in some major financial trouble.
The day of the enormous super-carrier is over. They may have thrived during the positive economy of the 80's and 90's, but now they don't stand a chance. This kind of airline survived during the 70's only because of regulation... but guess what. Airlines are deregulated now. No more federal price fixing, and unlike Europe, no federal funding of carriers.
The future is low-cost carriers such as Southwest or JetBlue.
Just ask anyone at United.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
It makes no sense to build larger and larger aircraft to carry more passengers. The USA (and the world) need to switch to a regional/small plane model where more small airports are utilized...
1) Small jets flying more frequently with less turnaround time would get travelers closer to their destinations with minimal transit time/distance to and from airports.
2) Direct flights between small airports would mean no layovers and no need for giant "airport shopping malls and food courts".
3) Airports could be built closer to towns and cities solving major traffic snarls in population centers. Jumbo jets have noise restrictions and huge land requirements.
4) Tickets could be booked on shorter notice (at reasonable prices) because traffic would be spread between many small airports. (instead of constrained between relatively few "hub" airports)
5) Small airplanes could be shuttled to meet demand spikes more easily than rigidly scheduled jumbo planes.
6) Overall travel time would be decreased dramatically as you would no longer have to:
a) drive/taxi/train to and from a suburban airport
b) fly to - and change planes in - a city that isn't on the way to your destination
c) arrive hours before your flight and wait for 500 other people to check their luggage and pass through security all at once. (which causes log jams and lulls in major airports everywhere)
7) Environmental impact of building huge airports would be lessened by utilizing small airports.
8) Small planes could be built entirely from light/strong composites unlike jumbo jets which are mostly aluminum and less than %25 composite. (no jumbo has a composite fuselage yet...and wont for the next decade)
9) Reduce suburban sprall development caused by major airports. (small airports can be located in city limits)
10) Allow developing nations to have tourism without having to build a major airport (and, for example, cut down rain-forest to do it).
11) Smooth out the cyclical nature of the airplane manufacturing industry... creating steady jobs and increasing the pace of innovation.
Feel free to list more great reasons to switch to a regional/small plane model...
Any two given drops of oil are pretty much interchangable, so nobody who understands the business cares where the oil they use comes from. Take Iraq's oil off the market and the prices go up just as much for the US as for France.
Based on two flights several years apart you are able to subjectively judge the stability of an aircraft from the economy class? Wow!
BTW, all that "video in the seatback" stuff is called BFE (Buyer Furnished Equipment) -- as in, the buyer (airline) can buy it if they want. Perhaps the airline felt that hauling the weight of all that video equipment around wasn't worth the investment (and the recurring fuel cost).
Maybe you haven't noticed, but these two airlines are in some major financial trouble.
I have very much noticed. But that changes nothing in the early days of PC, many companies were built and went under. This is very natural.
The day of the enormous super-carrier is over.
That is impossible. The super-carriers will still exists. In fact, more so in the future. During the 80's, few new airport was built and during the 90's, only DIA was built. All the others are expansions, but they are quickly running out of room for runways and gates. The same problem is very accute in the far east. Instead run-ways will be lengthened to 16000 (like DIA's new runway - soon to be the space shuttles 3'rd runway ) and rebuilt to handle soon to be small aircraft like the 380 and much bigger ones as well.
As to United and American, that is a combination of ALL employees doing there most to gouge. That includes not just the unions, but management as well. American overreached by buying TWA. United by attempting to buy US scareways. Sadly, had either of these companies looked ahead a realized that this industry was already overbuilt PRIOR to 9/11, they would not have tried buyouts. US and TWA would ahve gone under after 9/11 and UA/AA would be in much better shape now. Worse, Bushs' subsidy to all the airlines only delayed the inevitable. We would be better off had he not done that or had he subsidized domestic tickets. Say for the first month, the feds would pick up 90% of a ticket (fly NY - LA for 100 ), then start dropping the subsidy, by 10 % each month. This would have gotten ppl flying again.
Oh, the employees of American will tell you that low-cost will be used for domestic travel, but that large super-carriers will still be used for long-distance international .
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Here's one of the Interior.
More Photos can be got here.
"I think the metric system is the tool of the Devil! My car gets 40 rodsto the hogshead, and that's the way I liked it!"--Abraham J. Simpson
That is a fairly common comment when first seeing the Beluga.
They (there's five of them) are used to ferry fuselages across Europe, but obviously the fuselage of a A380 is way too big for it. I wonder if they'll ever build a "Super Beluga" on the basis of an A380...
I did qualify my statements as just being my impressions based on those two flights, and made no claim that it was the result of any sort of statistically significant experiment. However, the 777 flight was sufficiently unstable for me to consider to be a statistically significant data point--no other flight I've been on (including commuter turboprops in severe turbulence) has been that rough.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
So ask yourself why the Space Shuttle is built all over the US and not simple constructed in one place
Because the space shuttle is a huge government subsidized jobs program, just like the Airbus?
Seriously though, the distributed construction of the space shuttle was to help the project get passed in congress.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I just flew a DC-10 to and from England this past weekend. IMHO, the flight was more comfortable than my aforementioned 777 experience. The exception was the rather rough landing on my return flight to Detroit, but that can be attributed directly to the pilot instead of the aircraft. Again, these observations are not statistically significant by any means, although some AC will probably post a comment to that effect, anyway. :-p
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
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