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Airbus A380 Completes Maiden Test Flight
crazy blade writes "The much anticipated maiden test flight of the Airbus A380 jumbo jet is underway. The aircraft left Blagnac International Airport in Toulouse, France at 10.29 hours local time (08.29 UTC) from runway 32L. Here are some photos if you're interested."
... at 14.25.
0 _REF872_SPC265922,00.html (German)
http://www1.ndr.de/ndr_pages_std/0,2570,OID122143
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
The headline: Airbus A380 Completes Maiden Test Flight
From the article: The much anticipated maiden test flight of the Airbus A380 jumbo jet is underway.
So which is it? Underway or complete?
This is really quite an engineering achievement and good for the local economy.
It flies. Wow.
All these countries already have strong space and military plane programs. Wonder why none of them produces large commercial jets? BTW the A380 is the largest passenger plane. The largest overall planes are still Russian
**Life is too short to be serious**
That reminds me -- I just saw a wicked movie.
It's amazing that this giant of an airplane is actually bigger than the legendary Spruce Goose. It's amazing how technology has progressed from a rudimentary wooden substructure to this bleeding edge aluminum/steel airframe. Lighter, stronger, and more economical than Hughes could ever have imagined, this Airbus A380 is a marvel of modern manufacturing.
The only issue is whether the capacity will be taken advantage of effectively. While most flights now are booked solid, will the number of passengers be high enough to make the construction of these behemoths profitable?
777 > *
Bet some american company is about to build something bigger in some size war.
Ill probablly never be riding one of thes planes. I think Boeing made a good choice with the 7E7. All the flights I have had in the past 6 years have been on a small jet, not a large one like the 747.
Still looks like an awesome plane though =)
What a beauty - She took off with a takeoff weight of 150t less than the MTOW (Max Takeoff weight) of 560t. Only needed half the runway and made hardly any noise compared to the little Corvette which was the chase plane.
:)
A day I will never forget
But 2 engine planes have some restrictions on flights paths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
Jet engines, the last time I checked, were fairly inefficient in terms of miles per gallon (I realize that you're shoving an enormous hunk of metal and plastic into the sky, so the MPG won't quite match a honda). Is anything being done to reduce the consumption for these vehicles? Or is the hope to increase PPG (passengers per gallon) so that even if you can't get more distance for the fuel, you can move more people?
Just kind of curious.
I must disappoint you, but the A380 is much more fuel efficent for long distances than any other plane. Indeed this was a major design goal.
Airbus A380 Completes Maiden Test Takeoff
instead????
arn't some routes only allowed to be operated with 4 engine airliners, especially those which travel over a lot of water.
What other plane out there is big enough to hold all of the P-Ditty enturage for a flight.
Evolution or ID?
That's why I love my $45 flights from school to home with Jetblue =) Thank you European Taxpayers!
The thing also has huge (for an aircraft) cargo capability.
Boeing still seems to be pinning its hopes on midsize wide bodied aircraft that fly between smaller airports. All I can say is, for Boeing to be right an awful lot of people need to be very wrong about the way the world is going.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Is there any reason, AT ALL, that I should care about this? Was this directed at the sub-critical anti-France people, or is it supposed to be a generally relevant statement?
at Airliners.net.
Indeed, that's why ETOPS is said to mean
Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim...
Bleh, and the US Government doesn't subsidise Boeing? Hmmm. Ok. Guess those big fat juicy aerospace and defence contracts are won purely on merit.
I had a dream, bright and carefree, but now there's doubt and gravity
Actually the A380 is more fuel efficient than the 747 even though its bigger as it uses composites. In fact its fuel efficiency per passenger mile is at par with modern sedans and much higher than suvs.
The 777 is a much smaller plane than the A380. With such a large plane it makes sense to have 4 engines.
Passenger planes have to be designed such that they can fly on with single engine failure. With 2 engines each engine has to be strong enough to drive the plane on its own. With 4 engine failure scenario require the plane to fly on 3 engines hence each engine has to be only 1/3rd total load.
The wastage in excess power is much less 1/3-1/4 1-1/2
**Life is too short to be serious**
Fun fact: US government subsidize US airplane companies by purchasing their military equipment at high prices... ;-)
Fun Fact: U.S. government subsidizes Boeing.
When you ride Southwest (or any carrier who flies Boeing jets), American taxpayers helped pay for your ticket. Enjoy your flight.
Here is a mirror to the site with images: Here
For several great pictures of this wonderful aircraft check out http://www.airliners.net/! Just do a search for the A380..
Fun fact #2: Boeing too has received subsidies:s /207500_boei ngeu12.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busines
When you ride on a Beoing jet, enjoy it as your tax dollars also helped pay for it.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
But it's only fuel efficient when the plane is fully loaded. I really wonder just how many flights will have that thing filled to capacity with 800+ passengers...
what's the point to spend 10 billions $$$ on a huge plane like this, when oil will become so much expensive in a few years that this plane will be useless?!?
if they can really sell 250-300 A380 to go beyond the break-even, at least they will have make money...
or click directly here: http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=812064&size
and scroll down to the lower left of the picture.
It says:
Here's more of their work: http://www.planepictures.net/netsearch4.cgi?stypeTalk about a good marketing name ...
We Europeans do have the biggest and we can still get it up! :-D
Now that fuel costs are through the roof, Europe will HAVE to subsidize the A380 in order to keep ticket costs down.
I heard the bathrooms on the A380 will be big enough to sit down in, and you will now get a 4 oz. bag of peanuts instead of the usual 0.5 oz bag.
Please take a moment to locate the emergency exits in case of a water landing, we have provided a map of the plane's interior in case you get lost.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Actually, the seat-mile cost of the A380-800 is actually less than a 747-400 because it carries up to 50% more passengers than a 747-400 in a normal three-class configuration.
The primary reason why they're building the A380-800 is because in Europe and much of Asia they have landing-slot restrictions as a noise-abatement measure. As a result, in order to increase passenger capacity the only way to go is to fly bigger planes. Here in the USA, landing-slot restrictions are not that big an issue, so there is far less need to buy bigger planes.
However, expect the A380-800 to start flying to the USA starting in late 2006. QANTAS wants to fly the plane on the Sydney-Los Angeles route, and Singapore Airlines will fly the plane on the Singapore-Hong Kong-San Francisco route. In 2007, I expect Lufthansa to fly the A380-800 to the USA, probably on the Frankfurt-New York, Frankfurt-Los Angeles and Frankfurt-San Francisco routes.
Not many airlines are asking Boeing for stealth 737's or 777's with Air to Air rocket launchers.
I really have to question the wisdom in making such a large airliner. Sure, you can cut into the overhead by fitting more carcasses per plane, but you're concentrating the risks of mishap. The first time one of these monsters go down, it will be a tragedy larger than we're willing to admit.
At least I haven't heard anyone say that there are no flotation devices onboard because the 380 is too big to crash.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Rissians already have a good line of wide body passenger aircrafts. Just look for IL-96-300, looks just like your typical western widebody & just as efficient & safe. However, it is because of their unglamorous Russian heritage that they don't seem to have a foothold beyond Russia. Tu-144 is the sexiest looking passenger plane. Also, Russians were the first to produce Supersonic passenger jet, not Concord.
fly-i uses airbus, I was somewhat excited to fly on an airbus plane as I never have done so before. If European taxpayers helped me save over 200 hundred dollars this weekend when I had to fly home for a funeral this weekend, then they have my deepest thanks.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen A380 ?
(hint: you can't waffle on this since there is only one type!)
No, they dont. EU Governments provide whats called Launch Aid to Airbus, which is equal to 1/3rd development costs of the aircraft and consists of loans to that amount at national interest rates - yes Airbus pays back that aid with interest, so get your facts right. Launch Aid is something Boeing agreed to under the 1992 transatlantic industry agreement on competition.
Some governments subsidise local production plants, but this is exactly the same as Boeing getting a $20billion tax break from Washington State to move its 777 production plant to that state.
Pick your team, they are exactly the same.
Turbofan engines are really quite efficient. It's only military aircraft and that horrible Concorde thing that use pure jet engines.
In fact I believe that in passenger miles per gallon terms large passenger aircraft do better than most cars, before allowing for the fact that most cars have only one passenger a lot of the time. The only real advantage of trains over planes is that you can power an HST using a nuclear power plant while aircraft need oil. If people and perishable goods are going to continue to move large distances for the next thirty years or so, the A380 is a good bet.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
airbus.com offers two little videos (needs flash): http://www.airbus.com/a380/seeing/discover/index.a spx
In case you read the article you would know the fuel efficiency in gallons per passenger mile of the A380 actually matches everyday sedans and beats SUVs hands down. The only thing we need to do on fuel efficiency is ban SUVs
**Life is too short to be serious**
I mean this is decades old technology. It's the same thing as with the space shuttle. We're not getting anywhere by incrementally improving our existing technology. We should really push aggressively for something new like cold fusion, zero-point energy or antigravity. There is a growing underground scientific community that believes that these are real and achievable within our lifetime IF there's enough political will AND the political clique that controls mainstream science is overthrown.
Fun Fact: European governments subsidize Airbus.
As opposed to Boeing, who never receive any subsidies from the US government.
Oh wait...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Your post betrays a tremendous misunderstanding of fuel efficiency. Planes are almost *always* more fuel efficient than cars. While Jet Engines are pretty fuel hungry, they actually do extremely well in Miles Per Gallon Per Pasenger. Remember, the 747 may be burning 5 gallons per mile, but it's moving ~500 people plus cargo.
Here's an article I dug up using Google.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Why exactly wouldn't you want the fact that everybody participatin in a _test flight_ (and even the first one btw.) was wearing parachutes?
Perhaps, but the Soviets stole the blueprints for Concorde. They didn't design it themselves (and could never have done it).
No, newer twin engine planes such as the Boeing 777 can lose one engine and continue to fly. The engines are so powerful that it only takes one engine to keep the plane flying. I don't think they could take off with one engine, but they certainly could maintain crusing speed and altitude with the loss of one engine.
In Soviet Russia planes fly you.
Fuel efficiency/passenger is only valid when you have the seats filled. When they make huge planes like this, they will be banking on the fact that they can fill the seats.
I think Boeing's philosopy is that it is cheaper to fly smaller jets on more routes and fill them every time, than to have half filled planes.
Even though that airbus might have a better fuel efficiency, it is going to cost a lot to fill that bad boy up. If they fly that thing half loaded, they might lose so much money on a trip, it will take 5 more full flights just to break even.
/. ++
Flying 500 people in one big airplane is more efficient than 250 each in 2 planes. But then, by some people's reasoning, people should just stay home.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
I wait for the day when they ban SUVs and nothing changes... What will the extremist liberals whine about next?
And what makes you think the plane will be flying full?
Sure it's big, but how many milk bottles full of urine can carry at one time? That's what Howard Hughes would really be dreaming of.
--
RumorsDaily
And the design! It doesn't look at all like any other airliner from the last several decades.
Pffft... wake me up when there's some advancement in aeronautics... Like at least a return to Mach 2...
It will be interesting to see if Airbus' bet on the hub-and-spoke model works. The A380 makes sense for high-volume hub-to-hub long-distance flights. On the other hand, I prefer point-to-point, myself. I always try to avoid connecting flights if possible, prefer smaller planes (faster load/unload times), and prefer smaller airports (shorter concourses, faster in-and-out, fewer runway delays).
I'm sure there is room for both models, but once a hub saturates it becomes necessary to increase point-to-point operations from smaller airports (e.g., the Southwest Airlines model).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Speaking as a European taxpayer, European taxpayers often pay 100% of my ticket.
Why couldn't it be the other way around? Maybe the Brits & French stole the designs from Soviets. Remeber, Russians already had a very excellent Aircraft design & manufacturig industry. The Brits & French didn't. It would have been easy for Russians to develop than the Anglo-French consortium.
What no one has mentioned yet is that there is only 1 or 2 airports that have a terminal/jetway/runway configuration that can support this mammoth aircraft!
I can't find the link right now but LAX and other US airports (probably other worldwide ones as well) are going to have to spend millions of $$$ to convert their existing gates, etc to handle these things.
Who do you think is going to be willing to pay for this? Boeing's strategy of using smaller, more efficient jets do not require an overhaul of the major terminals...
You are seeing this because you visited /., read the headline on the front page and then decided to click on the link provided to see the whole story.
Hope this helps.
Flight testing is risky; part of the point is to discover and correct design flaws that might be considered a safety problem. Airbus is not the only one to have had fatalities during initial testing; Bombardier had a fatal crash in the 90s during a test flight. You should be glad the engineers are willing to risk their own lives before putting the plane into service.
The largest commercial plane, AN-124, is not Russian. It's made by the Antonov design bureau in Ukraine (although it might contain a significant number of Russian-made parts). BTW, Russia is already producing the wide-body IL-96 which is roughly in Boeing 767 to 777 class. As for making a passenger plane that matches the size of A380, I don't think that anyone else will follow that suit, not even Boeing, because lots of industry experts claim that the economies of scale and the demand in the superjumbo jet market are such that only one model can survive on that market profitably and Airbus came first.
How is it less fuel efficient.
747 has been one of the most fuel efficient vehicles for years.
Keep in mind you have to divid efficiency by total # of passengers flown. Smaller planes carry less passengers.
I don't know for sure, but I would be willing to bet that every 'maiden' flight for any new model of airplane would have a parachute equipped crew, at least since the early 50's. I would bet that every test pilot for every operating jetliner had a parachute on for every test flight they made. I don't think this is a big deal. in fact i would be more worried that the press would start running articles that Airbus took risks with its test crews and did not let them use parachutes.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
Yet another great contribution from someone in america (north or south? Which particular country?)
How many states does it take to run boeing?
Ant whats jour zpeling: "jet" "along"
Direct link to (crappy but watchable quality) videos:
Take off
In flight
Oh no... it's the future.
Stop pretending you're an American, you eurowussie troll.
Actually the overall largest aircraft is the Antonov An-225 'Myria' which is Ukranian. The A380 is the largest passenger aircraft however
Wonder why none of them produces large commercial jets?
Part of the reason is that the world's economy can only support a few passenger jet manufacturers. Remember McDonnell Douglas and Concorde? The market had a hard time supporting three-and-a-half major manufacturers.
It is possible, of course, that China/India/Brazil/Russia could support a new player that produced planes more efficiently (cheaply), which would probably hurt Boeing or Airbus substantially.
Sorry, sad to see that the server of the local radio station (NDR in Hambug where parts of airbusses are assembled and then flown to Toulouse with a A300-600ST) was not able to sustain.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
That's the airlines' problem, isn't it? Fill the plane or go out of business.
That was classic intercourse!
"What no one has mentioned yet is that there is only 1 or 2 airports that have a terminal/jetway/runway configuration that can support this mammoth aircraft!"
Nobody mentioned it, because it simply isn't true. Though this story is brought up by interested parties again and again, it still isn't true.
And I am sure when fitted with modern engines these aircraft would not be in violation of noise emissions enforced on most western airports.. furthermore, they may actually end up consuming a normal amount of fuel then too.. Nope, Russian Aircraft are great for the Military and the UN.. they don't care how much it all costs in the end or who is bothered..
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Do you know any pilots? Most of them are definite gadget geeks.
Best Slashdot Co
And what makes you think the plane will be flying full?
You try getting a ticket now on a QANTAS flight between Los Angeles and Sydney and the Singapore Airlines flight between Singapore and San Francisco, especially the segment between San Francisco and Hong Kong--good luck! Small wonder why the flights I mentioned will be among the first A380 flights to the USA.
They didn't design it themselves (and could never have done it).
Huh, a country that launched into the space on its own the first satelite, the first man, and the first space station (MIR, which at its height was bigger than ISS currently is) and which has built the largest cargo planes in the world couldn't have designed a supersonic passenger jet on its own? Please.
You seem to forget that the Airbus and Boeing for the matter get paid for the airplanes they produce. The planes arn't sold to the airlines at subsidized pricing. The goverments are only investing in the future and rightfully so. The planes still get paid for with corporate dollars not government money.
I think the misconception is that the European goverments created Airbus to compete with the American aircraft manufactures so that they were not at the mercy of the American giants. Just like when Hitler created what today is now Volkswagen. In an ever changing world, you either produce or you get left behind.
Most fly by wire planes have manual backups. These backups will let you fly the plane just as safely but not as fuel efficiently so that fear is a bit overblown. Its like saying you wont use a car with fuel injection as it uses microchips. The kind of computers you and me work with are much different from what goes into automobiles and planes. For one thing most of these systems are designed as fault tolerant using voting systems of multiple computers doing the same calculation and the decision being taken by majority vote.
**Life is too short to be serious**
To quote Scott Adams:
"In the future, airplanes will be flown by a dog and a pilot. And the dog's job will be to make sure that if the pilot tries to touch any of the buttons, the dog bites him."
And a train still beats both jet and auto for efficiency, yet some people still take a jet from NYC to Philly or DC. To save what? 15 mins?
Sure. Electronics are completely unreliable, regardless of how fanatically they are tested. Old-school hydraulics, on the other hand. Well, they NEVER break, EVER.
There might have computers, but they are not PC's. There is a huge difference.
and of course the world is waiting for noisy, polluting aircraft that are built in places with no workforce regulations or social standards..
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Finally a plane your mom can fit on...
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
for those of you talking about fuel efficiency and saying how the A380 isn't fuel efficient, you have no idea what you are talking about.
I worked on the flight system, I've flown the plane in simulation; trust me, it's very fuel efficient.
Boeing could have and still may design a large jet as well. However, Boeing and Airbus have different views of the air business.
Airbus still believes in a traditional hub based system. Boeing believes more of a "many small routes" business. Hence the 787.
Two different schools of thought, all depends who is right.
http://www.dascritch.net/blog.php/2005/04/27/131-a ujourdhui-il-ne-sest-rien-passe
(will have videos of the plane tonight)
(Sorry my bad French) Je fais parler les Guignols de l'Info. Le pied, quoi.
You think only computer nerds read /. ?
There are aviation nerds too. And some computer nerds are also aviation nerds. If that's not good enough, I hope you consider those stories about movies to also be off-topic.
I personally would love to see a beowulf cluster of these.
You didn't see what happened to Concordski, did you?
You know of companies other than Boeing and Lockheed Martin who can design and manufacture high-end military aircraft?
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
I won't fly on Airbus aircraft until Airbus corrects a major flaw in their recommended maintenance procedures.
In 2001 Flight 587 crashed in Queens when its rudder fell off the aircraft:
There have been several other incidents of Airbus aircaft experiencing similar uncommanded rudder inputs or even losing sections of the vertical stabilizer in-flight. This is caused by inadaquate maintenance procedures:
Until Airbus fixes their maintenance procedures passengers might see more things like these when they fly Airbus aircaft. Given the increased stresses of a larger aircaft, I'm not sure how seceptible the A380 would be to this kind of damage, and it would be harded to run the necessary inspections on the larger airframe as well.
The more congested the major air routes become the more of a demand there will be for aircraft like the A380 for moving large numbers of passengers and cargo between the major population centers and their hopelessly overloaded airports. It is a serious misjudgement by American Aircraft manufacturers to abandon the market for large passenger and cargo carriers and leave it to Airbus. Boeing for one has missed the bus and claiming that nobody wants the A380 is slowly being proven wrong and it definetly won't help them compete. Now they are scrambling to a produce a mix of stretched 777 variants and a modernized and stretched version of the 747 and pawn them off on the airline industry to compete with the A380 and they are meeting with limited enthusiasm. The 777 doesn't have the same potential for increasing it's capacity as the A380 and the 747 is a vintage design.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Yes, there exist statistics that show that Russian-made planes can and often are operating just as safely as the western-made planes. As for Brasil, are you kidding me? Brasil's Embraer is one of world's two leading companies in the market for passenger jets with less than 100 seats (the other one is a Canadian firm), with Embraer planes being widely used in the US and Europe. Yes, you are a baby.
On the Discovery channel they asked about luxury.
The response was that people don't want luxury, just price.
Suppose there is some truth to that since flying is never comfortable but for a handful of people who can afford more space.
Besides, its luxury you're going to at the end of the ride.
Makes me wonder though, why not offer a sleeping seat choice at ticket time?
Pack them in like train cars where you can sit cross leg or stretch out flat.
Offer a family box etc.
Let the engineers figure out the safety part of restraint for landings and takeoffs.
Uh... actually, the computers that Airbus uses for it's FCS is quite reliable. For one, they are redundant. And not only that, they have TWO different computers developed by 2 different teams. So, each command from the flight controls are computed by two systems, each developed by different teams that have different implementations of the requirements. The results from the 2 flight computers are then tallied to ensure that they are correct. I have no idea on what happens when the computers come out with different output though. The idea is that having redundancy is not enough, because if it was a bug in the algorithm, then the backup will still screw up. Thus, having two different systems doing the same thing results in a low probability that two teams could have made the same error in their code (which by itself is already heavily scrutinized).
"Airbus A380 Lands Successfully..." When I saw this I was thinking that as a business traveler I like to think that every plane that I might travel on will land successfully. I'm sure Airbus appreciates Fox's optimism.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
I predict that when they roll out model A3800, people will happily pay for the trip of being knocked out and stuffed into a dark, tight space. Much like my college days, in fact. Guess that makes me an early adapter.
But you do have faith in aircraft components or software from India? If not, you're out of luck...
China flies copies of old Russian designs and is attempting to buy in French fighters (but can't because of the EU's arms sale ban). The only domestic design of note is a tanker. Hardly the stuff background required to compete in the commerical aircraft market.
India and Brazil have airforces entirely composed of foriegn imports - mainly Russian and French. Their combined aircraft industries are behind that of Sweden. I don't expect to be flying on an Indian or Brazilian designed airliner to be in service during my life-time.
It took the combined efforts of some of the world's richest and most industrialised nations to produce compete with Boeing. Russia has the engineers but not the money. The others you mentioned aren't even on the radar.
The issue is, what the future of commerical aviation is. Megaplanes (747 Stretch and A380), or a mix of long range (777-ER) and point to point, the 787, 777, A319-340, Regionals.
India and China don't have that strong of an aviation industry. Russia's is in the toilet, Brazil has a strong Regional Jet industry.
This huge beast has been created because take off and landing time slots are full and more people need / want to travel.
The other solution is to create more airports.
The 840 person model is for charter flights..(aka easy-stelios-jet) you wait till Branson and the likes (virgin-atlantic) suit theirs up for 400 people with hot-tubs and discos on board! I heard someone saying there is a crazy Lebanese businessman who wants a flying, tax-free casino on one of these puppies! ROFL!! Les jeux sont faits!
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Fun Fact: Europian governments subsidize Airbus.
When you ride any carrier who flies AirBus jets, Europian taxpayers helped pay for your ticket, not United States. Who's tax money would you rather spend? Enjoy your flight.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Ahh, those infamous $15k toilet seats...
The American govt. wouldn't DREAM of starting AN ENTIRE WAR just to subsidise its defence industry, would it? At least no-one gets killed when the EU pumps cash into Airbus.
QANTAS wants to fly the plane on the Sydney-Los Angeles route,
I really hope the in-flight movie doesn't consist of the 1st season of Lost. That just wouldn't fare well at all.
I give you a 1 on a scale of 1 to 100,000,000.
You don't seem to have the right idea about this trolling thing.
First, you either need to fill your postwith obscenities (or references to sexual practices that make most people cringe), or you need to take the subtle route and make your statements wrong, but couch them in common sense and lull people into omplacency.
Your approach of bombast holds potential, but your horrible spelling and grammar completely knock the legs out from under your argument, maybe if you weren't trying to sound like an angry expert???
These pointers came to me after one readthrough of your post, you should take a couple more minutes and chiggity check your spelling, grammar, and the fundamental idea on which your troll is based.
Thanks for your time, better luck in the future.
Maybe you also have an older model, rusted-out horse up on blocks on your front lawn, too ...
BTW - How are you posting if you don't trust computers not to hang so often?
(in a related note, I've just noticed this morning that all the hds we've RMA'd were from Windows boxes - none from the linux boxes ... curiouser and curiouser ...)
I don't know about the specifics of the A380, but I have heard that the F-22 Raptor and the B-2 CANNOT fly without the computers running. I also heard about a European (I think Swedish) fighter that cannot fly without its computer. I am not sure if the A380 can fly without its computers running. As for the different computers for planes - have you ever worked with clusters? (This is NOT a flame question - it is a real question - have you worked with clusters?) Gee, the left wing has lost quorum - time to sleep ;-) The Airbus that went down in New York right after 9/11 had "rudder computer problems" and the pilot "moved the rudder to quickly"! So can you move the computer actuators too quickly for the system to react? This is "interesting"!
"I heard the bathrooms on the A380 will be big enough to sit down in, and you will now get a 4 oz. bag of peanuts instead of the usual 0.5 oz bag."
They even think about their US costumers.
What I really meant was when will these planes have a market share comparable to Airbus and Boing? I am a little surprised as everyone knows the Russians have always been ahead of the west in fighter plane technology just like the west has been ahead in aircraft carriers( For the patriotic its not about brains its about funding priorities).
Given this lead in fighter tech the fact that Russia/Ukraine/other ex-SSRs are not able to market their planes abroad better
**Life is too short to be serious**
Embraer in Brazil is doing an exelent job producing jets in the 90-110 passangers class. So are Saab in Sweden and Bombardier in Canada. I don't have any insight on any Indian-based aircraft builder but the chinese are also trying.
Russia didn't wait the A380 or even Airbus to build some very good (safe but noisy and polluting) planes.
By the way. Building such a project takes a lot of time and money ($13 Billions for the A380) it IS hard to do. Money such countris prefer to spend on more profitable industries (let's face it, it may be very good for your public image to have your own plane builder but those countries would rather have more IT companies and the like).
Modern Russian-made airplanes come with Russian and Western-made engines that meet the European noise and emissions requirements (e.g. IL-96, Tu-204/214, modernized IL-76, the upcoming TU-334, etc)
Cargo doesn't care about such things, which is why FedEx was one of the first A380 customers. Japan, if it weren't so loyal to Boeing, might have used an all-economy class A380 to replace their inter-city "bus" known as the 747-400D ("Domestic").
The best thing about the A380 is that it'll make for great subject matter for Hollywood. But for actual traveling, the choice will be between fewer stops and more scheduling flexibility vs. a bigger plane.
Antonov An-225 "Mriya" is the world's largest aircraft. When it was built, it surpassed any airliner built before by 50%. It was designed for the transportation of the Russian Space Shuttle "Buran" by the Antonov Design Bureau (HQ in Kiev, Ukraine), which already had built good and large cargo aircraft such as the Antonov An-124 "Ruslan". The basic configuration of the An-225 is the same as the An-124, except the An-225 is longer, has no rear ramp/door assembly, and incorporates a 32-wheel landing gear system (two nose and fourteen main wheel bogies, seven per side, each with two wheels).
http://www.airliners.net/info/stats.main?id=389
yeah, I agree with my seppo friend here.. ROFL!
Did anyone else notice the ads on the left
apparently it's possible to get one on Ebay
Ads by Goooooogle
Airbus A380
Airbus A380 for sale. aff Check out the deals now!
www.eBay.com
way to spread FUD, the Russians had a supersonic transport out well before Concord did.
The Russian Aerospace industry is very very amazing and almost as advanced as the US Aeorspace industry is right now. They are definetly ahead of the EU aerospace industry though.
- 1 large, human disaster should that bird go down
But if you have a plane with half the capacity, you will need two flights, which means double chance for a disaster half the size. With your rationale only one person per car should be allowed to reduce casualties in case of an accident. Luckily, your rationale does not make much sense.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
From the perspective of a traveller I strongly disagree.
Train: I board it in first or second class, have space, can move around, the aircondition is not doing a half assed job on recycling 20% of the fresh air, the fat Russian guy using half of my seet usually doesn't drop his tomato juice on my white pants, I can enjoy a Cuban cigar in the smoking compartment (and even there the air is better then on a non smoking flight after a few hours) and - at least on most inter-European routes it takes about the same amount of time to get from city center to city center, depending on the route.
Plane: I have to be at the Airport two hours in advance due to some innane requirements, I have to sit around overprized, smelly snack bars, I get to deal with long lines and security staff which is not only incompetent, but about as dim as a 25 watt light bulb. When I finally get to sit on my designated seat, which is the middle seat of course, I get to sit near a fat, Russian gentleman who spills his Bloody Mary on my white pants shortly after take off. When I finally arrive as a nervous wreck in Bombay it turns out (after waiting another hour and 40 minutes in the lost and found line) that my luggage went to Baghdad, but we are not quite through yet.
I get the privelege to pay 20 quid or so for some ugly train, which claims to take me to the city, but dumps me on some strange train station with obnoxious cab drivers and a bunch of really creepy people 15 miles away from my hotel.
Ah, the joys of flying...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Airbus is subsidised. Just like Boing. The WTO has no problems with either.
Who cares? Can't you just appreciate it as a very nice piece of engineering? This is the most negative website on Earth! If you believe the comments on this site, everything posted here is either going to end the world, be a dismal failure, or a mixture of both.
I'm going to need to start taking valium before reading comments
India and China both manufacture their own versions of the MIG. Also they are both developing their own fighter jets prototypes of which are already flying. Brazil Canada and Ukraine have strong regional jets. So it is not so much of a stretch for them to shift over to widebody jets especially given their domestic airlines are buying so many of these jets anyway. For that matter even the Japanese and Korean are great shipbuilders and plane building and ship building a lot similar in that they are both piecework and they require highly advanced metal working tech. So they too could come into the picture. Its probably the strong brand leadership of Airbus and Boeing combined with the government subsidies which they get which keeps them on top. But I expect at least the Chinese government to subsidize its own manufacturer
**Life is too short to be serious**
idiot
Russia is NOT ahead of the US in fighter plane technology... The F-22 spanks anything the Russians currently have and will have for almost 10 years.
Now over 500 people can be hijaked at once...I just don't see the demand for this plane in this day and age -- can you imagine the wait just to get on this thing and have everyone deal with their carry ons... LOL
Jet engines, the last time I checked, were fairly inefficient in terms of miles per gallon....
According to the A380 Specifications page, the A380 has a maximum range of 8,000 miles and a fuel capacity of 81,890 US Gallons. This means it flys with an average 0.098 mpg.
A 2005 Honda Civic Sedan with an automatic, according to Honda's Specifications, has an EPA rating of 29/38 mpg - three orders of magnitude better than the A380.
But, remember that the A380 is moving 555 people so it's not quite an apples to apples comparison.
Assuming the average number of people in the Honda is two, the mpg per person on the highway (which is probably the more accurage comparison) is 76 mpg.
Now, comparing this to the A380 with an average passenger load of 525, the mpg per person is 51 mpg. So by going on a purely mpg comparison, the A380 is about two thirds as efficient as the Civic.
BUT this doesn't take into account the fact that the A380 will probably only have 4 pilots (or less than 0.8% of the people on board) to go 8,000 miles (but fully 50% of the people in the Civic are responsible for driving 8,000 miles) and the A380 will take 15 hours or so to go 8,000 miles and each Civic will take 123 hours (assuming no stops) to go 8,000 miles at 65 miles per hour.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Boeing's presales of the 787 have been quite strong. I think it is Airbus that has made the big bet. The vast majority of the world's airports are not compatable with the A380 either at the gates, or with the required strength of runways. Airbus has made the real gamble. As with the Concorde, Airbus's (Europe's) desire to trump Boeing (US) may be clouding their business judgement.
an ill wind that blows no good
A loaded 747 gets about 100 MPG/passenger. Not bad at all.
Concorde is a manufacturer now? Funny, I thought it was a joint venture from BAe and some French company I can't remember the name of..
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
But they aren't building the Avionics software for the airplanes, RTFA!
No, no A330 version crashed on its maiden flight, but they did lose a A330-300 in flight testing in 1994, but it was well into the testing program that that happened and it occured when the crew wrongly handled a test case where they simulated shutting down the engines in flight.
They can just buy a set of airstairs and dump people off on the ramp. ;) Might be easier to get baggage out, too.. just push it out of the aircraft into a bin.
;)
hey, it works for the dinky San Jose "International" Airport!
(j/k. They have an American Airlines 777 that lurks at one of the few actual jetways)
Yeah, because their spies stole the design for the European Concorde plane. Their supersonic passenger aircraft never worked properly because they don't have good enough materials technology. The damned thing kept falling apart.
Well, fortunately slashdot didn't link to the plane's bord computer ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You deliberately neglected to mention that the Launch Aid Airbus gets only needs to be repaid if the aircraft actually sells.
What this means is that it's essentially billions in risk-free money that Airbus is getting. That is the major complaint the US and Boeing has. Try finding something like that that Boeing gets.
They are not the same team. It's comparing apples to a grovestand of oranges.
And Boeing isn't thoroughly subsidized by the current administration's bloodlust for military hardware?
It didn't. It's well known that the USSR engaged in undustrial espionage. Evidence abounds from both sides of the old iron-curtain. It isn't like it's some big secret.
Before my father retired, he worked with the FAA. After examining multiple Russian (Soviet-era) built commercial aircraft, he came to the conclusion that he would never ride in one. They were using vacuum tubes and some of the superstructures contained wood framing. I don't know if this is still the case.
Generally it's only fighter jets that actually need their FBW systems in order to by flyable. This is because they're designed to be inherently unstable (i.e. prone to giving positive rather than negative feedback on control inputs) in order to make them more agile. Jet liners, in contrast, don't need to be agile, and so they can be made stable enough for manual control even if they use FBW in normal operation.
Freedom is not increased by mere diminuation of government. Anarchy is freedom for the strong and slavery for the weak.
I love the google keyword add for ebay offering "airbus 380 for sale"!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Well, of course you need less big planes as small ones.
As the 787 carries 217, 257 or 289 passengers and the A380 typically 555, the numbers become : over 66470 (230*289) seats ordered for the Boeing 787 and 83250 for the A380. Seen this way, Airbus has the edge ;)
Personally, I think that it isnt yet decided which company did the right bet. Probably both the 787 and the A380 will both be popular. However, IMHO, the 747 is dead.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
I really want to know who these fuckers are that automatically define something that brings up controversial points as "trolls." I sure as hell would not want to have to wait behind 840 passengers in a terminal or at immigration, especially if I'm going through a paranoid United States immigration station! Fucking intolerant mods.
As to why Airbus did this, I can only assume that it is meant more for the major-airport-to-major-airport market, but I don't doubt that it's also to gain PR points against Boeing.
Will Snoop Dog fly the plane also?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
"Fun Fact: Europian governments subsidize Airbus."
I don't get it...you repeated the grandparent poster? Did you realize you did this?
This was indeed created as a result of a need expressed by the airlines.
Boeing was also working on a super-jumbo for a while.
Well, look at This Reuters coverage.
There is a graphic on the left that says that the United Arab Emirates have comitted to purchased over 40 planes. At nearly $300 million USD/plane, that's a but load of money.
No, you've missed the point. This used less fuel/passenger than a 747. It's therefore cheaper to operate with a higher capacity.
You clearly don't understand any of the issues involved in this -- nobody would have spent the money building and developing this aircraft without knowing they'd get an ROI.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/0,5538,10244,00. html
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
Well then I guess it's all the Goatman's fault we never see them..
The Canadian firm being http://www.bombardier.com/. Which began in Québec with snowmobiles....
The answer IS 42.
over 1700 piece of luggage.
:)
The A-380 is a ramp agent's worst nightmare. Ever worked at an airport? Being stuck in a cargo pit with bags rolling up a belt loader at you is like being stuck in a crazy real life Tetris game.
Although with widebody aircraft, bags usually get put into containers and loaded that way, but there's still a whole lot of freely loaded bulk stuff that goes on..
The choice for 4 engines may stem from politics more than technology. All 2 engine aircraft are subject to ETOPS (extended twin-engine operation performance standards) Regulations. ETOPS regulations force twin engine craft to fly on a route with suitable airports for emergency landings nearby (AFAIK the A380 is gonna need some big ass airports, traditional ETOPS diversion airfields will probably will not cut it). Here's more on the topic from Wiki!
In 1988, the FAA amended the ETOPS regulation to allow the extension to 180 minutes diversion period subject to stringent technical and operational qualifications. This made 95% of the earth's surface available to ETOPS flights. The first such flight was conducted in 1989. This set of regulations was subsequently adopted by the Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA), ICAO and other aviation regulatory bodies worldwide.
In this manner 757 series, 767 series, some Boeing 737 series, the Airbus A300-600, A310 series, A320 series and the A330 series were approved for ETOPS operations. The success of ETOPS airplanes like 767 and 777 killed the intercontinental trijets, forcing McDonnell Douglas to terminate the MD-11 programme and Boeing to scale down the production of Boeing 747.
The North Atlantic airways are the most heavily utilized oceanic routes in the world. Most are conveniently covered by ETOPS-120min rules, removing the neccesity of utilizing 180-min rules. However, many of the North Atlantic diversion airports, especially those in Iceland and Greenland, are frequently subject to adverse weather conditions making them unavailable for use. As the 180-min rules is the upper limit, the JAA has given 15% extension to the 120-min rules to deal with such contigencies, giving the ETOPS-138min thereby allowing ETOPS flights with such airports closed.
In the North Pacific, ETOPS-180 (180 minutes) is satisfied by the availability of airports in the Aleutians Islands and Midway Atoll. As the Aleutians airports are prone to adverse weather conditions and volcanic activities, Boeing subsidised construction of the Midway Atoll diversion airport to enable the 777 to fly the North Pacific routes. After a petition from Boeing and United Airlines, in 2001, the FAA allowed a 15% extension to the ETOPS-180 rules bringing them to ETOPS-207. The approval is granted only to the 777. This approval is granted only if Northern Pacific route diversion airports are closed.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
Nobody says these systems are bug free. Hence the manual backups. In military planes where space is at a premium it makes sense to not have manual backups as in any case the pilot has an ejection seat. Also military planes do crazy stuff like flying aerodynamically unstable configurations( The Indian Light Combat Aircraft is an example) so yes they might not be able to fly without the computers. Passenger airliners on the other hand are a different breed of animal. There passenger safety is paramount. BTW if quorum is lost the pilot should shift over to manual. The important thing is pilots should continue to train flying in manual/hydraulic mode even if they fly all their flights by wire.
I have studied Fault Tolerant Computing. No I havnt administered clusters.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Imbecile.
What the fuck do you think Airbus is?
Any word on whether they're using better glue than on the A300-600 and A310, or at a stronger vertical stabilizer?
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
I wonder if they are going to start using JIT systems to avoid this aka they have more plains than they realy need and use the largest plains only when they would fill up a smaller one.
I mean having extra jets for holiday travel seems nesisary so for day to day travel they should be able to send just the jets of the best size to keep them nearly filled based on last weeks fight expectations.
Older siblings, surely? The A340 that lost its tail was around 20 years old.
Losing tails is not unique to Airbus - your beloved Boeing 747 shed a tail over Japan when it was considerably newer than the plane that lost one over New York with the loss of around 500 lives (Japanese airlines ordered high capacity versions of the B747 for internal routes - I'm sure they'll be ordering 800-seat versions of the A380). The safety record of Airbus planes is very good - as is Boeing's safety record. It's irrational to travel on Boeing but not Airbus on safety grounds. I suspect the real reason for you is Not Invented Here syndrome. We won't even mention the rudder hard-over problems in Boeing 737s which have been responsible for a couple of crashes with impacts so severe all that was left was tiny, pulverized pieces in a small crater.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
don't forget the tax breaks and loans from The State of Washington, Kansas and the Japanese Government (for subcontracted parts).
Planes are more fuel-efficient than cars, but while people generally don't travel 1000 miles per trip two times a month with a car, they might do just that in a plane. Which is a big problem.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
A'ight! ROFL!
well it beats airmarshall Carlin bitching about getting on the plane eh?
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
it was created because theres genuine need, they need to move more people through the existing airports. boarding one big plane is a lot less hassle than boarding 10 smaller planes. a lot less hassle at the airport too, so airports can push people through faster(and more).
those 840 passangers want from a to point b even if this behemoth didn't exist, so there would still be the same hassle(MORE hassle actually) at the airport.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Conservative Rulebook, Rule #341.1a
If you didn't see it, hear it or taste it, it never happened.
Fighter aircraft often require computer control because they have unstable aerodynamics.. The control surfaces have to be constantly moved by the computer to keep the plane stable, and flying straight. This is done to allow the plane to maneuver fast and violently. This wouldn't be the case in planes such as the A380 which can fly without constant adjustments to the control surfaces.
And when was the last time the flight control system failed on a fly-by-wire plane?
The people who design and make these things are not fools, and they know what's at stake if they screw up.
All modern airliners have extensive computer control. New revisions of old designs (e.g. 737-800, 747-400) do as well. It makes them safer and more reliable. Not less.
The vast majority of my flights in the last few years have been on A320s and 767s, and I sleep very well knowing that their makers did their homework.
...laura
The problem with Russian technology is not the lack of technology. They simply don't have the quality control for large scale production.
Well, look at This Reuters coverage.
/. users, I will at least admit that I stand corrected.
:) (Kidding! I'm sure that Boeing gets them, too.)
Then unlike the majority of
This used less fuel/passenger than a 747. It's therefore cheaper to operate with a higher capacity.
But is this because of the design or because of the engine? Obviously, the extra weight of the beast and the people account for the need for more powerful engines. Would not the 747 gain higher efficiency as well if they used the same engines as the A38, assuming that they can but don't now? (Genuine question there. Not the typical Slashdot, sarcasm-laden rhetorical question.)
nobody would have spent the money building and developing this aircraft without knowing they'd get an ROI.
You mean more government subsidies?
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
That will be a record number of 1600 smouldering corpses!
http://www.airbus.com/a380/seeing/learnandplay/pdf /A380_airbuscolours.pdf
A grovestand of apples maybe. Between tax breaks and grants from Washington, Kansas, the Japanese Government (for subcontractors) and Defence Contractor preference status (as an American company) things work out about even.
I just flew SFO Hong Kong on United. No problems getting ticket on short notice. I even got a free upgrade to business class. My wife also got a free ticket on Sinagpore Air from SFO to Hong Kong... so they must have some extra seats. (BTW, Singapore Air is absolutely the best airline in the world.)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I've flown a class D Airbus A320 simulator before (and by flown, I mean as the pilot). Class D sims are so realistic, that most airlines will let pilots log time in the sim as time in the air.
A child of four could fly that plane.
Essentially, a good way to think about it is; the plane is always on autopilot, and if you take "manual control" you're feeding requests into the autopilot, which it may or may not honor.
For example; pull back on the stick and set the throttle to minimum. The plane will start to pitch up, and your airspeed drops off. Once you get close to stall speed, the plane will start increasing throttle to maintain speed. Once it runs out of throttle, it will start decreasing the angle of attack. Even if you give it hard over rudder, the plane simply will not stall.
I did a "flame-out" landing, with no fuel, Gimli-Glider style, and aside from the fact that I blew out some tires (no ABS when the engines are out on an A-320), I landed the plane no problem.
My cousin, who used to fly for Air Canada, said that by Air Canada rules, they had to fly under pilot control on takeoff until they were at 500 feet. After that, they could let the computer fly the plane to their destination AND LAND without further human intervention.
As far as concerns over "computer faults" go; the Airbus computer consists of (IIRC) 7 processors, which all vote to determine what to do. If a given processor disagrees or starts acting wonky, it gets rebooted. Each of these 7 processors is running different code, based on different designs, by different teams of software engineers. The only thing they have in common is that they were developed from the same requirements.
The Airbus parts supply-chain encircles the globe. The talent comes from all over:
http://www.airbus.com/about/operations.asp#aina
There are four established hubs of Airbus activity in North America. Headquarters for Airbus North America and Airbus North America Customer Services, Inc. are located in Herndon, Virginia, minutes from Washington D.C. and Washington Dulles International Airport.
The newest Airbus facility in the U.S., and largest in terms of people-power, is in Wichita, Kansas. Airbus North America Engineering, Inc., opened in Spring 2002, is the first design and engineering venture for Airbus in North America and hosts some 140 engineers working on the newest and largest Airbus aircraft: the A380.
The shareholders of Airbus are defence contractors too.
that depends on how you classify the An225.
instead of radar - russian planes but a midget in the nose cone
The military aircraft you mentioned cannot fly without computer feedback controllers because they are designed to be naturally unstable. This is what makes the F-22 / F-16 / F-18 fantasically maneuverable, and enables the B-2 to fly without vertical control surfaces. I'm pretty sure the A380 (or 777, which also uses fly-by-wire) wasn't designed with those types of properties.
Why-oh-why-oh-why are we so @#$% obsessed with this single-winner-take-all model!?!
Seems to me that there's room for, and a mission for BOTH the A380 and the 787. BOTH planes have a mission, and make a lot of sense in their respective missions. Trying to force an economic model that excludes one or the other is STUPID! (IMHO)
As far as I can remember, I've only once seen a 747 at the Burlington, Vt airport, which is the biggest in a 3+ hour radius. (Except for Montreal Dorval, across an international border.) There are no regularly scheduled 747s at BTV at all, and I doubt there ever will be. For my situation the 787 looks great, though I suspect that the Bombardier small (51 seat?) jet has been and will be of more use to me.
At the same time, once I have to go into a hub and onto a long haul, the A380 looks great, too.
There's a mission for both. I know the 787 emphasises long range, but that's part fuel economy, which may make it attractive to feed the hubs, as the fleet is replenished. In the long term, I wonder how many A380s between hubs will be fed by 787s servicing those hubs.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
The computers in aircraft are NOT designed like consumer operating systems. Fly-by-wire planes have been in the air for years now, and I've not heard of a crash caused by the fly-by-wire systems failing.
However, there have been several accidents caused by your supposedly 'more reliable' hydraulic systems - think Sioux City (DC-10, all three hydraulic systems failed after a tubine disc failed) for the most famous example, but there have been others (Boeing 737 unexplained rudder hard overs, other DC-10s losing hydraulics when the cargo door was lost in flight including one that resulted in a loss of all on board, a JAL B747 losing all hydraulics and impacting a mountain with the loss of 500).
The only planes you'll get with manual reversion will be B737 sized and smaller, and you won't be crossing the Atlantic on anything that small. Even then, the B737 has hydraulic controls only to the rudder (and there have been at least two accidents caused by rudder hard-overs in a B737 where the plane impacted terrain so hard that the people who discovered the impact crater thought a light bizjet had crashed because the remains were crushed into such small pieces).
In short, there are problems with all control systems (even cable and pulley systems have jammed resulting in crashes), and fly by wire is by far the most reliable we've made so far - and it results in a more efficient safer aircraft.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Since this is a completely new design how are the seats spaced? Currently, i have ZERO leg room (i am 6'3"). My legs are always jammed into the seat in front of me (even when in the upright). I MUST sit at an exit row, or be in the isle column and have my feet stick out in the row (uncomfortable with the arm rests). The width of the chairs are tight for me (i weight 250). The last time I flew, the guy next to me - his "love handles" were spilling over the arm rest - which made it uncomfy for me.
So did they build this plane in mind for us bigger (taller and wider) folk. 6'3"+ is not that uncommon. Neither are heavier people.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Only PURELY hydraulic controls to the rudder: the ailerons and elevator are also hydraulically controlled, but they also have wires/pulleys from the flight deck, and the ailerons/elevators can be operated on 'manual reversion' by using muscle power (although the controls get bloody heavy).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
As a matter of fact the programm for the flight controls are formally proven (Using math)
:, 36- 643085@51-627678,0.html
It is reported to be the biggest proven programm (The source is 500k lines of code)
Read more here (In french)
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3234
In the more mundane system failure, weather or pilot error induced incident, the scaling factor is more likely to overwhelm emergency infrastructure. Since many of the served routes are to huge metropolitan areas (e.g. London, Hong Kong) the stakes are high.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
heh, mix one part insecurity, one part immaturity, and one part "havent done anything worthwhile in life" and you have "the slashdot attitude".
Actually you'll see this attitude on a lot of web forums. The internet gives the pathetic and alienated a voice.
-
The
SU 30MKI can spank anything the US has or will fly in 10 years including the F22. If you want more proof you can see
this article on the spanking the US Air Force got from the Indian airforce when they had joint exercises and the Indians did not even bring their latest MKI planes just the SU 30K older version.
**Life is too short to be serious**
I am a European tax payer. Therefore I'm better off if people fly Airbus, because then at least my tax money will have been put to good European use (job creation etc.).
Linux user since early January 1992.
The Anotonov AN-225 Mriya is the largest commercial aircraft in the world.
In fact, save for the 'Spruce Goose' it is the largest aircraft ever flown full-stop. (bearing in mind the Spruce Goose never left ground-effect).
Originally designed to carry the Buran shuttle and its captive-carry mounting crane, the AN-225 is now in commercial operation with a uk company called Heavy-Lift.
Rumour has it, the 2nd AN-225 in now being completed.
Detail on the AN-225: here
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
My links dont seem to work . So here are the links3 0-1.html
SU 30 MKI http://vayu-sena.tripod.com/comparison-f16-f18-su
Article
http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004train.asp
**Life is too short to be serious**
Didn't it blow up at it's first showing at an airshow in France ? They were probably rushing the job just so they could one-up the French.. Thought I saw something about this on the history channel some time ago.
There's also the (singular) Antonov An-225, which is even bigger still, albeit in a limited number of just one.
I saw it fly at an air-show (Farnborough) many years ago - it's (a) very big, (b) very loud, and (c) has lots and lots of wheels. When I saw it, it still had the lumps on its back for carrying the Russian Space Shuttle.
I think it's still the heaviest plane in the world, even with the Airbus A380 around - 600 tonnes as opposed to a maximum 560, or something like that...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Actually - no it's not the wrong design for rising oil prices. The bigger you make the plane, generally the more miles per gallon per passenger you get. The A380 is much more efficient per passenger mile than the B747 in its standard configuration of 500 or so passengers - let alone 800!
The other problem, particularly in densely populated European countries, demand for trans-oceanic air travel continues to increase but you can't expand the airports any more. Bigger planes mean you can move more passengers without having to add runways. Changing the airport to accomodate the A380 is vastly cheaper than adding more runways, and in many cases you can't do that!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You don't?
A) Remove head from arse B) Read parent C) FOAD Have a nice day!
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
Do you know any non-American companies who are allowed to? (for the US government)
The A340 entered service in 1997. It can't be 20 years old. The plane that crashed in New York was an Airbus A300-600 equipped with two General Electric CF6-80C2A5 engines. The aircraft was built in 1987 and was delivered to American Airlines in July 1988. See this for details of the investigation.
The new SU-37 has similar flight characteristics to the F-22 and might even be more maneuverable. It is not contracted for yet by the Russian Air Force but it is reasonable to think they will either upgrade down that path or invest in an aircraft based on the SU-45 technology test bed.
Russia has -always- been at or near the forefront of aviation technology, dating back to World War I. I would not be so smug as to overestimate the F-22 or underestimate Russian aircraft. Yes, we have had much success against third world nations operating Russian made aircraft, but those aircraft are generally one, two, or even three generations behind current Russian design.
This is my sig.
Guaranteed loans are a type of subsidy. These loans are exclusive to Airbus and to no other competitor.
For those curious (and in case it gets /.'ed) :
The 555 seat, double deck Airbus A380 is the most ambitious civil aircraft program yet. When it enters service in March 2006, the A380 will be the world's largest airliner, easily eclipsing Boeing's 747.
Airbus first began studies on a very large 500 seat airliner in the early 1990s. The European manufacturer saw developing a competitor and successor to the Boeing 747 as a strategic play to end Boeing's dominance of the very large airliner market and round out Airbus' product line-up.
Airbus began engineering development work on such an aircraft, then designated the A3XX, in June 1994. Airbus studied numerous design configurations for the A3XX and gave serious consideration to a single deck aircraft which would have seated 12 abreast and twin vertical tails. However Airbus settled upon a twin deck configuration, largely because of the significantly lighter structure required.
Key design aims include the ability to use existing airport infrastructure with little modifications to the airports, and direct operating costs per seat 15-20% less than those for the 747-400. With 49% more floor space and only 35% more seating than the previous largest aircraft, Airbus is ensuring wider seats and aisles for more passenger comfort. Using the most advanced technologies, the A380 is also designed to have 10-15% more range, lower fuel burn and emissions, and less noise.
The A380 features an advanced version of the Airbus common two crew cockpit, with pull-out keyboards for the pilots, extensive use of composite materials such as GLARE (an aluminium/glass fibre composite), and four 302 to 374kN (68,000 to 84,000lb) class Rolls-Royce Trent 900 or Engine Alliance (General Electric/Pratt & Whitney) GP7200 turbofans now under development.
Several A380 models are planned: the basic aircraft is the 555 seat A380-800 (launch customer Emirates). The 590 ton MTOW 10,410km (5620nm) A380-800F freighter will be able to carry a 150 tonne payload and is due to enter service in 2008 (launch customer FedEx). Potential future models will include the shortened, 480 seat A380-700, and the stretched, 656 seat, A380-900.
Most fly by wire planes have manual backups.
Hmm... Let's clear up a few things;
A typical small aircraft has mechanical linkages between flight controls and flight surfaces. So, when I push forward on the stick, the stick pulls on a linkage, which pulls on a long metal rod (or possibly a cable), which pulls on another linkage, which moves the elevator (the flight surface which controls pitch).
Your typical old-school big-jet (like a 737 for example) uses a hydraulic system. When I push on the yoke, the yoke pulls a linkage, which pulls a rod or a cable, which moves another linkage, which move valves which control hydraulic pumps, which in turn move the flight surfaces. Hydraulics are used in big planes, because the forces required to move the flight surfaces would exceed what a human is capable of.
"Fly By Wire" is where I move a stick or a yoke, and it activates a switch or rotates a potentiometer, which sends a signal off into a computer, which then moves the appropriate flight surface.
There are no mechanical linkages between the flght controls and the flight surfaces in, say, an Airbus A320. So in the strictest sense, there is no "manual backup". There is a "manual control", wherein you cut the computer out of the decision making process, so the plane does exactly what you tell it to, rather than what it thinks you want to do based on your input (the closest analogy I can think of would be disabling traction control in your car, but that's a pretty poor analogy. See my other post in this thread for more information on the A320's flight computers).
From a pure "flight control" perspective, cutting the computers and autopilot and whatnot out of the loop, fly-by-wire is likely the most reliable of all methods, since you cut out a lot of mechanical linkages and pullies and other physical stuff (which will eventually fail, no matter what, it's all a question of mean-time-between failures), and replace them mostly with solid-state electronics, which have extremely low failure rates, and extremely long MTBFs.
Fly-by-wire also makes it much easier for you to build a computer which controls the plane, since all your flight surfaces are already "digitally controlled".
I think they do, otherwise aircraft would not be fitted with hydraulic fuses.
....
Furthermore, if there is a loss of power you loose an awlful lot of hydraulic force, the emergency RAM air turbine can't provide the power to push against the airflow on a modern passenger aircraft.
And this has happened a couple of times, once to a 767 (?) in Canada and an Airbus
That was my exact point. Apparently most everyone thinks that 4 engine aircraft are a technological necessity, when they in fact are not. You could fly a 747 on one of the engines from the 777 (take off is another matter). I just feel that super airliners are wasteful, and harm the industry because they force airlines to fly less frequently. This reduces the travel options of people who need to go places in a hurry. Plus my original statement (great-grandparent or something to that extent) about fuel efficiency has nothing to do with passenger capacity. Do you figure in passenger capacity for your automobiles when you calculate your fuel efficiency?
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Excuse me?
MIR was launched February 20, 1986.
Skylab was launched 28 July 1973.
I am all for giving the Russians their due for their many firsts, but "first space station" is NOT among them.
www.eFax.com are spammers
That'st just it. They're CONTRACTS. The US government says it needs a bunch of fighter planes and/or sattelites, pays the company for them and gets them. The government is paying for goods and services. You don't hear too much about the US government just giving money to a company because it thinks that company should exist (there are exeptions, like railroads and such).
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
You do realise that the free upgrade is probably because they oversold the economy seats? This happens with most major airlines, and United do it a lot. Getting a ticket is not an indication of there being spare seats! I used to fly London - Montreal regularly, and would get a free upgrade 75% of the time, because British Airways oversold economy by up to 80 seats in a 747.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A lot of industry experts don't even think one model will survive. The recent trend is more smaller aircraft transporting a modest number of people. Their PR department suggests they have 149 firm orders and they should be profitable by 2008, but keep in kind that's their PR department talking.
There's also the point that most airports in the world can't handle an aircraft that large which limits the possible routes the aircraft can fly. While obviously this airplane isn't designed to carry people from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, it remains to be seen whether it will even be profitable for Airbus. Keep in mind that an airline very well may do better with multiple smaller flights between, say, Dallas and London than a single flight with one of these suckers. Who wants to fly into Dallas and wait around until 5pm when the daily superjumbo flight is scheduled to leave?
And I hate to be the one to say it, but such a large aircraft sure looks like a juicy target for a terrorist that wants to get his money's worth out of the anti-aircraft missile he has stored in his closet.
Apparently you didn't either. Concordski crashed not because of some engineering failrure, but it COLLIDED with a French Mirage aircraft. The Mirage was, unknown to Soviet pilot was howering above Soviet supersonic jet taking pictures of the new aircraft.
The French were responsible for this & everyone knew it. The French & Soviets covered it up.
For the record, for the amount of miles they have flown, Russian supersonic has BETTER safety record per passenger mile than Concord.
Get a clue.
In fact they got so many blueprints that they were able to have it fly one year early. Wonder what the french-british consortium was doing that year.
Let's not forget that the biggest accident ever in the aviation industry occured ON THE GROUND on the runway of Tenerif (sorry if the spelling is wrong) when 2 747 collided causing 600 dead. The airport was a big traffic jam, fog everywhere, every single plane 2 hours late or more. One didn't heed the tower orders saying NOT to release brakes while the other one (who was taxiing on the runway because everything else was jammed) didn't leave the runway at the right exit.
Just for the record.. Concorde was Anglo-French..
Here is a scenario. You fly from London to Los Angeles. Of course it is a brand new AirBus 380. This one has seats for 800. At the same time a flight comes from Tokyo, and five other destinations. So at the same time we have 5600 people landing!
One word, [sarcasm]Wonderful[/sarcasm]. LAX is slow enough, but with these beasts in the air you might as well forget getting out of the airport in less than two hours.
On this one Boeing has the right answer. The problem is that the infrastructure is not equipped to deal with these planes. The hubs are already busy enough. Forget about expanding the hubs as that will take years, and years...
No, welcome to cattle country, ladies and gentlemen...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I think the Hindenburg was JUST A SMIDGE bigger than the either Mriya or the Goose.
That's because of the four Rolls-Royce engines. Everybody knows a Rolls is more quiet than a Corvette.
* ducks *
sigs, as if you care.
The articles detail a conclusion that the F-15 is no match for the SU-30, which I agree. The F-15 is what, almost 40 years old by now? The Cope India debacle is one of the reasons why the USA is buying new F-22s and new F-35s.
This is my sig.
It's been proven that the concordski was a ripoff of one of the early designs of Concorde, it was unstable (which is why that draft was trashed/reworked in the first place), concordski never made it to production status and was promptly dropped while Concorde actually got to carry passengers (until Gonesse, that is)
Even if that hadn't been a ripoff thanks to industrial spies, a plane that never managed to fly reliably couldn't be branded 'first supersonic passenger jet', at best it could be the 'first supersonic passenger jet failure'
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Works out about even? Can I see your spreadsheet on that, or did you just pull that analysis out of your arse?
When the AN 124 was designed, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and the money and the specifications for the AN 124 were sent to Antonov by the soviet government. I also guess that most of the engineers working at Antonov were somehow or sometime educated at Moscow University.
In fact the Ukraine has been part of Russia for 350 years until it broke away from the CIS in 1992. This makes anything that predates 1992 quite complicated to assign to a state or nation.
yes, the concorde, but he made reference to the 'Concordia'.. aka, 'concordski' or whatever you want to call the russian supersonic counterpart, which was being developed/built at the same time as the concorde..
You didn't answer the question, fuckwit.
Heheheh. I slay myself sometimes.
You clearly don't understand any of the issues involved in this -- nobody would have spent the money building and developing this aircraft without knowing they'd get an ROI.
History is full of examples of companies bringing out products that fail, even though they were certain that they would get a big fat ROI.
It's quite far from a spanking, and you can buy tens of russian fighters for the price of a single F-22...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
I would argue that your father came to that conclusion prematurely. Either that or your post omits crucial details.
Why would one refuse to ride in a plane that uses vacuum tubes and wood? Planes have been built with wood for a very long time, so I believe it can be said that wood, while not the best material, has certainly proven that it is worthy of use in aircraft. As for vacuum tubes, the same reasoning applies. Vacuum tubes were good enough in the 50s, but using them now (or 20 years ago) means that they are magically unsafe?
There is also only one plane to secure, so the single plane is safer than the double plane.
About time we had EU Linux then, I reckon. I'm certainly fed up to the back teeth of Microsoft sucking money out of the economy for the world's shittest software.
:
Prez George pimps his ride to impress his biatch, Condy.
This sarcastic piece of flamebait modded up +5... I guess there exist jingoists on both sides of the pond...
It's amazing that this giant of an airplane is actually bigger than the legendary Spruce Goose. Only if by "larger" you mean "20% smaller". the spruce Goose's wingspan is 320 feet, and the A380's wingspan is only 262 feet.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
John Travolta just got a hard-on...
(He's an aviation nut for those that don't know)
. . . do a barrel roll?
"I worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I have it," Campbell said. "It's all mine."
As has been pointed out, A3XX initial development started in 1994 and while design freeze came later, airports have had quite a bit of notice. LHR T5 will accomodate it (Qantas) and LAX is already moving forward, voting to approve spending last week. Even Dublin Airport's new 10L/28R will be 60m wide to give best suitability even though A380 will only be in Dublin for rugby charters in the short term.
/ Technical _Data/docs/AC/DATA_CONSULT/AC_A380.pdf
A340-600 and 777-300 have already pushed the boundaries of length and width of stands to the point where accomodating 380s is less of a trauma. The main area of concern is taxiways, where the 380s wingspan will infringe neighbouring taxiways.
For slashdotters who actually want to research this stuff (if it's ain't Boeing-ers can stop reading now) look at the Airport Planning Document produced by Airbus:
http://www.content.airbusworld.com/SITES
(the other one is a Canadian firm)
That would probably be Bombardier.
Yeah, but if you actually read the wiki, you see that newer planes like the 777 which are rated at ETOPS-180 (180 minutes or less from nearest airfield), the only areas they can't fly are some middle-of nowhere areas in the south pacific and at the poles. Trans-atlantic and -pacific flights are perfectly feasible.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Godwin's Law
The bigger picture is that the Euro's seem to have a complete disdain for open markets, and I worry that they won't change until their taxes are outrageous and unemployment tops 10%.
Not with the TSA confiscating your tweezers!
CATSA staffers tested my (bought at liquor store) Nova Scotia wine at Halifax NS to see if it was homebrew. WTF?
"Yes, there exist statistics that show that Russian-made planes can and often are operating just as safely as the western-made planes."
Except you can't get rid of the boiled cabbage and vomit stench.
What if it's 250 people that want to go from NY, NY to Sacramento, CA, and 250 people that want to to Los Angeles,CA. Do you cram everybody into one plane to Los Angeles and then have half of them file into another plane to Sacremento? You still have 2 planes.
The more I read about the small planes going point to point vs. large planes and centralized hub, the more I get struck with how much like packet switching the point to point flihts are and how much like circuit switching the central hub model is.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
That said, seating space is the hands of the airlines, and does not have to do with the size of the plane. On smaller planes, there are less seats but the seating space is the same. Equal sufferage for us tall people.
In general, the reason that seating space is so low is for the simple reason that people book flights without regard to seating space in general. The airlines have tried experimenting with wider seating at times, and the results have been it doesn't have an effect on plane bookings. People just don't seem to care, at least at booking time. Personally I'd gladly pay another $30 a flight to be able to stretch out on planes, but I guess I'm the minority.
I admit that my experience may have little or no bearing on international flights, but my general impression is that there is no clear move towards big aircraft, instead increased volume seems to be taken up by more flights of small aircraft. Anyhow, I'd be curious to know: do people find themselves on 747s and the like very often, or primarily on small and medium sized aircraft, particularly when flying overseas? I'm really curious to know if this bet Airbus has made is going to pay off.
You need to also compare delivery times, though. How far out are each of them? Airbus only has a 25% margin, and I think they have at least a 1-year head start.
Of course, the real test is profitability though.
the stretch version which Emirates have already said they will order if Airbus launch it.
Depends on the facilities at the airport. If the airport can load two sided or with an upper deck airbridge it could possibly be quicker to load than a 747-400.
As for how many people are at check-in etc. - if the route can fill a 380 it can probably fill 2 x 777 at least. So at peak times the airport is likely to be just as crowded.
It's not that much of a gamble, as if it fails Airbus does not need to pay back the government loans it used to build it.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I agree.
Beyond that, I dont think a lot of people are looking forward to boarding and off-loading times of over an hour with the amount of passengers that thing can hold. It is a technical marvel, but I think they just built a bigger slower Concorde, that will probably find a niche in Cargo, instead of passenger flying.
Look at major transatlantic routes like JFK-LHR or YYZ-LHR. Eastbound flights during daytime are not popular and tend to use smaller aircraft (like a 757/767 or now 787) because you lose working time (local time goes forward). However, some people need to fly then.
Night flights/redeyes are more popular because you arrive the following morning and don't "lose a day travelling". These flights have 777s, 330-300s, 747-400s. These are the flights 380 will operate.
Money such countris prefer to spend on more profitable industries (let's face it, it may be very good for your public image to have your own plane builder but those countries would rather have more IT companies and the like).
Russia does warrants debts for the Russian Regional Jet program. It's perhaps the only chance for the Russians to get back to the passenger jet market. Other projects are obsolete and/or mismanaged.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Yeah umm, the Indians went against F-15's not F-22s. Not to mention, the F15s are primarily BVR fighters and during hte engagement, the AMRAAMs were not allowed to be modeled. Of course the SU-30s could not use R-73s either, but SU-30s are better dogfighters then the F-15, so when it comes to close range fighting the Sukhois rule the day.
They still can't touch the F-22 though.
False. Nowadays military uses turbofans. Turbojet is no longer in use because performance is extremely low. However, military fighters use low derivation ratio turbofans because of compacity reasons.
The turbojet penalty is in the propulsion efficiency. To make thrust you need to accelerate a given mass flow. The thrust is Mass_flow*Delta_Speed, being Delta_speed the difference on flow speed from the engine exit respect the flight speed (unperturbed inlet speed). As a result there are two ways to produce high amounts of thurst:
a) Low Mass flow with high delta on speed
b) High Mass flow with low delta on speed
Turbojet does a) which is highly inefficient in energy terms (kinetic power transferred to the flow by the engine is 0.5*Mass_flow*(delta_speed)**2). (note that a**2 means a*a). Turbofan does b) providing same if not more thrust with lower energy involved. The highest derivation ratio the turbofan has, the better the propulsion efficiency is, and the larger the Fan radius is, also. Having large fans also involves transonic problems, and can become a problem for supersonic flights. As a result fighters use low derivation ratio turbofan because of compacity and perhaps because of supersonic flight requirement. Intake design may avoid supersonic problems in the fan, nevertheless- note how fighters have funny intakes in contrast to commercial airplanes. Also compare Concorde intakes to commercial transonic airplanes.
800 people need to get from point A to point B. They can take: A) two 777 or b) one A380 Which is the most fuel efficient method?
"Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!"
There is another important point when comparing cars to airplanes. The A380 efficiency is obtained at a speed of nearly 10 times higher than the car. Do drive a car at 200Km/h (in a test oval circuit, of course) and you'll get a fuel consumption from the double of that values to three or four times higher!
My neighbor is an F-18 pilot, and I asked him about that Indian exercise. He told me that the U.S. as a routine allows other countries to win these engagements because they only participate in those things to learn how the enemy is progressing in their tactics and abilities. He also told me that the U.S. gains nothing by showing their enemies what they can really do until they really need to kick ass.
This guy tells me that there is nothing, nor will there be anything that comes near the F-22 for at least 10-15 years, and that the F-15 is so powerful, that what it cant kill, it can outrun and get away from anyway. The SU-30 has such a large radar signature that an F-15 can pick it up from over 60 miles away.
Against an F-22, that thing would be blown up before it ever saw the F-22 on radar. I want some of what you are smoking.
Airbus lost some very valuable personnel in that crash.
So did the loved ones of the "personnel".
He's also a "Xenu nuked people in volcanos and now thetans are floating invisibly over my shoulder"-nut, so we don't care.
...somebody gets it.
>>The internet gives the pathetic and alienated a voice.
Indeed!
Yes of course it is more complicated. I was just answering the point of a previous poster that a big plane automatically means more fuel will be burned. These planes will be better for very long distance flights. But for a lot of passengers, the service will be worse. Airlines like the larg hub airports mainly because scheduling is easier, from a passenger end-to-end travel time point of view they suck.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
Well, apparently Airbus and Boeing have realized that some people fly elsewhere than just in the US.
;)
It could be that they have done some research on the subject (while travelling by boat, or by cart maybe), or possibly they made up their mind after looking at Fox News while waiting for their plane between DC and New York.
I find myself in 747s all the time but then I go to countries that don't really exist.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Airbus only has to pay its taxpayers back when it makes money on the A380. Boeing gets to avoid paying taxes to the city that builds it. Essentially Airbus gets free R&D but Boeing does not.
This is my sig.
My Jag can do that easily four up, and it's not really fuel efficient AT ALL.
The first link is written by people at the Russian MOD! It isn't surprising that they would say that their plane is better. In the real world, the fighter plan is only one small cog in a big machine and judging by recent performance, buying fancy new Russian airplanes will not prevent the american Airforce from decimating any of the worlds airforces except for Russian itself.
Efficiency = Work done / Energy put into system
It does have to do with passenger (or cargo) capacity.
Versteh?
I think you're confused, I think because usually we don't care about the amount of work done, just as long as we get there.
For the US/Mexico/Canada markets, they did move away from 747s. Those are used for high cap long haul. I flew 747 to Hawaii from the Twin Cities, but alot of the routes flown by 747 and MD-11 have been replaced with A380, 777, 757 and 767.
Japan uses alot of 747s, some of them configured for shorter range and very high capacity, and 747s are being used for long over ocean flights quite a bit.
>>> and you can buy tens of russian fighters for the price of a single F-22
You mean ten, at most, rather than tens of Russian fighters of course.
sorry to burst your conspiracy theory, but AA587 (an A300-600R) did not operate using the kind of FBW regime the A380 uses. The first aircraft using FBW in the way described here was the A320-100. It did crash in disputed circumstances when being displayed.
AA587 went down when experiencing wake turbulence from a preceding aircraft. The pilot used heavy rudder input which Airbus claim was contrary to SOP. The forces the rudder generated caused the tailfin to fail. The dispute is whether delamination found in the tail would have caused a crash even if the rudder inputs were not as severe.
and as with packet vs circuit switched, both models have their uses.
The central hub model is better when it's comes to fuel, noise and environment impact.
The PP model is better when it comes to time and flexibility.
Hub carries a heftier initial investment.
PP carries a higher operational cost.
Both have strengths and weaknesses, and one will not mean the end of the other, both have their uses and their markets.
If you go from a location within car/bus/train range of a major airport to another location a continent and/or ocean away within car/bus/train range from a major airport, PP makes sense.
Like NY - Los angeles.
But if you want to go between two locations not within car/bus/train range of a major airport you'll have to change planes anyway, so Hub makes sense.
Like Riga/Latvia - Madison/WI/USA.
Executive Pope (small) Kallisti Engineering
And I hate to be the one to say it, but such a large aircraft sure looks like a juicy target for a terrorist that wants to get his money's worth out of the anti-aircraft missile he has stored in his closet.
AND WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN! IF ONE OF THOSE FELL ON A SCHOOL MANY OF THEM COULD DIE!
The first space station was the Russian Salyut, like someone already mentioned.
Let the parent give "the Russians their due for their many firsts" by modding him down.
I've seen eBay trying to sell me zeta functions.
There's a bid difference between a local government giving tax breaks to a local company to keep jobs local, and giving an interest free loan to a for-profit corporation.
You're missing the point. Assuming you meant "500 people", as the A380 doesn't carry 800: what happens the next day, when only 250 people want to go from A to B? You can fly just one of those 777's, or a half-empty A380. The real issue is whether they can consistently fill those 500-odd seats on the A380. "Dollars per seat-mile" assumes that there is a paying butt planted in each of those seats.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Is there an echo in here?
Yes, and I appreciate it. Summertime going to Europe is great for free upgrades. Last summer I had four free upgrades on trips through Europe. Coach was packed full with empty seats in Business class.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
probably not the greatest idea to throw that many people on a single plane - the logistics of boarding alone with security will be a nightmare.
I don't think that is true. There are videos of the event that I have seen (admittedly, quite a few years ago). While there was a Mirage in the air which the Soviets were not informed about, it was not the direct cause of the crash, at least.
Building a passenger jet is completely different than building a fighter aircraft, so calling military hardware purchases a subsidy is completely wrong.
This is my sig.
Do you know what this business is about? Do you really think they don't do enough market research when each of those birds costs 218 million USD and you need to sell at least 200 of them in order to make even?
- 1 large, human disaster should that bird go down
- 1 even larger potential target for terrorists
OK, lets all stay at home. At least, slashdot is free from potential terrorist menaces.
The other points have been already covered by other replies.
Why would you let something so insignificant as history get in the way of some good old-fashioned flag waving jingoism?
And it's such a shiny new flag!
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
This is all very nice... over 500 passengers.
But let's assume that the new airplane is going to be subject to the same issues as other airplane and suffers the same statistics in crashing as other planes. Does the fact that more passengers are carried around make flight more or less secure, I wonder? What are the current statistics like?
If one of these babies goes done you have 500 people dead, otherwise you generally have around 150.
Oh, and here is something else to cheer you up: last I checked the software that powers most airplanes has about 5-7 million lines of code. Very well debugged software tends to have about one bug in every 500 lines, generally speaking.
Try not to wet your pants next time you fly :).
China manufactures largely unauthorized copies of older MiG fighters (there are far more than "the" MiG) and has done so for decades. Last I read, India assembled MiGs domestically, but these were from kits supplied by Russia.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Embraer (Brazil) has been a big player in regional aircraft. Don't count them out of the running.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Bzzzt, wrong!
You don't expect to fly a Brazilian airliner? Well, I have, more than once. The company is called Embraer and builds small/medium airplanes. The polish LOT airlines have some and they don't seem too bad.
The jump to large planes would not be easy and probably unnecessary anyway - there is a much larger market for small and medium airliners. Attacking the long range market is a different question, their current planes are in the 3000-4000km group.
This has got to stop.
The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
Quit flying coach. You need first class. Just kidding about the cheap bastard part. Like I can afford coach even. Hey, maybe on the new A380 first class will be cheaper, since it is more efficient and all, yeah, right. like the airlines will make first class cheaper...
Shut up.
I don't have the details you do on who designed this plane, but I've been to a Ruslan (AN-124) factory -- got a tour, watched several being built, watched a completed one being towed out of the main building to a hangar.
All this was in Ul'Yanovsk... Russia.
(I also snapped some pictures, against their request, but I never sold them to the CIA, so I'm not a spy, right?)
--
"Fly by wire" has three missions: a) never let the airplane fly out of flight envelop (airplane integrity), b) increase airplane efficency (e.g. flying in unstable condition in cruise, positioning the center of gracity of the airplane as close to the lift as possible) and c) lower the pilot stress so she can be aware of other things besides the pure flight control as she has to.
The 7 processors are made by different manufacturers, also (intel, motorola, AMD, ...). AFAIK ADA language is used for programming because of realtime capabilities and not being error-prone language.
Probably soon cars will do "drive by wire". Let's hope none of the 7 computers runs windows...
But how close to *full* will each typically fly? I'd expect the smaller plane to have the edge there . . .
hawk
First off, airliners are a known target of terrorists. It is very likely that if terrorists wanted to target an aircraft for destruction, these would be their likely choice because you can cause the most amount of death and destruction. Now its still damn hard to take down an airliner these days, but if I were to hedge my bets, the A380 has "Al-queda target" written all over it. It fits with their M.O.
Second is the PR angle. Right now the deadliest air crash of all time happened when 2 747's collided on a runway in Tenerife killing 574 people. That was due to pilot error. If anything, at somepoint the A380 is going to crash. If its a passanger version with 600 people aboard, one crash is going to cause more deaths than 2 747's. The Media will go nuts over the story. Second off is how many times will insurance companies pay out until they decide, $600M+ per crash is a little steep for payout? That's if it was settled for $2M a person. Likely much higher with lawsuit happy trial lawyers.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Well actually, it would be a big deal. In a debate on Monday in France over ratifying the EU constitution, Airbus was constantly used as THE realization of the dream of a unified Europe. Along with the Galileo project, which will essentially duplicate the american military's GPS system in order to lessen Europe's dependence on the US, Airbus is also a project to make Europe more self-sufficient. The political capital invested in Airbus is definitely worth more than the $10 billion invested in the A380.
Still, look here for info on the EU-US dispute in the WTO over EU loans and US military contracts supporting Airbus and Boeing.
hawk, ducking and running
I hate to burst your bubble, but lockheed martin gets most of those contracts.
These routes right now could use the A380-800:
Frankfurt-New York
Frankfurt-Los Angeles
Frankfurt-San Francisco
Singapore-Taipei-Los Angeles
Singapore-Hong Kong-San Francisco
Sydney-Los Angeles
Just curious:
1) Which of the following airports have runways long enough to allow the A380 to land [or to take off]?
2) Which of the following airports have terminal facilites [seats in lounge areas, toilets in bathrooms, food concessions in concourse areas, parking in parking decks, bussing from remote parking lots, baggage handling conveyor systems] to handle the 800 passengers on an A380? Or hangars large enough to offer the option of servicing the A380? 3) Which of the following airports are NOT beseiged by local "environmentalist" activists who will sue for decades in the American legal system to prevent the expansion of existing runways so as to allow the A380 to land [or to take off]? 4) Which of the following airports can come up with the funds necessary [tens of millions of dollars? hundreds of millions of dollars? billions of dollars?] necessary to upgrade their terminal facilites [seats in lounge areas, toilets in bathrooms, food concessions in concourse areas, parking in parking decks, bussing from remote parking lots, baggage handling conveyor systems] so as to handle the 800 passengers on an A380? Or to upgrade their hangars so as to be able to offer the option of servicing the A380? Again, just curious.Yeah, and that's because the Russians stole the plans for the Concorde and rushed it into production.
The Russians were brilliant aeronautical engineers. They also had good espionage, and they used it frequently.
It's not a coincidence that, on the outside, the Buran orbiter is indistinguishable from a 2/3 scale Shuttle.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
They were using vacuum tubes...
Russia continued research on vacuum tubes well after all US R&D went over to solid state. (hell, the MiG planes ran on tubes). There were certain conditions in which tubes far outperformed solid-state circuits, even for American tubes. Russion tubes of that era are small, almost transistor-size, are far more rugged wrt. interference and EMP. As a result, Russian tube technology was the best in the world (and several Russian plants still make them) and they made the right choice.
Only very recently have tubes lost all of their use.
toresbe
Do we really need a bigger jumbo jet?
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
But it becomes the consumers' problem when airlines choose to drop number of routes available in order to ensure planes get filled.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I have never flown on a 747. I have flown overseas on 767s and 777s. I have flown internationally from North America to South America on 757s. I have flow to Hawaii on a DC-10 (obviously been a while).
It seems to me that airlines that can't justify multiple large plane flights per day choose instead to fly a single very large flight. Korean Airlines uses a 747 for most of their flights that are once or less per day to the United States. I could see how it could be cheaper to do that than to buy two 777s. In fact, older 747s are probably CHEAPER than a new 777. But a 747 is more expensive to operate.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I thought the test flight wasn't carrying passengers?
Assuming you meant "500 people", as the A380 doesn't carry 800
The A380 is perfectly capable of carrying 800 people and is advertised as such; the decision rests with the airlines themselves, and customers who probably will not want to be crammed in like sardines.
Nice weather for penguins...
No airport modifications are needed to support it.
The A380 requires a drastic retooling of airports. From dual double-decker jet-ways to reinforced tarmac pads to support the weight of it.
You'll see the Pacific rim airports and carriers pick up the A380. But very few US domestic carriers and airports will want to spend the money on it. I doubt it will ever catch on for transatlantic flights.
The only issue is whether the capacity will be taken advantage of effectively. While most flights now are booked solid, will the number of passengers be high enough to make the construction of these behemoths profitable?
Well, that the multi-billion dollar question.
Did you notice that after flying resumed after 9/11, although there was supposedly a lot less flying going on, you were frequently in extremely crowded terminals and on packed flights? I did.
What was happening was that the airlines were concentrating their passenger flow through hubs, reducing point to point flights. This increases facility and airplane utilization, which in turn increases financial efficiency. This massive airplane is not going to be seen on flights from Manchester NH to Sacramento CA, it'll be used either on transoceanic flights (reducing the overall number of flight choices) or on major links in the airlines' spoke and hub sytems, say between Atlanta and Salt Lake, from which you'll take a small regional jet to your final destination.
For transoceanic flights, this will be great. If you fly these domestically in the future, it'll prbably be because the airlines have managed to force you into a hub and spoke system, instead of point to point, as most passengers prefer. If you are going from a small airport to another (e.g. the Manchester/Sacramento example above), you may find yourself having to change planes twice. Fortunately, if one of these behemoths is late, then it will involve so many passengers that it is likely that they'll hold the final flight.
IIRC Boeing is betting that airlines won't be able to channel passengers this way, and that the system will look more or less like it does now, or that passengers will demand more direct flights. So they're producing a smaller plane that achieves per passenger efficiencies through advanced technology.
Personally, I'm hoping Boeing is right. I don't mind flying, it's the in-terminal experience that sucks. I take Jet Blue when I can, but Jet Blue's model is not scalable. They're basically cherry picking the most lucrative point to point routes from the majors.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That tells you much.
> I also guess that most of the engineers working
> at Antonov were somehow or sometime educated at
> Moscow University.
You'd be wrong. Moscow State U doesn't do aerospace or any other kind of engineering. For Antovov, try Kharkiv Aerospace Institute (Kharkiv, Ukraine).
How typical, so easy to badmouth the planes, but, if it's cheaper, you'll go ahead and get on them anyways.
My guess would be that this sort of personal hysteria is the reason that we don't see much of a market for planes from these countries.
Actually, it's more like ignorance of what they are riding on, because americans are climbing onto non-American and non-European airplanes every day by the thousands, altho i'm sure very few of them realize it. Between Embraer and Bombardier, a lot more airframes are being delivered to US airlines than Boeing and Airbus are providing.
God bless capitalism.
The reason there are no american manufacturers left in the sub 100 passenger jet category is because of the product liability lawsuits in the usa. Heck, even Boeing has special status, they only sell airplanes to the us government directly, all the rest of what they make is sold thru carribean shell corps to avoid the taxes and liabilities of being a manufacturer in the usa, and even that is changing now. Look very carefully at where components are going to be built for the newest models they are bringing out. Hint, you will have to travel to China to see the production facilities.
Large aircraft have 10 year lead times from initial design concept, to first deliveries. The Q400 (Dash 8) has been king of the commuters for the last 10 years (canadian airplane). The CRJ and EMB have emerged as the mainline of the small passenger jets (sub 100 passengers, canadian and brazillian airplanes) over the last 5 years. Now Airbus is emerging as king of the big iron. During this same period, even Boeing has been slowly starting to shift to offshore production, a process thats going to accellerate if they want to survive in the industry. When you factor in lead times, it's pretty obvious, with the exception of Boeing and all it's associated government contracts, the aerospace industry abandoned the usa in droves all at the same time, during the early 90's. this trend can be traced directly back to the product liability lawsuit which halted production at the cessna plants, it was a HUGE wakeup call for the industry, and started the wheels moving in earnest for aircraft manufacturing to get out of the usa.
Your beloved capitalism, and all it's associated lawsuits decimated the aircraft manufacturing business in the usa during the 80's. The assembly lines of Cessna, Piper, McDonnel Douglas and Lockheed all fell victim to the process. The USA was once the king of aircraft production, the world over, that's no longer the case. they compete head on with airbus in the 100+ categories, and there are no serious offerings out of america in the sub 100 passenger ranges.
I've been in this business for 28 years. I've watched the industry press as various designs and concepts go from 'early hype' to either 'abandoned' or 'flying' stages. It's pretty obvious that Boeing bent to political pressure, and the next batch from them will still have final assembly in the usa, but the components will be coming from all over, specfically a lot of the hardware from china, and the software from india. To anybody that's been watching the industry for a lot of years, it's pretty obvious, the groundwork has been laid. The next batch of Boeing products after the dreamliner, are going to have final assembly done in China.
The lead times and investment capital required in this industry are HUGE. Even if the usa fixed the legal system today, it would take at least 20 years for the industry to regain it's world dominance, but that wont happen because of the sheer cost of american labor. I watched the 380 take off, and listened to the commentary about a 'new age in aviation'. It was truely just that, the start of a new age in aviation.
There was a time when you had no choice, t
and judging by recent performance, buying fancy new Russian airplanes will not prevent the american Airforce from decimating any of the worlds airforces except for Russian itself.
.
Not very likely. Decimation eliminates one part in ten. The day someone has 9 parts in 10 left after a U.S. air campaign . .
hawk
I meant 340...
It broke up as a result of taking evasive action to avoid a french fighter plane which flew directly at it (the french claimed they wanted up close pictures).
Essentially the plane had to manauver in a way that stalled its engines due to lack of airflow. The pilot put the plane into a dive to spin them up again but lost the plane when he tried to pull out of the dive.
ISTR that the Concordski was climbing fast, and suddenly saw the Mirage (French spy plane) above. The pilot levelled off the dive suddenly, which interrupted the airflow into the engines.
All 4 engines stalled, and the plane went into a dive from which it did not recover.
Arguably a combination of the Mirage being where it should not have been, and a design weakness in the Russian plane.
One word for you: PORK
This comment does not exist.
At last! We've got something that's bigger than the Americans have got!
Originally designed to carry the Buran shuttle and its captive-carry mounting crane
I think that means that it is not commercial.
Sorry slashdotters, I see a huge amount of resources, fuel and money going up in smoke. Hard to not say anything. Viva la France and good luck.
hawk
damn...those must be really good drugs you're on. you should be sharing.
Go and have a look what Heavy-Lift uses it for.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
My Favorite part of the site.. the google ad words on the left side: "Airbus a380 for sale. Discount airbus a380. Check out the deals now! http://www.ebay.com"
Collective Type Project
Here's the link.
From that article:
So typical airports would be looking at investing anywhere from $53 Million to $1 Billion in renovations before they could accomodate the A380.And that's assuming the "environmentalists" didn't keep them tied up in court for a couple of decades.
you are comparing new designs vs ones that were rolled out in the mid 70s. given that, it's still funny then why India is crapping its pants over the sale of F-16s to Pakistan.
There's a difference between being able to make something and being able to make something efficiently. Governments will happily pay ridiculous amounts of money for millitary aircraft, but airlines aren't going to pay this much for passenger planes. Just a thought.
I've been seeing the PR out of Boeing for the last few years, with all the talk about how folks would rather use more frequent, smaller planes. It sounds good, but, doesn't quite equate with reality. After 28 years in the business, one thing i have learned. If the ticket is 25 dollars cheaper, most of the travelling public will happily wait 2 hours and save the money. Cheaper tickets happen when you cram more people into bigger airplanes. Business class travellers would rather have more frequent flights, but, the reality is, there's not enough of them to cover the increased operating costs. business travellers have learned to adjust thier schedules to fit those of the airlines, and the airlines are not going to reverse that process anytime soon.
And as for your terrorist paranoia, there's more than enough 747's in the sky today. If your fictional terrorist really wanted to get his money's worth out of that missle stored in his closet, he's got lots of targets today. The reality is, that missle is stored over with Iraq's WMD supply, ie non-existant. If it actually existed, it would have been used already.
Besides, the A380 is assembled in France. Terrorists would much rather pick a Boeing target, for political reasons. Americans should think twice when they play the terrorist card when comparing the airplanes, cuz airlines the world over realize full well that a Boeing aircraft is a much juicier target than an Airbus. It's not something that's discussed in public, but, airlines are factoring this in to making purchasing decisions today. The terrorist card is actually a serious strike against purchasing Boeing. Just another one of those little side effects from 9/11 that have long term negative impact on the us economy.
Come on, people!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS
Do you love freedom??? Do you love freedom!!! DO YOU LOVE FREEDOM!!!!!!!!
The problem for the large airports at the moment is the number of landing slots, Heathrow for instance is landing a plane every 20 seconds. The A380 can put up to 840 people down for each landing slot, almost twice as many as a 747, it's also more efficient than a 747. They already have 150 orders for the thing, 250 are needed to break even some time over the next 40 years it can be expected to be in service.
The 777 can only handle 300 passengers, much like an Airbus A330 but with higher costs. Boeing have been sitting on their backsides for a couple of decades now with the assumption that they would be the king of the airways forever. Today, Airbus handed them their arse. Boeing are now playing catchup, and will be for a while.
The A380 has 2 sets of doors. It can be deplaned faster than a 747 if the airports modify their gates to cope and they *will* make that investment one way or another, their customers the airlines will demand it.
Deleted
As long as the internal voting systems are not made by Diebold... NO PROBLEM!!
but I don't doubt that it's also to gain PR points against Boeing.
Right, because ultimately everything foreigners do is to either spite or upstage Americans.
uhhuh....
oh for mod points today, that's one of the best laffs so far in this thread.
"Most fly by wire planes have manual backups."
To be precise, they have redundant fly-by-wire control channels and systems. The tech is old hat. F-16s have been using it with only minor problems since around 1979. With any aircraft flight control system there will be failures.
That wasn't where the insult stopped.
.
It couldn't recline, so I had *significantly* less space than the regular seats . .
hawk
Roughly 100m long, weighing 540 metric tons fully loaded, and flying at 2m above the water at 400km/h. Its tail section was 5 stories high.
It's a ground-effect vechile, where the stubby wings trap a pocket of air that allow the vechile to "hover" of sorts. They built a few of them before the collapse, mostly intended as fast, below radar troop transports and as naval destroyers.
Here's a video of it in action (in German): http://www.ingopagehome.de/franz/MOV_Ekrano_Lun.mp g
Interesting note: the man helping push the throttles is the lead designer, Rostislav Alexeev.
The reason the military uses turbojets is because turbojets provide more power than turbofans can, and in military aircraft such as Air Dominence fighters etc the more power you have, the better chance you have in combat, ie higher speeds, higher climbing characteristics
e b/A10.jpg
Actually that's not the case. Military aircraft would use higher bypass turbofans if they'd fit, but they won't fit in a fighter where the engines are mounted internally. But on planes where the engines are mounted externally, they do use higher bypass engines, like on the A-10 and S3 Viking.
The S3 Viking's engines look like little airliner engines:
http://web.singnet.com/~jtann/plane17.jpg
As do the A-10's:
http://www.math.univ-montp2.fr/~mohamadi/dasilvaw
They're way too fat to fit inside the airframe of a small fighter, so they have to use much narrower low-bypass engines in fighters.
They changed something to make it more manouverable than the Concorde, and in the process wired a wire wrong, so it crashed (from Wikipedia).
Too bad. But don't dismiss the Russians, they did manage to keep up a space station many many years longer than its planned lifespan.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Yeah and we defend(ed) Europe with the things we buy from Boeing, while Europe spends their money on social safety nets. Now that the Cold War is over they don't have to worry about offending us with their industrial cheating.
True. But in the aircraft industry for commercial jets and the like, you market and sell before you build.
They had pre-sold a large amount of these aircraft before ever flying one.
One does not design and build an aircraft which costs almost $300 million USD without doing this stuff in advance.
This isn't like Pontiac selling the exceedingly ugly Aztec and later pulling it from the market because nobody bought 'em. This is more like Ferarri pre-selling all of the Enzo's before production.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
With the security nightmare in US airports, lack of investment in infrastructure to cope with the numbers and the resulting chaos and huge delays. People will just get fed up with travelling to the US and will instead travel to countries where there is investment in the airport infrastructure to cope, where security isn't ridiculously invasive.
That's the beauty of market economics.
Deleted
In those cases, the airlines and Boeing took steps to check for structural fatigue problems. If Airbus and the airlines that fly Airbus aircraft began a program to do ultrasound inspections of all A300 and A310 airframes looking for structural cavities, then the safety issue would be dealt with in a responsible manner.
The problem is that Airbus doesn't mandate ultrasound inspections. Visual inspections won't reveal subsurface cavities and tap inspections aren't nearly accurate enough. The problem is that the layers of carbon fiber material lose structural integrity between layers, and that sort of thing can only be detected by ultrasound evaluation.
Airbus has a great safety record, but we're just now running into the length of times where these sort of structural flaws can occur. It's wise for Airbus to take a serious look at delamination and ensure that it doesn't become a serious problem.
Air travel is still the safest form of travel, but only because airlines and aviation regulatory organizations take aircraft safety very seriously. This is a case where proper preventative maintenance could have potentially saved the lives of the people on Flight 587.
did they work 35 hour weeks too?
On the other hand, if you want quiet, fuel efficient airplanes, a really good place to start today, is in Brazil, the Embraer line fits the bill quite well.
Noise and pollution levels of airplanes have nothing to do with where they are built, and everything to do with when they were built.
I was once assigned the task of monitoring/assisting with the unloading of a Russian cargo jet loaded with EIGHT UAE AH-64s. The thing was HUGE (The US does six packs of 64s on a C5) but in a terible state of repair. One of the aircraft inside had damage from part of the plane falling off in-flight. The russians were not concerned and the UAE guys were incensed as their aircraft were in otherwise perfect condition. Later on the same trip, I did some work on a couple of russian helicopters. The things were built like tanks but were maintained terribly. The guys working on them wold do crazy stuff like weilding aluminum on the airframe. None crashed while we were there though... I would fly on a Russian jet, but only as a last resort.
(1) No-bid contracts are handed out to special favorites such as Boeing.
(2) Being a government contractor gives you access (often for free) to tons of modeling software developed in military labs and universities. This software is not available to non-government contractors, and is often dual use. E.g. imaging-satellite design software.
2 words: Super Clipper
(not the car, the plane from McMasters' and Kroo's paper)
You forget that India/China are like New York City all over...planes carrying 600-700 would go full all the time once the airline industry takes off. Take a look at this photo - http://kalele.homelinux.com:8080/gallery/funny/aah ?full=1
Found these posted on the airliners.net forum. I hate to /. this guy's PC, but hopefully somebody will be able to mirror these:
flyby & landing video
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
On shorter flights the plane doesn't get 100% refueled. A trip from say, London to Paris might fill the tanks 15%. This translates to a significantly lighter aircraft which in turn requires less fuel for takeoff, meaning the fuel economy skyrockets (no pun intended) to somthing closer to 0.200mpg.
moox. for a new generation.
Someone else has already pointed out the airport modifications. But another key factor is a "installed base". Meaning, there are thousands of 747s out there being used right now, not just for passenger flights but also for cargo shipment. While it may be cheaper in the long run for companies to switch over to the Airbus or new Boeing, it's still a huge initial investment to buy these new planes. You'll notice how small the pre-sales are for both planes, nowhere near in the numbers to replace the existing 747 fleet. Until governments start to mandate using newer jets (which could happen since the 747 fleet will keep getting older and older and therefore less safe/reliable) the 747 will be around for a while longer. Granted it might only be 10-20 years, but that's still quite a long time.
BTW, if you're still hung up about the fuel economy etc of these new planes, just remember what happened to all the airlines after 2001. We saw how they operate almost day to day with their finances, so spending a huge chunk of change on a brand new fleet is probably out of reach of a lot of airlines.
I believe that it uses 20% less fuel per passenger at cruise, but what about when you take into account the extra short-hop flight(s) to get passengers to their final (smaller) destinations? Bet it's less efficient then...
The Concordski's engine intakes were UNDERNEATH the plane. Attempting to level off would not effect airflow into the engines at all.
However, the wing that FELL OFF would have a great deal to do with the plane crashing into the ground.
Actually, it's more like ignorance of what they are riding on, because americans are climbing onto non-American and non-European airplanes every day by the thousands, altho i'm sure very few of them realize it. Between Embraer and Bombardier, a lot more airframes are being delivered to US airlines than Boeing and Airbus are providing.
You're probably right. Even seasoned travellers mostly can't tell the difference between a 737 and an A320 by sight. And of course, despite having the manufacturer in big letters on the safety card, most people probably don't know where the plane they are on was built.
Even if they did, its not easy to make a choice with your wallet, because it's not like most routes are going to give you the choice between a Boeing and an Embraer. If it did, it would be on another airline. Most people, given the choice, probably WOULD fly a Boeing, simply because it is larger than a regional jet, and people seem to fear small planes.
this trend can be traced directly back to the product liability lawsuit which halted production at the cessna plants, it was a HUGE wakeup call for the industry, and started the wheels moving in earnest for aircraft manufacturing to get out of the usa.
True. But the lawsuits mostly affected general aviation, not commercial. Commercial aviation in the U.S. has suffered because everyone was trying to build large planes, and there wasn't enough room in the market. Lockheed, Rockwell, Northrop Grumman, and McDonnell-Douglas all realized that there was more money in military aircraft.
The General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994 did wonders for the GA community by limiting liability to the warranty period. This meant that manufacturers weren't being sued by people who crashed their 50 year old plane anymore (well, they could still be sued, but it was not as likely to be successful). Since then Cessna has rebounded, Piper has become New Piper, Commander unfortunately still went bankrupt, Mooney has changed hands a few times, but keeps building airplanes, Raytheon Beech is still doing well, and what is more interesting is that new companies such as Adam Aircraft, Cirrus Aircraft, Eclipse, Lancair and Liberty have entered the market. In fact, many flight training facilites are buying Cirrus over Cessna for their trainers. Moreover, after years of very little advancement in GA technology, the revitalization act allowed third parties such as avionics manufacturers and so forth to make investments such that most new GA planes now come with glass panels.
Cessna, Lear and Gulfstream still dominate corporate aviation in the United States. Lear is owned by Bombardier now, but still manufactured in Wichita, Kansas.
do you buy a cessna 180, or a cessna 185. Today, it's still simple, you go to canada and buy from Found Brothers, they are the only ones left making that category of airplane.
Cessna makes the Grand Caravan, which can be fitted with a belly pod capable of hauling 4X8 sheets of plywood. There is also the Maule which can be used in rugged terrain.
I've always wondered, is there another industry where the silliness of the us courts have cost the american economy so many trillions of dollars in the long term.
Just about any industry with the word insurance in it, healthcare, etc. Any industry that lets people sue for large settlements, really. The lawyers take their cut, and the extra costs are passed along to us, the consumers. If we won't pay it, the companies go out of business. No industry can prosper in an environment where people are allowed to sue and win even in cases where common sense or proper use would have prevented injury.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Insofar as fiber optics and glass blowing both involve glass and heat.
If you are going to be an AirBus fanboy, you need to get your facts together.
Also, the A-380 not more efficient than the 747-400 with its newest GE engines, so again, you are mistaken.
Incorrect. The market has shown again and again that if customers can choose between 1) being 'crammed in like sardines' or 2) paying more they pick sardine-class every time. American Airlines is busy putting seats back *into* their planes - When they took them out passengers didn't flock to them - They flocked to the airlines with the lowest fare.
Truth be told, I think the market for this aircraft is very limited, chiefly long-haul international routes. Imagine the reaction the first time this plane crashed, fully-loaded with 800+ souls on board, and it will happen. Imagine standing in the lines needed to board and un-board this behemoth. Imagine a plane this size, 4 engines and you have a shoulder launched missile. I for one, can't imagine a scenario where I would even consider flying much less boarding a flying object of this size and speed. Petra
Which lawsuit is this?
I too, have noticed similar traits over the past decade, but didn't know the driving factor.
You haven't flown much then. The Embraer 145, with over 1000 hulls in service, of which over 200 fly for Continental Express alone, is a Brazillian made airliner.
http://www.embraer.com/
P.S. I'm not saying I like them - they suck to fly, from an ergonomic perspective - but at $20mil a copy, they are pretty popular, also flying with about a dozen other U.S. Part 121 carriers
That is true my figures for that are off, what I meant to say is that the $3.2billion tax break that Boeing gets is equal to the launch aid loans which Airbus got for the A380 ($3.7billion repayable). Now, this 'massive launch subsidies which are risk-free' thing has come up several times and is frankly ludicrous. Airbus is committed to paying back those funds once the number of hte orders received passed one quarter the number that is required for the project to break even. Since the loans only equate to 1/3rd of the cost of the project at maximum, saying they are risk free is stupid - as opposed to tax breaks which ARE risk free.
Everyone seems to overlook the fact that Boeing and the US government specifically agreed to Airbus getting these funds, and the conditions for repayment were signed off BY THOSE SAME PEOPLE. Today Boeing, the US government and a lot of anti Airbus people seem to get a bee in their bonnet over something that was agreed to previously - talk about changing stances when it suits. Airbus and the EU didnt move the goalposts or act 'illegally' in anyway, they are abiding by the very terms of the agreement that Boeing and the US government signed up to in 1992. Seems amazing that something agreed to when Boeing was the top dog now no longer stands just because Boeing is being a cry baby.
While you are at it, ask yourself why Boeing can price the 787 at $130million USD while the A350 is priced at $170million USD. Boeing farmed out much of the wing, central box section and some forward fuselage construction out to japanese manufacturers (Japanese Aircraft Development Corporation), who are getting massive state subsidies valued at $1.5billion USD and can charge Boeing pennies on the dollar for these parts. This came about because Japan wanted the technology behind the construction techniques, which the US government agreed to allow the export of for the 787 project, and the low cost parts are a 'Thankyou' to Boeing. These actions have already been deemed illegal under WTO rules by several analysts, and if the US persist in taking the Airbus to the WTO over launch aid, then Airbus already have a cut and dried case to return fire on.
Also with the 787, Kansas State has granted Boeing a $290million tax break for manufacturing contracts, and the Italian government has given Boeing $600million in incentives for contracts. Starting to sound like Boeing is getting a lot of 'Risk Free' cash for the 787 doesnt it? Airbus are required to pay back the money when a certain order point is reached, tell me when Boeing is going to repay the $5billion it received directly or indirectly during 2004?
In short, yes you guys are as bad as us guys, only theres an agreement covering all this that was created in 1992.
The A380 is even available with american made engines from the GE and Pratt & Whitney "Engine Alliance"...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
you are right that the limit at hub airports is number of landing and takeoff slots. but, if you have a long range and economical aircraft, you can fly directly to and from smaller airports closer to your home and destination. These airports are not overcapacity. Once they bleed off enough traffic from the major hubs, the big planes start to look like pteradactyls.
Ever hear of a company called Embraer? They are a Brazilian company that currently produces airliners including the very popular EMB-120 Brasilian turboprop. No, they don't produce huge jetliners (I think the biggest is the new ERJ-195 with ~110 seats, but I'm not sure it's even flying yet). But Brazil at least does have a successful aviation business that supplies airliners worldwide. Not sure about India.
That's fine perhaps in North America. If you look at who has ordered the A380 you will see it is carriers who operate predominantly from Europe, the Middle East, Far East and Australia. Look at how many 747s operate in NA or accross the Atlantic. Now look at the number of 747s operating between Europe and the Far East/Australia.
There are not enough slots at European airports, and others, to support two 200 pax flights when one 550 pax flight will do. As someone who flies between the UK and Australia, through SNG and HK, I can assure you the flights are packed, expensive and hard to get at times (i.e. Xmas). So your point to point model might work in your little (and no offence, but not really that significant) corner of the world, but there are other parts where it does not. Hence the orders placed so far.
You are not far off: picture
There is a difference between "a commercial aircraft" and "an aircraft being used commercially".
The Germans built a pure jet engine in WWII, and we had at least an experimental one.
Since then, it's been turbojets, turbofans, and turboblades. *both* power and fuel consumption are better on a turbojet than a plain jet. Turboblades are more common than turbojet these days on at least fightercraft in the U.S.
hawk
"What I really meant was when will these planes have a market share comparable to Airbus and Boing?"
Probably 2 main things:
(1) The people who fly around the most seem to be Americans, as they have both the money available, and a large enough country to make it worthwhile.
(2) American aerospace people don't buy anything that isn't made in America.
For pretty much the rest of the world, the USA may as well not exist as far as aerospace customers go. (That, and the value of the dollar) So it's hardly surprising that India, China, and Brazil aren't developing airliner industries in the hope of selling to the US.
Airbus of course, enjoys similar local advantages in Europe, another group of people who occasionally use the airlines to fly around. Again, the "what to buy" decision is always so political that it would be crazy for someone to suggest an airliner that didn't create "local jobs" for their voters/customers.
China signed contracts on April 21 to buy five Airbus A380s and 25 other Airbus jetliners in a series of deals totaling more than $3.2 billion.
nicely wiki-ripped.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS/
Electronically, the JAS-39 is pretty cool because multiple JAS-39 combine their radars to form a single view of the battlespace. It's also more maneuverable than our own F-16. Because the JAS-39 is a smaller aircraft, it does not compete with the F-15. However, as it stands, the -only- aircraft that the USA produces that really outclasses all European fighters is the F-22. The EF-2000 and Rafale are at least as good as, if not better, than our own F-15 variants.
I don't know where the Navy's new FA/18s stand with respect to the above.
F 16 Net
Air Force Association
This is my sig.
You have to compare apples to apples though. The Airbus figure is quoted PER PASSENGER. If you load a Porsche Cayanne Turbo (18MPG) with 4 people it works out to 3.3L/passenger/KM. A honda civic would hit 1.5L/P/KM.
I don'r actually care. If subsidising Airbus means more jobs are created in the industry, then all the more power to them.
When you give the computer final say in what the plane does, you're swapping your trust in the pilot for your trust in the ability of the programmers to forsee all possible conditions.
Not always a good bet.
Anyone else seen that video of an airbus flying into the trees after a low pass for an airshow? Apparently, the pilot wanted to pull up 30ft to clear the trees, but the computer decided it was better to increase thrust before pulling up.
Boeing planes have all those autopilot toys too, but if something unforseen comes along, the pilots can take actions required to save the plane. In an airbus, the computers would tell the pilot to fuck off.
I believe there are other stories out there showing the folly of giving computers the final say.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Business class travellers would rather have more frequent flights, but, the reality is, there's not enough of them to cover the increased operating costs.
But what are the airlines going to do when jet fuel becomes so expensive (due to increasing demand) that non-business travel necessarily gets priced out of reach of most consumers?
I'm serious. Cheap oil is a thing of the past. And if I have to pay $5000 for a discount ticket, I'll more than likely choose a domestic vacation that I can drive to. I don't think that non-business travel is going to be a growing market, because it's enabled by Cheap Oil.
So that leaves business travel - which will shrink as prices go up, of course, but it's simply a necessity for some industries, so as non-business travel declines, business travel will take a higher percentage of the total air-travel market, which means the A380 is already obsolete.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
There's also the point that most airports in the world can't handle an aircraft that large which limits the possible routes the aircraft can fly.
The A380 can be reasonably accomodated at any airport that can support a 777 - this was one of its first design features. Current flight plans for A380 deployment do not include planned stops in the US anywhere but on coastal cities (Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York being the first three that spring to mind), since US companies have little to no interest in purchasing an expensive, high-capacity plane for their markets.
The air travel markets in Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East are the ones which will determine the success of the plane, since that is where the majority of the planes have been purchased.
Yeah, the UAV thing is not to be understated. The USAF is buying -many- Predators and Predator B. Predator B is still in test but it can carry 16 Hellfire I think or 500lb bombs. It's becoming a serious ground to air asset.
This is my sig.
Isn't it strange that most European leaders seem to recognize that they need a less controlled economy to increase their quality of life, but seem unwilling or unable to take the steps necessary to bring that about?
Even if the A380 is a huge succes, boeing could not afford to start developing its own version.
Simply, by the time it will be ready for commercial use the price of fuel (and as a result flight fares) will be so high, no airline would buy a jet that will be absolete in a couple of years.
If boeing wants to take care of their future (and ours) they should start putting some big efforts and piles of cash on developing a non oil dependant solution.
More airports is actually the most intelligent solution, by far. If it weren't for the rampant NIMBYism everywhere, helped along by our huge surfeit of lawyers, that's what we'd do.
It truely was the end of an industry.
Actually ETOPS restrictions can be lifted as they were with the Boeing 777. It is an extensive process but ETOPS is not the end all be all. Boeing 777's are running alot of pacific asia routes right now.
My Doom. The gift that keeps on giving
Hyundai heavy industries builds a lot of equipment, but no aircraft, wonder when they will begin...
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This is the famous incident that's always dragged out. It actually turns out to be somewhat more complex than the "common" version that you've probably heard by word of mouth. Check out this version for some facts, or check this one.
In short; the computer said "What you're doing is pretty stupid. Are you sure you want to do this?" and the pilot said "Yes".
Or, in other words, had the computer actually had final say, the accident likely would have been avoided.
Actually, this reminds me of another interesting feature on the A320, which is the computer's response to an emergency. Let's suppose an engine lights on fire. The master alarm goes off, and the central screen says "Fire in engine 1. Please shut off engine". So, you shut off the engine. Then the screen says "Please prime fire suppression SQUIB 1. If fire is not out in 30 seconds, fire SQUIB 1.". Meanwhile the red SQUIB 1 button starts flashing, and then the "30" starts counting down.
Another neat one is the traffic system. If the computer determines you're on a course which would take you dangerously close to another aircraft, a voice says "TRAFFIC! TRAFFIC!", and then the central screen shows the other aircraft in relation to you, and displays a list of maneuvers to carry out to avoid the other plane. (This is actually pretty standard. If you were in a 767 flying head-on at another 767, by the time you could identify the orientation of the other 767 and realize there was a problem, it would be too late to do anything about it. But, it's still very cool).
For one thing most of these systems are designed as fault tolerant using voting systems of multiple computers doing the same calculation and the decision being taken by majority vote.
:)
Considering who has been elected as the President of the United States for a second term, my confidence in voting systems has gone down incredibly
But what are the airlines going to do when jet fuel becomes so expensive (due to increasing demand) that non-business travel necessarily gets priced out of reach of most consumers?
You're making it sound like the conclussion of your argument is so obvious as 1+1=2? How do you know that with expensive oil non-business travel gets priced out of reach of most customers? Oil might become more expensive but airplanes are also getting more efficient. The per passenger fuel cost of A380 is 20% or more lower than than of B747. In addition, Airbus designed A380 so that they could streach it even more and thus make it even more efficient. Also, I suspect that if non-business travel is too expensive, then business travel will also either either end or it will continue existing only on the few very popular routes. Try to count how many economy vs business seats are in a typical flight in the US. The vast amount of revenue is coming from the economy class customers. Without them, most flights simply wouldn't exist.
550 people (+crew) will be dead. That's a lot of people.
I'm not sure where you get your statistics, but the Boeings appear to have half the fatal accident rate according to what I've seen, with a few exceptions. Here are fatal accident rates per Million flights:
Airbus A300 1.13
Airbus A310 1.85
Airbus A319/21 0.67
Boeing 727 0.66
Boeing 737 0.62
Boeing 747 1.62
Boeing 757 0.56
Boeing 767 0.46
Now, if you're going to say "Well, the 747 is bigger than the A310 so really it has more fatalities" let me just you a question: When you're taking a flight, do you care about your chances of dying on that flight, or your chances of dying divided by the number of other people alongside you?
I remember reading an interesting incident report from a year ago or so. I'm afraid I don't recall all the details, but basically there was an Airbus A340 which had a tail strike on takeoff, so they circled around and tried to land immediately, just to make sure everything was OK. Their landing was less than perfect;
They intercepted ILS (Instrument Landing System - A radio based system which tells your aircraft "You're lined up with the runway" or "You're too far left, and a little too high", etc...), and then let the computer take the landing. The plane was fine for a little bit, but then starting pitching up, and up, and up, until they were flying along at around (again, this is from memory, so don't quote me on any figures) 35 degrees pitch up, before finally one of the pilots took manual control and correctly landed the plane.
The problem should have been noticed much earlier; the plane picked up the ILS beam about 5 miles farther out than they should have. What happened was, another aircraft was taxiing around the airport, and paused for a while in front of the ILS antenna. This deflected the ILS beam downwards, causing the A340 to pick up the ILS further away than they should have, and proceed on a very shallow landing trajectory. When the other plane eventually moved, the ILS beam was restored to the correct position. The A340's computer suddenly said "Whoa! I'm way too low! I better start climbing," and so increased pitch, and throttled up.
The A340 might have recovered and landed properly eventually, but that's hard to say. Sometimes really wonky things happen, and the computer just can't deal with it, so it is certainly handy to have a real human in the cockpit.
Statistically, though, real humans botch up far more landings than computers do.
Guess those big fat juicy aerospace and defence contracts are won purely on merit.
You mean like the fat juicy aerospace and defense contracts that EADS and BAE (the parent companies of Airbus) get?
You're right, the country that did all those things probably could. Unfortunately it was called the USSR and collapsed in on itself well over a decade ago.
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By the way, Boeing agrees with you and that's why they aren't building a plane to compete with Airbus's. But Airbus says that hub-to-hub flights will grow, especially in Europe and internationally, so they're building these super planes as a more economical way to fly 500+ people.
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And where exacty are Salyut and Mir now?
Roughly the same place where Skylab is now.
(with the minor exception that Skylab re-entered uncontrolled and burned up and crashed onto Australia and both Salyut 1 and Mir were intentionally de-orbited in a more controlled manner over the Pacific)
The maule is a fun toy, but, it just doesn't have the load capacity. As we like to say, why is a maule a great plane for fishing, cuz there's so much room in the back to store your fishing rods. 2 seats back there, and an airplane which are no good for anything but fishing gear after you fill up the tanks and hang some floats under it.
But what are the airlines going to do when jet fuel becomes so expensive
They do what they've been doing for the past 50 years, they use the cheapest fuel that can combust inside a jet-turbine engine... there are something like 14 types of high-octane fuels that are suitable for jet turbine engines, and only 'pure' petrochemical is kerosene type jet fuel. As a matter of fact, airplanes can fly of of any number of distiled alchohols, so if every drop of oil on the plannet was used up, we could alway grow some plant that could be refined into alchohol cheaply enough and regrow fast enough to produce a constant supply for jet turbine engines.
The reason airlines have been so dependant on keresone jet fuel in the past is traditionally it's been the cheapest fuel source for airlines. as prices have already nearly doubled, that could easily change... forcing airlines to consider one of the many alternatives to using pure kerosene as a jet fuel.
Also your example of a $5,000 airline ticket is rediculous. the single largest expense for any airline, is the cost of planes, and 'renting' terminals at airports. followed closely by employee costs, and the least signfigant price is the cost of fuel. The reason it costs $3,000+ for some flights is the cost of renting an airport terminal that you have 1 weekly flight going out of, simply due to lack of demand on that route.. compare that to a popular route where the cost of a ticket is in the $200 range, because they have nearly hourly flights 7 days a week... If renting your terminal gate is $1 million a year you need to clear a lot of passengers to keep the ticket price at $200 and the number one factor in rising ticket prices is due to Increased demand for terminals and a lack of increased capacity at many airports.
If rising oil prices has impacted any airlines bankruptcy it is clearly a case of 'the straw that broke the camel's back' because of the narrow profit margin with the high upfront costs and the enormous cost of leasing terminal space at airports.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
As per usual the patriotic Boeing (yay USA) fanclub has to go and piss on an accomplishment of some other company because it isn't American and because it's bigger and better than Made In USA whatever.
Get over yourselves. Boeing outsources as much of its planes to foreign countries as any other corporation. There is no real competeing vision for the 787 or the A380 as they serve different sectors of the market. Not to mention that it's just a fucking airplane, for crying out loud. What the fuck is wrong with you americans anyway?
I presume this is the non-commercial lines? Because cessna appears to still be making aircraft if cessna.com is anything to be believed...
On airbus site there are some quicktime vr shots.
The seat layout seems excellent but how are you going to get that many people through the security check? When you think of LAX boarding will take hours. OK - so it already does - but then - more hours.
And of course it is a double decker. IMpressive.
And not only that, they have TWO different computers developed by 2 different teams
One metric, and one imperial?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Yipi, the A380 flew over my garden (about 500 meters ^^) ! Yes I lives in Toulouse. It was an enjoying moment. From I lives here (7 years ago), I always heard speek of the A3XX (number wasn't defined). I thought "it is in far future". But 7 years past, and I'm in the Captiole, in front of the Giant Screen (I couldn't go in the airport), and I think "wow, it's now". It was en really great moment :D
None of the airlines bit.
Airbus' PR is what it is because their collective governments decided to build the plane. Boeing's PR is what it is because they couldn't find enough customers to justify the plane. One is based on wishful thinking, the other is based on market forces. The exact same thing happened with Concorde and the SST. Boeing dropped the SST when it couldn't find customers. The UK and France went ahead with Concorde because, probably blinded by the prestige, they thought it was a good idea. It turned out to be a major money-loser.
That's not to say the A380 won't succeed. The 747 was considered a boondoggle by most when it was first conceived. But if I were forced to bet based only on the PR, my money would be with Boeing.
The Japanese government has also given Boeing tax breaks to manufacture some components there.
From your list, LAX, JFK and SFO will be able to handle it.
See my reply over here: LAX plans to spend about $53 Million, and SFO is spending almost $1 Billion, but neither is ready to take the A380 right now, as we speak.
On the east coast, I don't have any clue what the plans are at Newark/JFK/Laguardia, but I imagine that they will have to make very significant expenditures, as well.
Now, in fairness, you did say will be able to handle it, as opposed to can handle it, but I guess it will be a good five years or more before we know whether your prediction proves true.
Brilliant post!
Can you please give some details of the lawsuit that you mention?
A link?
Thanks.
It's a ground-effect vechile, where the stubby wings trap a pocket of air that allow the vechile to "hover" of sorts. They built a few of them before the collapse, mostly intended as fast, below radar troop transports and as naval destroyers.
I believe the Soviets also equipped some of the Ekranoplanes as nuclear missile delivery platforms. It really was a very clever idea; a very fast airplane that can (easily and with stability) fly so close to the surface of the water that it is invisible to radar. The Reds could have easily hopped over and launched a sneak attack on the West coast of the U.S., I think this is one of the reasons that the Soviet design bureaus were given the go-ahead to pursue a ground-effect seaplane.
For shits and giggles, I have done the same. check prices for coach, and then for first class. You'd think they would have more than a curtain seperating the two. And champagne, and hookers. They certainly have nicer seats.
It wasn't it's maiden flight - the crash you're referring to happened at an air show. The reason for the crash wasn't the autopilot: The crew made a mistake which would've lead to a crash anyway but the reason changed due to the flight computer - it prevented the crew from pulling up because that would've made the aircraft stall and thus it flew into the trees that the crew tried to avoid. That is, without the computer the aircraft would've stalled and crashed but instead it hit the trees and crashed.
You'd be right if all you did was scale the plane bigger or smaller. But economies of scale say that 2 engines is more efficient than 4 engines (actually 1 engine would be most efficient, but nobody is going to do that from a safety standpoint). That's why all the newer bigger planes (A330, 767, 777) are two-engine models. The 747 and A380 are 4 engine planes simply by virtue of the fact that engine manufacturers can't yet produce two engines that can provide enough thrust for these beasts. They pay an efficiency price for using 4 engines instead of 2.
"Tu-144" would be more exact.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Have you seen the cockpit of any Airbus? They only have two joysticks on each side of it (on for the captain and one for the co-pilot). So there's definitely nothing mechanical.
Just look at the cockpit of any airbus - they don't have control columns. There's just a joystick on each side of the cockpit so they most definitely need the computers.
Night flights/redeyes are more popular because you arrive the following morning and don't "lose a day travelling". These flights have 777s, 330-300s, 747-400s.
That doesn't work. The number of 787s you have going East on a route has to equal the number of 787s going West. Otherwise you end up with all the 787s in Europe and all the A380s in the US.
Check out what people are paying for their area in the plane you you'll see that economy class is subsidizing even the very expensive 1st class seats.
On a modern jet, a passengers share of the fuel is less than $20 an hour (with cars being $6 to $12?). Contrary to the "fuel surcharges", the fuel still isn't a major cost of the flight.
Lots of photos over on airliners.net for those who want to get a bit more of a perspective on it:
r cr aftsearch=Airbus%20A380-841&distinct_entry=true
http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?ai
The A380 is perfectly capable of carrying 800 people and is advertised as such; the decision rests with the airlines themselves, and customers who probably will not want to be crammed in like sardines.
Exactly. Show me one airline running nothing but coach seats on a long-haul flight and I'll concede the 800 passenger thing. In reality, they'll likely all be the 555 seat three-class arrangement.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
You could have at least tried to make it less obvious.
They do make a line of jets today, and the caravan, and they have started extremely limited production of a couple of the small models again. It's nothing compared to the product line they were cranking out back when the lawsuit shut them down. There's been a few changes in ownership along the way, and they went from being the world dominant manufacturer of light planes, to being an insignificant, almost non player in the market today, with the exception of the caravan. the only reason the caravan line survived, they had long term delivery contracts with fedex, couldn't afford to shut that down.
This predates Scott Adams by decades. And by the way, what's the man's job? If you're going to misquote a joke, at least tell all of it. (Answer: man's job is to feed the dog).
I'm suprised that no one has mentioned the fact that the EU waived the required emergency evactuation tests for the A380 because of concerns that people would be injured during the simulation. Now think about that. They waived the test because even under ideal conditions of a simulation, they couldn't be sure that they could get 500+ passengers off that plane safely.
As for the regular loading and unloading of passengers, how long would that take? How much earlier would you have to arrive to check in? How are they going to keep from losing my luggage when they have that many other passengers?
On small aircraft, crew costs become very significant, but as the aircraft get larger, the cost of crew does increase, but pales beside things like the fuel bill. Annual training requirements for flight crew actually cost more than the salaries of the folks in question.
I know the costs of things like C checks for an airframe, and hot sections on the engines, as well as the cost of fuel for those things. Every time I travel on a sub 200 dollar ticket, it just amazes me, it's just not possible for the airline to be paying all the bills, even with seats full at those prices. I cant understand why all the major carriers in the states are not bankrupt.
oh wait... they are....
I should have said "the major expense" but maybe you should read a few annual statements to see just where fuel fits in the grand scheme of airlines costs. Just keep in mind how the accountants spin the costs of the planes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3722888.stm
The A380 can be reasonably accomodated at any airport that can support a 777 - this was one of its first design features.
Not really - the wingspan is considerably greater than any other airliner, and that's a problem fitting them at airport gates. Many airports are already unable to park two 747s at adjacent gates, and the A380 can't even be placed next to a smaller plane like a 737.
The two-level design also presents problems with the flow of people boarding/disembarking, more so than with the relatively small upper deck of a 747.
Since the loans only equate to 1/3rd of the cost of the project at maximum, saying they are risk free is stupid
Yes, the loans themselves ARE risk free if they don't need to be repaid. The project may not be risk free, but the loans most certainly are. If 1/3 my projects' funding came to me as a subsidized loan that I only had to repay if I succeded, make no mistake, I would have considerable advantage over my competitors.
[quote]That is true my figures for that are off, what I meant to say is that the $3.2billion tax break that Boeing gets is equal to the launch aid loans which Airbus got for the A380 ($3.7billion repayable).[/quote]Does that include the $4 billion in loans Germany just outright forgave?
The Japanese government has given tax breaks to an airlines part maker. If Airbus opted to buy parts from that manufacturer, they would receive the same benefits.
21 May 2000; Executive Airlines BAe Jetstream 31; near Wilkes-Barre, PA:
8 January 2003; US Airways Express Beech 1900; Charlotte, NC:
19 October 2004; AmericanConnection (Corporate Airlines) BAe Jetstream 32; near Kirksville, MO:
Chinese MiG clones are based on the ancient MiG-21 design which is totally obsolete by all standards. But note that the Chinese and Indian airforces now also include the top notch Russian Sukhoi fighter jets which they have been buying throughout the last decade or so.
" American aerospace people don't buy anything that isn't made in America."
WTF are talking about ?
There are tons of Airbuses being operated by US airlines.
Political pressure does exitst but mainly in EU where majority of airlines are partially state owned.
I guess the same "industry experts" also say that only one OS for PCs can survive in the market?
A grovestand of apples maybe. Between tax breaks and grants from Washington, Kansas, the Japanese Government (for subcontractors) and Defence Contractor preference status (as an American company) things work out about even.
Really? Things work out about even? Can you provide us a reference (preferably in an established scholarly publication) that supports your claim?
And what makes you think that Boeing is being somewhat more preferred to the the other two major US defence contractors?
On the other hand, regulations impose the ability to achieve a minimum ascending angle when an engine fails during take off in the worst possible case ( MTOW: maximum take off weight), so two engine aircrafts need much more total full power than 4 engine ones. As a result the airplane weight is higher for a 2 engine version, so the fuel consumption is slightly larger. One engine case is not possible since no regulator would allow that aircraft, since it is impossible to achieve the one-engine-failure test.
Three engines have been used in the past. However nowadays does not make sense because they involve higher weight at the tail structure, and you have not so much benefits on the manteniance side as compared with the 2 engines case versus 4 engines one.
Finally, transoceanic flights require 4 engines because of regulation (except for very few airlines)- so large range aircrafts tend to be 4 engines ones so they are supposed to do transoceanic flights. Also, there are usually versions of the 4 engines aircrafts with 2 engines (A340 -> A330) so if you are an airline that will do continental long range flights you can lower the manteniance costs.
And about scale, the 2 engines - as they are larger- do have better performance than the 4 engines (2 big things is better than 4 small ones, in fluid mechanics). But as I have already said, the one-engine-failure test means that the 2 engines need to be even larger so perhaps they are more efficient but they are far heavier. Don't forget that weight in aviation is *the* issue.
yes, I am aeronautical engineer.
Not quite. New jet-ways might be needed, but no new tarmac is needed. Any runway that can take (or launch) 747 can taken and launch A380 as well. While A380 does weight more, it has more wheels, so the weight of the plane if distributed better than on 747. the actual ground-pressure caused by A380 is actually less than that caused by 747.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Pardon my French, but this is mostly bullshit. Learn more, sput less crap. To wit:
./Taz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Antonov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine
Glad you think so, but, there's a few folks at Boeing that actually think otherwise, folks that probably know a _little_ more than you do.
Read the article
Boeing had a conference call today. There's 29 orders on the books for 747's, and, unless somebody steps up and orders a stack of them, they have already started to plan the closing of the 747 manufacturing lines.
Turns out today is the dawn of the A380 era, AND the end of the 747 era, and it's bascially been confirmed by both companies today.
Raising kids on junk food finally made its effect
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3625031.stm
Well you sound logical but why then do airports disallow aircraft based on manufacturer sighting noise and pollution as the reason?
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
The 787 will do similarly unpopular evening departures West bound. West bound deps tend to be early since you only lose about 2-3hrs with a 5hr timezone change and 7-8hr flight time to east coast US/Can.
A380 arrives 0600 (LHR opening time) and leaves 1000. B787 arrives 2000 and leaves 2230 (quicker turnaround for smaller plane assumed)
So I don't understand what you mean. The US could have done it a long time ago, however I think they wisely chose not to. I said the same thing about the SST and finally Europe admitted it. They couldn't subsidize it forever. Too much red ink. I think the SST's folly was more obvious though.
I give them an A+ in effort. Who knows, maybe I'm wrong (not bloody likely). I'd give it say 20 years and see how many are flying then, if any.
BTW I do fly. I'm not partial to Boeing or any other make, Airbus, even prop planes like Cessna, Bellanca, YAK, etc. I'll fly any of them as long as they are safe (you have to get checked out in that model first before you can fly). Some planes are a joy to fly (walk in the park), others are serious real work (dig a 1 cubic meter hole). All I care about is that I make it back onto the ground safely. What I will say is that I have no desire to fly this new bird. Same with the C-5.
Nearly 1 million Lbs. and it flies. At least the SST looked cool (one of them is at the air and space museum at Dullus Airport, thanks France). Maybe a cool paint job would help the A380.
Air Foyle HeavyLift does charter that single flying AN-225 that is considered "the world's largest aircraft". (specifications)
Air France, Japan Airlines (in both cases bucket-and-spade vacation flights to holiday destinations)
http://tinyurl.com/89ur6
The per passenger fuel cost of A380 is 20% or more lower than than of B747.
IF the plane is full.
But if there aren't enough travellers willing to pay what the fuel costs (+terminal rental, financing, labor, marketing, etc.) to get them to their destination on the superjumbo - then the superjumbo flies with empty seats, and cost per passenger goes way up.
Also, I suspect that if non-business travel is too expensive, then business travel will also either either end or it will continue existing only on the few very popular routes.
Not necessarily. Business travel, for sales, anyway, is life-and-death for a lot of industries. Most companies will pay any price to get their salespeople in front of customers. I've worked at software companies where in the same quarter, they refuse to equip their engineers with necessary systems, because "revenues were down", yet they treated their salesguys to an "offsite" in South Africa, including a commemerative gold watch, and a "team-building" safari trip. Companies can always find money to fund sales and marketing, and business travel, no matter how expensive it gets, will always be a necessary part. Price will affect demand, of course, but only to a certain point. Some of that exposure slack will be taken up by more focus on regional hiring. But at some point, managers have to travel to regional offices to "maintain order". Beyond that, if it becomes a fatal expense - then the business travel will stop, along with the rest of the business. (uh-oh).
Try to count how many economy vs business seats are in a typical flight in the US. The vast amount of revenue is coming from the economy class customers.
Of course, as an engineer, when I travel for business, I'm routinely in "economy class" - so that doesn't mean squat.
But the end of Cheap Oil is going to affect a whole lot more than air travel. Airlines are typically geared so "high" financially speaking, that when oil prices go up, they are like fragile flowers. At some point, they have no choice but to pass that cost on to customers. My point is: Business travel can absorb that extra cost. The beleagured US Middle Class leisure traveller cannot. Not in this environment of declining wages and advancing energy costs and debt.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Of course, what would be the point of spending billions of US tax dollars to buy some system that anybody else in the world can also buy?
If you're an average nation that wants an average air force, then you can save money and buy F-16s, Mirages, etc. If you want your aircraft to be able to go head-to-head with anybody else on the planet and always win, then you pay to develop F-22s and forbid them from being sold elsewhere, and don't let those who work on them work for any of your competitors.
While I don't believe in government-industry subsidides, I do think that military is one area where staying local is just sensible. Now, why the US allows those contractors to use parts made overseas I have no idea - in a war they could become hard to obtain...
So basically you are angry for Americans doing what you are doing (i.e. generalizing)? For the record, we're not a bunch of jingoists and some of us actually look outside our borders.
I am not sure about the A380 but the A320 has control yokes stowed below the control panel which can be swung into steering wheel position if required. I havnt actually heard of them being used.
Given that hydraulic yokes can fail just as motorized systems controlled by computers.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Given the fact that Chinese and Indians are getting richer all the time and have a lot of people to fly around as wel big countries to fly them around they should be having an exploding demand for planes. Russia too is still the biggest country in the world. Basically if you took Russia into two it would still be the biggest country in the world and the second biggest country would be the other part of Russia. And they have an extremely low population density which makes air travel attractive unlike in Europe and the coastal areas of US where the high population density makes train travel more feasible.
Also I have travelled on European "state owned" airlines flying Boeings and US planes flying "Airbuses"
The reason for Boeing/Airbus dominance of these markets has more to do with the third world still not having got over its hangup of being dominated and still somewhere inside think whites are superior and their technology must be superior. But the Chinese and Indians are overcoming these hangups and are even rediscovering their national pride. Soon a time will come when this national pride demands they buy locally made planes. Hopefully by that time Boeing and Airbus will both be local companies. (Not so unfeasible . The doors for the Airbus and the software for the Dreamliner are manufactured in India)
**Life is too short to be serious**
Only at the beginning did India assemble from kits. There has been a long tradition of technology transfer from Russia to India and now both the Mig and the SU are manufactured locally under license. India even has the right to sell these to third party countrie. It is something like the arrangement US has with Israel.
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Also for the SU 30MKI Indians actually developed the onboard avionics with Israeli help and installed French weapons with the net result that the Su planes India has are actually superior to the ones Russia itself has.
India also has developed its own helicopter,light fighter plane and light transport aircrafts.
Granted by todays standards the Mig 21 is not cuutting edge but its still a mean plane when used in the role the Indians use it for i.e. the second wave. The SU 31 and the Mirage go ahead and sweep the air of enemy aircraft and then the huge numbers of Mig 21 go in and play hell with the enemy ground troops and facilities
In any long war the top of the line planes are going to get used up soon and the rank and file planes will do most of the fighting.
**Life is too short to be serious**
"747 and MD-11 have been replaced with A380, 777, 757 and 767."
I wasnt aware the A 380 was flying commercially yet
**Life is too short to be serious**
Within the US with large number of regional airports the dreamliner makes more sense.
Across oceans on transatlantic and trnaspacific flights the A380 makes more sense.
But the jey question is what makes more sense within Asia as that is where the future market is. As Asians become richer they will fly more and when it comes to number of possible passengers Asia beats the world hands down
**Life is too short to be serious**
I read on the Airbus site that given the higher fuel efficiency of the A380 it can break even with 66% full passenger load whereas the 747 needs to fly at least 75% full to break even. What this means in terms of passenger the 747 needs at least 350 passengers on board while the A380 needs 360 passengers. Not much of a difference in the downside. However on the upside the A A380 can fly 550 passengers thats 190 passengers over breakeven while the 747 can only fly 450 passengers 100 over breakeven. So the potential profit is almost double while the breakeven point is almost the same. Which would you choose if you were buying planes for your airline?
**Life is too short to be serious**
That depends entirely on how well the AWACS aircraft perform. If one side has effective AWACS and sufficient missile supply while the other does not, front-line and reserve aircraft are going to lose out, because the AWACS will going to vector in friendlies and coordinate initial responses. Iraq lost out hugely in the air battle of 1991 because of this, even with capable fighters such as the MiG-29. The sole confirmed air-to-air victory by an Iraqi pilot was the downing of an F/A-18 by a MiG-25, partially because of the initial strikes that took out many of the planes before they got off the ground, but also because of the effective AWACS coverage that assured that there were no significant coverage holes, and that strike aircraft were effectively protected by interceptors.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
In other words, two 200 seat airplanes do require more fuel than one 400 seat one.
I simply pointed out why that isn't necessarily true. Yes ETOPS regulations influence the decision on number of engines. But from a purely fuel efficiency standpoint, it's not necessarily true that a 400 seat 4-engine plane must be more fuel efficient than two 200 seat 2-engine planes.
As for the weight of two engines being an issue, if they hurt efficiency as badly as you claim, smaller planes would also be using 4 engines instead of 2.
What a specious argument or six. Boeing couldn't have built the thing 40 years ago for all sorts of reasons. Even leaving aside the technology, at that time it wasn't clear that a plane even as large as the 747 would be commercially viable. They took a gamble, it paid off, they were right. Same with Airbus now - the need for a larger aircraft isn't proven yet, but they are betting that their gamble will pay off too. Things change. Just because it wasn't done 40 years ago doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done now. Also, the technology wasn't available to build an A380 40 years ago. It really wasn't. The A380 isn't just a bigger 747. By that argument, we should have skipped all that silly mucking about with the biplanes and canvas and string and just built a 737 in the first place. Saved ourselves a lot of time and money. Air travel is now ubiquitous and affordable. In the 60s it was still the reserve of those who could afford it. Indeed the 747 was not just responding to that change, it helped bring it about. Maybe the A380 will have a similar effect - I for one would love to see cheaper long-haul flights (living in Australia but having family in the UK as I do)
Airports will not have to be remodelled for the A380. Its design was even changed early on so that it would fit within the standard "box" of an airport parking stand. This required the design of a new high-efficiency wing so that it could get the lift it needed with less wingspan. The result is one of the most efficient wings ever produced, certainly on this scale. Take-off and landing distances are much the same as the 747, no runway mods needed. As for the passenger ramps, most stands have two ramps per plane, as used on the 747, one at the front, one at the back. They can easily use these one above, one below, though for efficiency, you're probably right that more would be ideal. But not necessary. The size is not that huge - transporting through the streets is one thing - a 747 on a truck would be a pretty awkward load too. A C-5 can operate out of any international airport.
Fuel efficiency. Substantially better than a 747. Fuel use per passenger mile is on a par with a family car with 4 passengers - which is much better than most cars, which usually only carry the driver. This is actually a relatively eco-friendly plane, in those terms. I'd rather see one of these than two 747s to do a given job, so until we all take personal responsibility for the planet and stop flying altogether, it's a good option.
Every part of your agument is wrong or uninformed, hence, it sounds like you're trolling to me. OK, I bit. I agree on one thing though, let's give it a chance and see how many are flying in 20 years. If all those analysts and experts and highly intelligent engineers at Airbus HAVE got it wrong (NOT bloody likely, indeed) then, well, we can say, OK, that guy ebvfwfwtff on Slashdot was right after all, why didn't we listen to HIM? D'oh!
I'm wondering if you really do know what you are talking about with the airports. Your the first one I have heard that says there is nothing that has to be done. Political gateway dot com seems to disagree with you. Here is one about the investment at Heathrow (London for those of us that don't know about Heathrow across the pond) airport business At Dulles Airport in Virginia, I understand that some construction going on over there is for the A380 to handle the 2nd deck. So do they have it wrong or do you? I can't seem to find anything that says nothing has to be modified at 747 airports. I dare say, you seem to be the one that is uninformed, or do those experts have it all wrong? I'm taking them for their word.
Comparing the fuel efficiency of the A380 to a 40 year old plane seems a bit odd to me. Update the 747 with the 777 engines and see what happens. Do you compare new cars efficiency to 40 year old cars too? Your comparison also assumes that the plane is fully loaded. The modern 747-400 seems to do better on fuel than the A380.
I'm still bothered that you think that every part of my argument is wrong. You don't think the SST was a white elephant? They would still be flying it if it was cost effective, especially after updating it after the takeoff crash. There was a conversion problem between the C-5 Galaxy and the A380 (darn metric). The two aircraft are very similar but the A380 is designed to take off with more weight. They are so similar (after I converted correctly) I wonder if they started with the C-5's plans and updated them (maybe they started with the 747's plans). By the way, if you take off in a fully loaded A380, one that weighs in at the max of 560 tonnes, the max landing weight is 386 tonnes. So you have to get rid of 174 tonnes to land if something goes wrong after takeoff. Seems that a C-5 could take more than 800 people, especially with 2 decks. There again, the C-5 has been around for decades. If there was a need, it would have already been put into service as a passenger plane. You would also have to update terminals to handle the C-5 as well. Top aircraft in the world - http://www.globalaircraft.org/50_largest.htm. The an-225 is still bigger than the A380. The spruce goose is larger, a prop plane that Howard Hughes built (a nearly 60 year old sea plane).
Well maybe I should be glad that someone is happy that Airbus with their big government subsidy has a new plane. Hurray for Airbus and the EU. I hope the US doesn't build something bigger.
Embrarer regional jets make up the majority of American Eagle USAirways and United regional jet fleets, so you probably already HAVE flown on a Brasilian airliner
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Finally a plane your mom can fit on...
Not if your mom is alread on the plane. Oh wait that was improper of me. Yo momma still can't get on that plane and get in the air.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Re-read the original post. Pay particular attention to the part about 'I operate airplanes'. Explain to me again, why I need to go read somebody elses statements? Then again, our fleet is not operating under bankruptcy protection, so, I'm sure our statements look substantially different than those of most major carriers.