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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)
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**
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
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.
at Airliners.net.
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
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+
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.
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.
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
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.
The A380 with 550 passengers on board uses 3 litres of fuel per passenger per 100km - on par with a good economy car. Its also quieter. 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 etc.
Well there are two sides to this story. I used to travel a lot on company business and always preferref direct trips where available. However a lot of times the airlines are already using a hub and spoke system and you have to make connections in any case. This being the case I would welcome the cheaper tickets made possible by the higher fuel efficiency of the A380. This is doubly true when planning personal trips.
On the other hand flying without having to make connections is so much better and I would really wish more airlines shift to the Boing model and use the 7E7 for direct flights.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Given the number of 787 orders (Over 230) vs. A380 (150), it seems that there are more companies that agree with Boeing's vision of Point-to-Point vs. big hub systems.
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?
a pore-Sydneye sbergo g apore-Sydney
These routes right now could use the A380-800:
London-Hong Kong
London-Singapore
London-Tokyo
London-Sing
London-Bangkok-Sydney
London-Johann
London-Cape Town
Paris-Montreal
Paris-Tokyo
Frankfurt-Toky
Frankfurt-New York
Frankfurt-Los Angeles
Frankfurt-San Francisco
Singapore-London
Singapore-Tokyo
Sin
Singapore-Taipei-Los Angeles
Singapore-Hong Kong-San Francisco
Seoul-Los Angeles
Sydney-London via Singapore/Bangkok
Sydney-Los Angeles
Small wonder why among the first A380-800 flights to the USA are flown by QANTAS on the Sydney-Los Angeles route and Singapore Airlines on the Singapore-Hong Kong-San Francisco route.
considering that it is built in 5 different countries and then shipped in parts to Toulouse, I am not sure which local economy you are talking about..
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
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.
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.
A A380-800 or a A380-800F ?
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.
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.
Actually, this means more capacity was purchsed by the Airbus buyers:
Airbus:
550 passengers * 150 = 82500 seats
Boeing:
259 passengers * 230 = 59520 seats
It could be argued that there are fewer routes that need a 550 seat plane, but airspace is getting crowded...
Karma: It's not just a good idea. It's the law.
The Canadian firm being http://www.bombardier.com/. Which began in Québec with snowmobiles....
The answer IS 42.
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
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.
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
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**
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".
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
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When was last time you heard of a Jumbo jet successfully landing on water? Yeah, that is right: never!
h tml
Since they aren't designed for successful water landings (when they do that, it's not exactly plan 'A'), you won't ever see one either. However, that's not the point. I was prodding at the arrogance of those that decided to put only enough lifeboats on the Titanic to satisfy the asthetic requirements because, after all, the ship was too big to sink.
FYI: There has been at least one jet (707 cargo) ending up in water still intact that I can think of off the top of my head: http://www.cargolaw.com/2000nightmare_africa_air.
I'm sure you can find more if you look, but since it's bad form to post pics of airliner crashes, you might have a hard time finding photos.
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Here's some stats for both aircraft:
A380-800
Hughes Flying Boat H-4 (HK-1) Hercules ("Spruce Goose")
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
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.
"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...
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...
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.
Boeing is not subsidized. It recieves no free handouts of operating cash, no below market rate loans, etc from the government. If you think producing a product and selling it to the government at market (bid contract) prices is "subsidized" then you need to check your definitions. Airbus, on the other hand, is owned by its member governments, started with capital from those governments, and gets low/no interest and/or outright gift grants to develop new planes, including the 380. Boeing has to find its operations and its R&D with its own money it gets from selling its products and services.
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.
Has it occured to you that Airbus industries offers more models than just this brandnew thingy called A380?
Airbus has a market share of almost 50% of all commercial planes sold these days and that *excludes* the preorders for the A380. In every segment of commercial transportation Airbus directly competes with Boeing it does so quite well, just take a look at the A320 or A340.
However, there is one segment, where Boeing does *not* compete with Airbus industries and that is the segment for the A380, serving both airlines with a need for efficient long distance flights and high passenger capacity, as well as all the large freight businesses. So far, UPS, FedEx, DHL among others have ordered A380s and this is just the beginning.
It's funny to see Americans still dwelling in the glory of past market dominance and it's even more funny to see arguments and discussions on the question whether the A380 is going to be a success, since that question has already been answered.
Obviously, the market is there, otherwise there would not have been more than 150 orders for the A380 and if the market is there, but no competition to be seen, I'd say that Boeing looks a big loser already. It will take Boeing at least 10 years to come up with an airplane that targets the same buyers and until then every single enterprise and institution in need for a large aircraft that seats up to 850 people (or packs tons of freight)is going to order an A380.
It truely was the end of an industry.
It recieves no free handouts of operating cash, no below market rate loans, etc from the government.
For the A380 program Airbus received one third of the development costs as credits from the governments of the involved countries. They are repayable including market interest rates, but I guess depending on the success of the program.
Airbus, on the other hand, is owned by its member governments,
80% of Airbus is owned by EADS, the rest by BAE Systems. EADS is partly owned by the French government (below 30%), the major owner is DaimlerChrysler (30%), another third is free floating. For BAESystems I didn't find the info on their site, but I found the information that about 50% is in foreign (=non-British) hands, so BAE Systems is surely not owned by the British government.
started with capital from those governments
The Airbus consortium was not 'started' with government money, it was a consortium founded by the respective companies (surely with a political motivation). It is founded on much older companies, like MBB.
and gets low/no interest and/or outright gift grants to develop new planes, including the 380
I think I already adressed that...
The Su-37 is certainly impressive in terms of its manoeuvrability, but that's about it.
The great strength of the F/A-22 is not in its manoeuvrability (which is excellent) but in its weapons and avionics systems, and its use of stealth in its construction.
Basically your F/A-22 pilot is going to see the Su-37 long before the Sukhoi pilot even knows he's sharing the sky with somebody else, and he'll be able to fire off an AMRAAM or two before the Su-37 pilot can react.
Supreme manoeuvrability is absolutely useless if the engagement takes place at long ranges. Though the F/A-22 is manoeuvrable, it was designed from the outset to fight at Beyond Visual Range (BVR), thus preventing a real dogfight from even happening.
One of the previous posters said something about having to visually ID aircraft, but that's bollocks in wartime. Modern IFF systems are considered accurate enough for a visual ID to be unnecessary.
So don't kid yourself. The F/A-22 is, at the moment, a vastly superior aircraft to any other fighter aircraft, including the latest Russian stuff. If the Russians can bring their avionics systems on par with those of the US, it'll be a different story, but with their funding problems I don't see the latter being possible for a long time to come.
The JAS-39 Gripen is a capable aircraft, but it's not even in the same league as the F/A-22, Eurofighter, Rafale and Su-37. Basically all the above are medium to heavy fighters, the modern equivalent would be the F-15. The Gripen is a light fighter, more along the lines of an F-16 or F-35.
In fact, the Gripen is best described as a point-defence fighter. It has a rather pathetic range, meaning its use as an offensive platform is limited. It's got excellent electronic integration for its weapons, nav and comms systems, for instance possessing a datalink that allows it to share battlespace information with all compatible platforms, but in a 1to1, any F/A-22 or Eurofighter would easily smoke it.
Incidentally, the F/A-22, F-35 JSF, Eurofighter Typhoon and the latest JAS-39C Gripen all use extremely sophisticated helmet mounted displays and cueing systems, allowing them to direct short range air to air missiles in virtually any direction without having to turn the actual aircraft to face the threat. These systems are vastly superior to the current Russian helmet-mounted sights and cueing systems, which even though possessing the basic cueing requirement, do not provide the pilot with nearly the same sort of situational awareness that the Western systems give them.
Incidentally, the helmet systems on the Eurofighter Typhoon, Gripen and possibly F-35 all incorporate elements developed in South Africa, which was in fact the first country to use helmet-mounted cueing systems operationally (in the late 1970s). Israel followed shortly afterwards, with the result that both South Africa and Israel have been using these systems for over 20 years, and I believe the US Navy has also used them in some squadrons. The Russians are not nearly as advanced in this field as many people think they are, as both South Africa and Israel possess superior systems.