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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**
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?
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
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.
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.
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: 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
As the article was written before it was posted on Slashdot, we can safely assume that it was underway (at the time the article was written) before it was completed (now). This is the expected behavior of most flights.
This is, of course, barring any recent technological advancement which allows jets to complete flights before getting them underway. If it were so, that'd be real news for nerds. Of course, then, the article would be posted on Slashdot before it was written.
So to answer your question, the answer is yes.
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+
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Direct link to (crappy but watchable quality) videos:
Take off
In flight
Oh no... it's the future.
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.
You do realize that people are saying this since the first plane that could carry 2 people instead of one?
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.
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**
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?
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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 ...)
At least I haven't heard anyone say that there are no flotation devices onboard because the 380 is too big to crash.
When was last time you heard of a Jumbo jet successfully landing on water? Yeah, that is right: never!
Every time we step on a plane, we get to see a demonstration about the flotation devices under our seat and how to evacuate the plane if it has to crash land on water. The truth is, however, that if a jumbo actually tried landing on water, the result would be a wingtip submerging, instantly causing the plane to overturn and smash itself to pieces against the surface.
The only reason airliners still have life vests (and the reason they still look like something from the 1940s) is that Airline industry safety is still regulated by agreements from the 1940s (ever wonder why $100 million jumbo has seatbelts crappier then your $500 1982 Datsun?). And the reason these agreements cannot be updated is simply that they also contain liability limitations of airlines against the victims of crashes - and the US tort lobby would never allow that into new agreements (if such limitations were taken away, the price of plane tickets would double so that plane crash victim families could become multi-millionaires...)
I digress, but the point if we are not any worse off without flotation devices aboard the A380. If you took comfort in having that life vest under your seat, it was a delusion.
"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.
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
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**
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
Too bloody right, and it annoys me that we continue to put useless balloons under airplane seats but won't mandate for smoke hoods. An invention that costs no more than a life jacket but would actually save lives.
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.
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.
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..
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
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
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.
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.
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**
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.
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
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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
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.
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?
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%.
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
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.
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.
I've seen eBay trying to sell me zeta functions.
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.
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!
"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...
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.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...
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
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.
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.
Decimation was a Roman punishment used for disloyal troops.
A loyal legion would be used to pull 1 in 10 soldiers out of a disloyal (or cowardly) legion, and beat them to death. The remaining 9 in 10, presumably, would think twice before disobeying orders to attack.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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.
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.
That is an interesting definition of what happened. According to Webster.com, this is the definition of a subsidy. In other words, the governments of Chicago, Dallas and Saint Louis were all willing to give millions of dollar in tax breaks for somewhere around 500 jobs. That was a subsidy, at least according to Webster's dictionary.
If local citizens pressure the government to give them goodies then that's between the government and the citizens. When the government BUYS SOMETHING from Boeing, it isn't a subsidy.True, but the development of weapons systems does not occur in a vaccuum. The military and Boeing sit in a room together and design the weapons systems together. The military then provides seed money to Boeing and the company uses that money to develop prototypes. For example, the cost of the new Join Strike Figher(see here and here, is on such a long timeline--starting about 1994--and is so expensive that neither Boeing or Lockheed could afford to develop a simple prototype without a government subsidy. Both Boeing and Lockheed spent millions of dollars (both their own and government subsidies) to develop the prototypes over the course of years. In 2001, the military awarded the contract to Lockheed. Note that today, the only two major military aircraft builders are Lockheed and Boeing. It was rumored that if the government didn't provide the contract to Lockheed, it was highly likely that Lockheed would have gone out of business, leaving the US with one manufacturer of military aircraft.
Airbus gets money from the European governments and provides nothing in return.Really? Are they that much different from the Chicago's, Seattle's and San Diego's? All of those cities have provided millions in subsidies for jobs. Are not the national governments of Europe just providing money for Airbus jobs? And, according to some of the articles on a A380, about 40% of the material in the A380 is purchased in the United States. In effect, the Europeans are subsidizing some communities here in the States.
(Note that I am NOT personally in favor of subsidies by any government, I am just pointing out that both Boeing and Airbus are subsidized).
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...