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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.
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
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.
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**
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Did anyone else notice the ads on the left
apparently it's possible to get one on Ebay
Ads by Goooooogle
Airbus A380
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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**
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.
Oh geez, what uninformed nonsense. Why don't you check the statistics of actual aircraft accidents and base your opinion of how safe or unsafe a plane is on actual facts. They are quite readily available if you care to search:
http://www.airdisaster.com/statistics/
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.
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".
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.
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.
Sorry, you got that one wrong as well. The first space station was indeed Russian, Salyut 1, launched April 19, 1971.
I think by "space station" he meant "space station that didn't subsequently drop out of the sky like a brick"
I've seen eBay trying to sell me zeta functions.
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.