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World's Largest Passenger Plane May Be Unsafe, Some Say
CNET reports (citing this BBC video account) that some aircraft engineers in Australia are concerned about small cracks that have appeared on the wing ribs of some Airbus A380 airplanes, a report says. They're calling for the whole fleet to be grounded, but Airbus says the cracks are harmless.
Yes, the economy is more important than not killing people. In fact, can I kill you and take your money? It's for the good of society. That money's gotta keep changing hands. I'll be by tonite.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Airbus have issued an inspection notice saying it's a materials issue, and that airlines should inspect at an aircrafts 4 year inspection interval. They would not do so, and would be overruled by the European safety body EASA, if they thought otherwise.
This has been discussed to death on aviation industry forums, and the general consensus is it's a non-issue - the calls for grounding are being headed by an industry union, not a regulatory body.
Every aircraft has cracks in it, even brand new ones - in this case, it's in a non-critical location and is non-load bearing. A check at the 4 year point is adequate for this type of discovery.
Why are we so strange behaving species? How about being more rational?
We are rational - we just suck at understanding the risk of thing sin everyday life.
To many false alarms or things that appear as false alarms, we ignore it. And most of the time it is the right thing to do. Because if we don't, we spend all of our time preparing for very unlikely or even improbably events.
Or another way we go over board is over estimating some risks while brushing aside others. Such as we have no problem jumping in a car and driving 70+ mph separated by just some dashed white lines but yet, we have to go through over zealous or even unnecessary security at airports.
Most likely we will die from a car accident, cancer, heart disease, gun shot, lightening strike and a few others things, but do we spend as much time and money on mitigating those risks let alone as much as we do on terrorism? Hardly.
Well, except speed tape isn't duct tape...so, -1 Misleading Subject.
Who's saying they are blowing it off?
From what I understand, they are aware of the problem, have isolated it's cause, and deemed it non critical. And I do trust Airbus far enough that they do not want to see one of these planes fall out of the sky.
The cracks are for course troubling in such a young aircraft, but blowing issues out of proportion is about as bad as ignoring them.
I'm an experienced aircraft mechanic and have no problem with it.
"Such parts wouldn't be there in the first place, now would they?"
"Fairing" comes to mind. which exists to cover structure and streamline flow.
Even delicate fighters can have considerable defects and be safe to fly. One inspects, documents, and monitors those with inputs from engineers and tech reps.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
And if those parts are designed to experience some cracking, as part of some carefully tuned tradeoff? There was some high altitude spy plane (maybe the Blackbird?) that leaked fuel on the ground, because when operating the temperatures would cause things to expand, so it was better to have it leak on the ground than break in the air. If a layman, or even an engineer unfamiliar with the project, saw that, they would naturally assume something was wrong.
Like it or not, there is, and must be, a price on human life. "But it could kill people!" isn't sufficient reason in itself to ground the A380 - the risks and costs must be balanced.
Pulling some numbers out of the air, for argument's sake this problem has a 10% chance of one day causing a crash, which will kill 400 people, and killing the A380 will cost $20 billion. That is $20 billion to save, on average, 40 lives, or $500 million per life. You could instead tax Airbus more heavily for $500 million, and put the money into a branch of health care which on average saves one person per $500,000. The economy is $19.5 billion better off and the population is 960 people better off, by letting the 380 keep flying despite the fact that "it might kill people".
You even place a value on your own life. Do you own and habitually wear a bullet proof vest? Do you wear a crash helmet when driving? Do you buy a new vehicle every year with safety features almost entirely dictating your choice? If not, it is because you value money (and other benefits such as comfort and avoiding ridicule) over slight reductions in your chance of an early death.
(Note: I don't know the risk/benefit numbers for the specific case of the A380 cracks. I'm saying this analysis is grossly inadequate to justify grounding the A380, not that it shouldn't be grounded.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
The Ford "cover up memo" was in regards to post-crash fires after accidents involving rollovers, not anything specific to the Pinto and it's behind-the-rear-axle gas tank.
The Pinto got a bad rap -- it's actually got a better fatality record than similarly sized cars of the era.
Who's saying they are blowing it off?
From what I understand, they are aware of the problem, have isolated it's cause, and deemed it non critical. And I do trust Airbus far enough that they do not want to see one of these planes fall out of the sky.
The cracks are for course troubling in such a young aircraft, but blowing issues out of proportion is about as bad as ignoring them.
Agree. The alternative is that the cracks really are critical but Airbus are playing down the problem because they've decided that having an accident, forcing them to ground the rest of the fleet anyway, having to pay out billions in damages and fines, and completely destroying their reputation, is a better option than grounding the fleet now and repairing the aircraft.
Before I listen to anyone's opinion that these cracks are more of a problem than Airbus say they are, i'd want to see some qualifications in metallurgy or similar discipline.
I'd wager this has a whole lot more to do with last year's grounding of the entire fleet (due to negotiations failing with unions) and the ongoing labour dispute than anything technical. As others have already mentioned, the A380 has been widely discussed in aviation-specific forums, it's likely this is a move to highlight the ongoing issues within Qantas
And some actual knowledge of the specific problem. Admittedly, I haven't done any metallurgy in 10 years, but I know enough to not trust anything the media say about very specific technical problems on a first attempt, metallurgy, computer science, physics, or anything.
I reckon we'll be banned from driving in the next 15 years.
Think about it, if the driverless cars that are definitely coming are proven to be safer than human driven cars, which I suspect they will be, how will any government justify letting us drive?
Even if the governemnt doesn't ban driving, the insurance industry will probably make it so expensive that it is effectively banned.
"If the most capable and relevant people we have look at the findings" .... Exactly, the initial call to ground the fleet was by the service engineers and the association that represents them. This is not a trivial matter raised by a baggage thrower.
The people who lie are usually the ones with the most to gain/lose. What do service engineers have to gain by grounding the fleet - not much. What would Airbus lose by having their brand new fleet grounded - a huge amount of public confidence.
Cars are only dangerous when you're bad at driving. Ever wondered why only a small fraction of drivers are involved in fatal or near-fatal car crashes each year? It's because the rest have above average driving skill. Ask them yourself if you don't believe me.
"The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
Using a factor of safety is not over-engineering - it is an admission that the design can't account for absolutely everything.
pilot error as in hiding a bug in airbus autopilot or it reading faulty gauges.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/27/air-france-flight-447-crash-report-airbus-autopilot-to-blame.html
The autopilot is not bugged. The autopilot wasn't even active for over four minutes before the crash. The headline is completely misleading, as the autopilot shut down as soon as conflicting airspeed readings came in. The system recognizes that it is unsafe to have a computer flying when the computer is getting faulty data. Thankfully Airbus flight computers are pretty good about error-checking, as they detected the airspeed discrepancy and acted on it - by turning control over to the crew and telling them why.
The accident appears to have been triggered by a number of events:
- Faulty pitot tubes providing faulty airspeed indications.
- Weather radar that saw a little storm ahead, but not the big, fuck-off storm behind it until the pilots decided to fly through the small storm.
- An avalanche of data coming into the cockpit during critical moments. During an emergency, it can be difficult to avoid focusing on a few bits of data, while others slip by.
The storm was recreated in an Airbus simulator for multiple flight crews. Using data the flight computer sent back to the maintenance crews during the flight, they were able to trigger the same errors (Pitot tube failure and airspeed mismatches).
Every crew survived.
Actually, it isn't that it lost a lot of fuel before takeoff (although it did leak a bit), it's the fact that it couldn't takeoff at all with a full fuel load. The engines and airframe were optimized for high-speed, high-altitude flight. Lift and thrust characteristics were terrible in the low-altitude subsonic speed regime.
A radiation therapy machine called Therac-25 had severe design flaws that caused it to kill several people. The AECL engineers and managers were overconfident and over-greedy, respectively, so even after a significant number of accidents they refused to admit that the machine was faulty.
Chances are the problem is quite serious, but Airbus' actuaries tell them that the short-run cost of performing immediate repairs is greater than the long-run cost of their insurance rates after a mechanical failure.
Incidentally, congratulations on your recent MBA.
May the Maths Be with you!
Early 747's had similar issues with cracking on the spars in the nose. Some bits of aluminum even fell off a couple of planes (was that the primary buffer coupling?).
They were fixed as the planes cycled through rehab and the rib placement redesigned. 737's had a tendency to lose roof panels because of metal fatigue from improper riveting.
This sort of thing happens. You really need more info to determine if this particular case is serious.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
pilot error as in hiding a bug in airbus autopilot or it reading faulty gauges.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/27/air-france-flight-447-crash-report-airbus-autopilot-to-blame.html
What Really Happened Aboard Air France 447 tells the story as it stands after investigations. It's a rather chilling read. But it makes one thing clear: it was about human error. The plane was even fully operational when it crashed, as an anti-icing system had managed to bring air speed sensors back to operation before it.
Two years after the Airbus 330 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, Air France 447's flight-data recorders finally turned up. The revelations from the pilot transcript paint a surprising picture of chaos in the cockpit, and confusion between the pilots that led to the crash.
The people who lie are usually the ones with the most to gain/lose. What do service engineers have to gain by grounding the fleet - not much. What would Airbus lose by having their brand new fleet grounded - a huge amount of public confidence.
What do service engineers have to gain?
Well, let's have a bit of context. These aren't just "service engineers", it's the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association, the trade union for aircraft engineers in Australia.
The same trade union which wants an A380 maintenance hangar in Australia, written into the workplace agreement they were negotiating with Qantas.
They've recently settled that agreement, without getting the hangar, (one source), so one presumes they're just keeping their name in the news.
People who are actually good drivers (or flyers) know that there are some situations in which you are FUBAR. Like getting t-boned by someone running a red light, or like PSA Flight 182 -- a 727 which collided with a Cessna 172 above San Diego, CA. Captain James McFeron's last words to the tower as the 727 descended in an uncontrolled plunge were, "This is it, baby", and that sums it up. Sometimes no matter how good you are, how much you prepare, you end up at the mercy of the universe's alternate plans for you.
Regarding the article, there's enough that can go wrong without having a plane come apart because some bean counter deemed it an acceptable risk.
Or having a hell of a good time.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
What do service engineers have to gain by grounding the fleet - not much.
Australian service engineers were on strike recently about keeping QANTAS planes serviced in Australia to preserve Australian service engineer jobs. It's the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association that is calling for the planes to be checked now rather than when they are next due for heavy maintenance as Airbus suggests. I wonder if "checking now" (followed probably by "checking much more often") might make work for some Australian licenced aircraft engineers? While I am inclined to agree with them, I do have to recognise that yes they have something to gain.
The crew is trained for IAS failure. They're supposed to use a chart to manually set throttle position and nose attitude. This crew, for some reason, failed to follow the procedures.