Flying the Airbus A380

FloatsomNJetsom writes "So the largest passenger airplane in the world actually is pretty large inside — Popular Mechanics has a great article and video from their test flight on the brand new double-decker Airbus A380. This includes footage of takeoff, interviews with the pilot and test engineer, a rundown on the bar, the two staircases, and an attempt to walk down a crowded aisle from one end of the plane to the other without having to say 'excuse me.'"

Re:Too big - simultaneous boarding on both decks

[wakaranai]

Apparently, many airports are planning to use 3 jetway bridges for simultaneous boarding on both decks of the A380

This paper discusses A380 boarding efficiency:
http://www.math.washington.edu/~morrow/mcm/alex_ev an_harkirat.pdf [washington.edu]

Re:Wing Flex

[Anonymous Coward]

the wings flex noticeably on many big planes. for example on MC-11 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_MD- 11 [wikipedia.org] ) they flex quite a bit when the plane turns during the flight. might get your heart pumping if you discover this at 40,000 feet.

Re:First Air Disaster

[antifoidulus]

520 have died in a single plane accident already [wikipedia.org](you can hear the final moments of this planes flight on the Rammstein CD Reise Reise if you so desire), so it's not exactly unprecedented.

Re:Too big:

[Anonymous Coward]

What you say is completely wrong.
1. The required time for evacuating an aircraft is 90 seconds. They made it in 78. This is definitely not barely.
2. The volunteers represented the typical passenger mix (except from people using wheel chairs). This is required by the FAA/EASA.
3. Minor or moderate injuries are acceptable when evacuating a burning aircraft, better a broken arm then beeing burned.

Re:Is this even practical?

[slart42]

What percent of the time could plane companies actually fill an entire plane this big?

Well, look at the takeoff schedule for Heathrow for example. I see 22 departures listed to New York today. Some of those might be dupes, as single flights are often listed with multiple flight numbers, but still it would be more then 10 flights a day. Grouping some of those using larger Airplanes would probably be more fuel and cost efficient.

Re:Wing Flex

[c6gunner]

Ofcourse they're designed to do that. Here's the way they test 'em:

777 Wing Flex Test [youtube.com]

Re:Is this even practical?

[vivtho]

Actually Mach 0.8 or thereabouts is about the fastest you can fly while still being fuel efficient. Beyond that and the aircraft starts experiencing trans-sonic drag which persists until the aircraft crosses Mach 1-1.1 IIRC. To go faster than Mach 0.8, you either need more powerful engines or a more aerodynamic airframe. Bigger engines are available, but are much more expensive and fuel hogs at sub-sonic speeds, while the nature of civil aircraft means that building a faster airliner while still carrying an economical number of passengers involves too many design compromises. The Concorde and Tu-144 were the only civilian supersonic airliners. Both of them used long thin fuselages and delta wings. The delta wings meant that the aircraft had to maintain a high angle-of-attack during take-offs. Which in turn led to longer (and heavier) landing gear and (heavy) droop-snoot noses.

Re:the roominess is only temporary

[Rich0]

If you've ever flown a long-haul international flight you may have noticed that the plane always struggles to get off the ground. That is because for every pound of luggage somebody doesn't pack, they go ahead and load freight. And if you look at a freight aircraft variation you don't get much more compressed than that...

The planes have a certified max takeoff weight, and they takeoff with almost exactly that weight on many if not most flights.

More passengers just means a little less freight - and the passengers certainly make more money.

Re:How to play it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, this is just a Flash Video. Mplayer plays this just fine using ffmpeg.

Re:Wing Flex

[JimBobJoe]

I think the wings on every plane do that. If they wouldn't, they would break.

There seems to be a movement towards even more wing flex than we've come to expect. Conceptual drawings of new Boeing aircraft, such as the 787, show enormous wing flex. New materials and engineering are likely allowing for it.

While it might freak out the uninitiated, wing flex is pretty nifty--it absorbs turbulence before it actually reaches the cabin.