Flying the Airbus A380 281
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:Wing Flex (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First Air Disaster (Score:5, Insightful)
Gotta love meaningless PR junkets... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, no duh. 62% of available seating empty, less-than-average hand luggage, next-to-no checked luggage, no freight, and only enough fuel for a two hour flight plus margins.
Of course, it makes it sound great in the press, but it's hardly an indicator of the performance of the aircraft out here in the real world.
the roominess is only temporary (Score:5, Insightful)
As it was on the first 747... The spacing on these showroom models is setup to show them off. Once the airlines start buying the real models, the spacing will be set back to the "stack em in like cordwood" norm to make as much money as possible off each airframe.
NIH and patriotism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Too big: (Score:4, Insightful)
78 seconds is a good time. It's better than the 90 seconds that the FAA in all their strictness mandates.
If a complete seal of approval from the FAA isn't good enough for you, then why are you using FAA testing parameters to justify your argument that the aircraft is a "death trap"?
Re:NIH and patriotism (Score:1, Insightful)
You can call it as you like, but it's not an accident Boeing basically shelved its even more massive blended wing body, which was tremendously large and efficient for a 787 which is proving extremely popular. Sure, for the high capacity crowd they're teasing yet another varient out of the venerable 747 airframe, the demand is _there_. But it's hard enough to envision it supporting the development of a completely new monster plane, let alone two. The A380 might have some aspects which are innovative. But a new, larger aluminum tube. That's one one of them. In fact, I think the Russians _still_ own that title. (And by god those commie bastards should.)
The fact is if you're flying coach on a regular low to no frills carrier, the A380 is going to be that much more miserable an experience. Put a fucking pool, and Victoria's Secret orgy in the mock up, but if it's not there when us regular slobs buy a ticket to dream of strangling ourselves during Employee of the Month II staring Ashelee Simpson, so what?
Bullshit!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you magically figured out the commenters' nationalities, I think you are way too uptight and sensitive about this. You are seeing something that isn't there.
Re:First Air Disaster (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First Air Disaster (Score:3, Insightful)
To be fair, we'd have to crash 40 to 50 of them a year to equal the amount of Americans who die in car accidents. Freak accidents aside, you are still more likely to die driving to work (or perhaps your bathtub) than you are flying.
It is just that when planes do crash (and it has been a while since I remember the last one on the news) a lot of people end up dead all at once. It just looks bad on the news, but in reality we'd never had enough time in the day to show all the other people who died from other transportation methods.
Re:Europe rules! (Score:4, Insightful)
The A380 is probably going to be a financial disaster. The number of planes that Airbus needs to sell to break even just keeps going up and up--I believe it is now around 420. When UPS cancelled their order of the freighter model, the total number of orders for the A380 freight dropped to zero, meaning that more passenger models must be sold to recoup the loss... but that isn't going to happen for at least another year, meanwhile the passenger airlines need to increase their capacity now and so they making up the gap with other aircraft...
The Adam Smith institute said it best [adamsmith.org]:
Re:First Air Disaster (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:NIH and patriotism (Score:3, Insightful)
What fresh nonsense is this? Let's face it, by any standard, the A380 in the last 2 years or so has been a disappointment. Something on the order of $8-10B in 2000 valuations were originally invested in this program. The result is a plane that is late, overweight, and not selling great. Airbus has lost money because it cannot deliver the planes on time, has to keep 20 or so airframes parked in Toulouse because they can't deliver them to customers, and has to pay compensation to the airlines that had expected to be flying the bird by now. Airbus's problems with the A380 has detrimentally impacted the A350; essentially, Airbus as conceded the fastest growing market segment in commercial aviation to the 787 because it has had it's hands tied down trying to correct the sinking ship on the A380.
Meanwhile, Boeing has conceded that the very large aircraft (VLA) market is minimal and not worth investing tons of money into. It has spent a nominal sum to upgrade the 747 with the 747-8. The result? Airbus has about 144 orders for the A380 in 7 years, and Boeing has over 80 in less than 2.
Is it anti-Europeanism that makes these facts true? No, it's reality. The A380 has been an absolute disaster. It's possible that the market will turn around and Airbus will certainly move a few more frames. But it will never make back the money is spent on the A380. Maybe it's just the Americans that pride itself on being able to make a buck?
Re:NIH and patriotism (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you actually realize that everything you say about the A380 was said about the 747 in it's early day? Everybody said too big, too much hassle at the airports, the danger when two collide, Boeing will never get it's money back, much less get a return on invest etc. etc.
And look how far the 747 came. How on earth can you, most likely not in the business, not employed at airbus, with no real insights in the market, know that this plane will not make money for airbus? That's a bold statement. Again remember: The 747 was late, the development much more expensive that planned and was suffering from major problems in the first years (mainly the inadequate engines). It still became a stunning success.
Cheers
Re:Gotta love meaningless PR junkets... (Score:5, Insightful)
What really matters to travelers are the 45 minute "air traffic control" delays into O'Hare, or the 9+ hours stuck on the runway in a JetBlue, or the hour it takes to check in and the 2nd hour to get through security. It's the hours waiting at the beginning of the trip followed by the sprint across the airport because your 45 minute layover was consumed by delays, followed by the wait to (hopefully) get your luggage at the end.
It's not a powerful airframe that would impress me or any other frequent flyer, it would be a quick and smooth trip.
I wonder what kind of review this new jet would get if they had to park it and wait for 30 minutes after pushing back, or had to pay $2 for a bag of nuts on a 3 hour flight, or arrived at your connecting airport and found out their next flight was cancelled for no reason, their luggage nowhere to be found.
I'm an engineer so I certainly appreciate any new piece of shiny kit like this, but even a posh jet can suck if the airline that buys it makes your trip miserable.
Re:First Air Disaster (Score:4, Insightful)
Not the issue.
The issue is machines are only as perfect as the humans that design, build, and program them. Did you know that right now, the software that controls all of the computerized system on every airplane you fly is operating with a series of documented, unpatched bugs? All of them have workarounds and none have been judged dangerous or the airplane would have been grounded. But there have been cases where software bugs have caused incidents and even accidents. There have been many more cases where design or manufacturing flaws in some other non-computerized airplane system has caused an incident or accident. It's the pilots job in those cases to take over and save lives.
One of the examples I can give you is United flight 232, which was caused by a manufacturing defect that led to the loss of all three hydraulic systems - something the airplane's designers thought would be impossible. It also happened while in a turn, locking the plane's ailerons in a turn position and almost causing the plane to nose over within the first 30 seconds. In such a case, no computer would even be able to diagnose the problem, let alone come up with an undocumented solution to controlling the airplane as the pilots did. In the end, because of the pilots' actions in figuring out how to get to an airport (and almost making a clean landing), 174 out of 285 people survived what would surely have been a nosedive into the ground under computer control.
Computers can only be programmed to anticipate problems that the software designers themselves have anticipated, and to use an airplane's systems in the way the software designers tell it to in advance. The problem is, mechanical or software problems that lead to an accident can never be anticipated - if they could have been, the plane wouldn't be flying. There was no procedure for what to do in the case of full hydraulic loss in a DC-10; the pilots made one up as they went along. A pilot's advantage is being able to use reason in diagnosing problems and coming up with solutions to those problems. Decision-making is what a pilot is paid to do. Computers don't make decisions; they follow instructions, and that only works when those instructions can actually be applied to any given situation.
It's probably worth noting what the auto-pilot does when there's a problem with the plane: it shuts itself off. That's what it's programmed to do.
Re:Bullshit!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
No American carrier flies the 747, with the exception of Northwest and United-- airlines with large networks in Asia. Perhaps the apathy towards the A380 in America is because there is no market for it in the United States-- not blind patriotism.
Meanwhile, even the Asian carriers are downgrading from the 747-400 to the smaller 777-300ER, or smaller. It does seem like the VLA market is shrinking, no? The only carriers that are buying the A380 in huge numbers don't even fly the 747 (Emirates with very close to 1/3 of the entire order book for the A380, for instance). You have to wonder what they are going to do with all of this excess capacity-- if it was so urgent, then why don't they have larger planes in their fleet already, considering they are already available?
And let's look at the trendlines. 144 or so orders in 7 years. FedEx, UPS, and ILFC have all cancelled their A380 freighter orders. Virgin Atlantic has already delayed delivery (of an already delayed plane) because they don't have a need for it. Ethiad is rumored to be considering delaying as well. Malaysian can't even afford the planes, and is considering at least delaying the order.
It doesn't seem like a real winner, does it?
Despite the problems, a good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
One of the most common complaints about the Airbus seems be that it's an ugly bird. Everyone has their own sense of beauty. The A380 has grace and style of its own. Besides, although passengers might say to themselves as they board, "that's ungly bird," they are still going to get on and fly. I'm looking forward to flying the A380 because of the increased interior comfort (I hope -- we'll see) in cattle class, the increased cabin pressure, and the much reduced interior noise. Boeing's next planes will also follow suit. It's all good.
Re:First Air Disaster (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:First Air Disaster (Score:3, Insightful)
No...they ensure that there is somebody aboard who (a) knows how to get the airplane down safely and (b) knows he will die if he doesn't.
rj
Re:Europe rules! (Score:3, Insightful)
Lets make in example of this. I'm from Finland and Finland is nation of five million inhabitants. I have a software company, for my company the Finnish market is very small and for my company to grow I need bigger markets. In past it would have been very difficult to set up foreign operations, but because European Union has established common European market, I can sell my software products and services in whole European Union area with almost 500 million inhabitants with out the need to set up subsidiaries in other countries, with out need to pay import taxes or tolls, with out need to customize my product to country specific standards. Also because Finland uses Euro as a currency, I can sell my products and services to other Euro countries with out currency risks. Also because European Union has mandated that all public projects in all member countries are open to public bidding by all companies regardless of their country of origin, so if in example German government organization would have public bidding race for a specific product or service, my company would be in an even playing field with other companies.
And lets make a better example in more smaller level. Because European Union, people are free to locate themselves freely in European Union area. I can travel freely in European Union area in countries belonging to Schengen treaty I don't even need passport when traveling. If traveling in Europe I happen to fell in love with some place, I can just start living there, I can buy a house, I can get a job i.e. There is nobody telling me that because I'm from Finland I can not stay in their country. What this has meant that if in some cause there isn't enough jobs in Finland, I can freely locate in example in Ireland, or if I marry somebody from other European Union country, she can come freely to Finland or I can move to her country. In past moving between European countries and especially moving from country to country was more harder and one needed to deal with bureaucracy, or in some cases it was not allowed. So because we have a thing called European Union, I'm more free to do and archive things in Europe.
To make a note is that when we talk about European Union, in many countries like in Britain and France, politicians like to blame European Union for all the problems they have in their countries. Also in Britain there are some powerful business men that have straightly dictated that their media companies are anti European Union. Of course problem with the European Union also is that it's very difficult for European Union citizens to understand what European Union does and how valuable the things are that it has achieved: i.e. no war in Europe, common markets, common currency, more and more power to negotiate with US, Russians, etc..
I'm not American (Score:3, Insightful)
Giggle.
Re:First Air Disaster (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem isn't the argument: it's the alternative.