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.'"

First Air Disaster

[Seumas]

Just wait until the first air disaster, with numbers like "six hundred dead...".

I seem to recall there is also another jet in the works that will take either 900 or 1,200 passenegers. Just wait until one of those crashes on take off and you've got over a thousand dead in one swoop. Not to mention, a terrorists wet dream! Why bother shooting it into a building when you can take just the airplane itself out and wipe out enough numbers to make the average pansy cry and the average cable news programmer wet himself in excitement.

Is this even practical?

[EonBlueTooL]

With the aviation industry the way it is are planes like this even necessary? Wouldn't speed be the most important factor when designing airplanes?
What percent of the time could plane companies actually fill an entire plane this big?
Wouldn't the fact that its a bigger plane mean that there are more things that can go wrong with it?
What kinda damage would this make if you crash it into a building?

It seems to me that building planes like this would be like buying new hardware to make your applications run better when it's the code that needs optimization. The only place I see in the market for big planes is the moving of highly profitable, degradeable goods. But I'm no part of the industry so I'm just talking out of my ass.

Re:Is this even practical?

[Anonymous Coward]

With the aviation industry the way it is are planes like this even necessary? Wouldn't speed be the most important factor when designing airplanes?

No. See the demise of Concorde, modern aircraft as a general rule all travel as close to the sound barrier as is feasible with a safety margin (typically 0.8 - 0.9 of the speed of sound), faster is just vastly more inefficient.

Wouldn't the fact that its a bigger plane mean that there are more things that can go wrong with it?

Not really, the two (onboard) critical failure paths are still there and not significantly more complex - most likely cause of failure pilot error and secondly failure of the engine / engine assembly.

Though it would be interesting to see if they have managed to solve the problem that the 747 and other quad engine aircraft typically suffer from. Namely that catastrophic in-board engine failure on takeoff will dump shrapnel into the out-board engine, at which point you have an aircraft that has insufficient thrust to stay in the air and cannot dump fuel fast enough to lower the weight to a safe landing weight.

Re:Wing Flex

[Adult film producer]

It looks worrying but it's completely normal for a big airplane like this double decker monstrosity. If you ever get a chance to see the B52 landing/take-off you'll get to see the same thing happening, such much more that they have retractable "bogie wheels" on the tips of the wings.

Re:First Air Disaster

[Rich0]

Just because you have eliminated humans from directly operating your system doesn't mean than human error (in the form of programming) can't crash your airplane. In most cases the computer can do the job just fine, but the pilot can override it in more dangerous conditions. Of course, the pilot could also act with malice (or be replaced with a hijacker). So I would also argue that at some level of system robustness that an all computer system would be the safest. But that is only in an extraordinarily well tested system (that probably will never be built for transporting hundreds of people).

I'm thinking six-sigma - the key is to make your process repeatable, and then make it better. If you don't have the first you'll NEVER have the second. Computers are VERY good for achieving repeatability.

Think about this as a programmer - which situation would you rather have:

1. A test scenario that causes failure 100% of the time.
2. A test scenario that causes failure 0.001% of the time.

You'd rather have the former - you just trace the problem and you're done - probably fixed in an hour. The latter simply means you haven't controlled all your variables and you might spend weeks figuring out what the missing variable is...

With computer control you can first test the software out on unloaded planes in all kinds of conditions. Then you can put people on-board. Once in a blue moon there might be a failure, in which case the bug gets tracked and then it NEVER happens again. There is continuous improvement. Eventually the failure rate gets so low people will be shocked when planes simply encounter air turbulence - because normally flights will involve no bumps at all.

The main problem will be liability. With computer control you can't blame the pilot, which means that the manufacturers get sued and they have deep pockets (nobody bothers suing the pilot except out of vengeance). If you grant too much legal protection from this liability then manufacturers will tend to cut corners. There needs to be a balance, because computer control won't eliminate all disasters - at least not at first. But I think they're our best chance for doing so.

The same sorts of issues apply to automating cars as well. Why have your GPS tell you which way to turn when it can just drive the car?

Re:NIH and patriotism

[amabbi]

So, just because Boeing has conceded that the aircraft is minimal it has to be the truth? There is no chance they are only saying this because they don't have one?

The sales figures for the A380 say all that needs to be said about the market demand for VLAs.

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.

The 747 very nearly bankrupted Boeing.

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.

OK, let's compare the A380 to the 747. The 747 was late, true. By a matter of weeks, not years like the A380 is. The delay was due to problems with powerplant, not airframe. In contrast, the engines for the A380 have proven to be even more reliable and more efficient than expected. Of course, Airbus had nothing to do with the design and construction of the engines, so it's not that's not terribly surprising. Meanwhile, the A380 frame has had a debacle of textbook proportions with regards to its wiring. It's wing test failed and requires additional bracing because it is too weak. The plane by all accounts is something on the order of 5 tons overweight. And, it's been delayed for 2 years with no guarantees that there will be another delay.

Let's compare markets. The 747 was nearly twice the size of its nearest competitor when it debuted in 1969. The A380 is about 20% larger in terms of seat capacity compared to the 747-8. The 747-8 is far lighter and far more efficient than the A380. The 747 in 1969 was also the longest ranged airliner in its time, and most airlines actually bought the plane for its range and not its size. The A380, unfortunately, does not have that distinction.

I have no connection to the airline industry, true. I also have no connection to the automobile industry and yet I can recognize a carwreck when I see one. The A380 is a monumental carwreck. How anyone cannot see that, and how that person blames patriotism (I'm not an American, btw) for criticism a terrible plane program, is beyond me. Let's compare the A380 to something that is actually more apt, the Concorde. An amibitious piece of engineering that was a financial disaster for the European companies that supported it. It only sold to 2 airlines, and the final planes were sold for ridiculous sums (like 1 pound). The plane was late, was too expensive, not efficient enough, and unwanted.

144 orders in 7 years. That's all that needs to be said.

It's not the plane that matters so much.

[hey!]

It's the itinerary. The worst thing about travel are complex itineraries with delays and missed connections. A six or eight hour transoceanic flight is nothing if you don't have a immense fat guy next to you and you have a couple of books to read. It's the transcontinental itineraries that can get brutally long, if you are going to or from a second or third tier city and are flying cheap.

The longest itinerary I ever had was from Boston to a small town in northen Chile. The last leg of that itinerary was on a fish spotting plane that landed in a remote desert airstrip. Overall it was just over 24 hours, not counting the 70km drive over rutted dirt roads bouncing around in the bed of a pickup truck with my luggage. It wasn't a bad trip at all. On the other hand I once had my boss book me on an itinerary where I had to drive 100 miles to board at Manchester NH, then change in Newark and St Pault to arrive at Sacramento. The air travel part was over nineteen hourse but it was really, really cheap (I tendered my resignation after that). That was immeasurably worse than taking 24 hours to go half way arond the world.

The greatest problem of the business traveller is not cramped planes. It's connections. What we should worry about is the impact of a plane like this on the availability of absurdly crappy but absurdly cheap itineraries. In an era of intense price competition and financially shaky airlines, it might open up new possibilities for cutting costs.

You don't build a complete mesh of point to point flights between cities with a plane like this. You carry people on major backbone routes between hub cities, and shuffle them onto smaller planes at either end. So maybe if you are flying from Boston to San Francisco, it becomes much cheaper to fly to NYC take the super plane to Denver or Salt Lake, and then take a third plane to San Francisco. The class of second tier cities becomes a lot broader, and if you are flying from a smallish city to a smallish city, you may get sucked into flying between a pair of hubs nowhere near your home or destination.

If you are making connections off of a flight on one of these you are going to be dumped into an immensely crowded terminal with almost a thousand other passengers. True, they can have to get people off of these within a certain time to meet FAA regulations. But then you are on your own. Better use the toilet before you land.

No, I'm not excited about massive planes like this. I am much more excited about the Boeing 787 which promises to be comfortable, quiet and efficent. Heck, a plane that is a bit more mechanically reliable would be a godsend all around.

Did anyone see the "Landing Anomoly" on CNN (LAX)?

[alien-alien]

Did anyone else notice the CNN video that showed the US LAX arrival earlier this week. The mains touched down and the plane aircraft slewed to the right requiring immediate (and large) correction - watch the rudder deflection. Looked like a problem with uneven braking. Both mains touched down twice, the second touch was followed by the slew. On final touchdown the left main touched fractionally first followed by the right main followed by the nosewheel. The correction was needed between the right-main touch and the nosewheel. It did not seem to be crosswind related, though that's a little difficult to tell (have to use wheel smoke etc. which is tough to gauge).

Don't know if the automated systems or the pilot made the correction but with that large an aircraft there's very little room for error.

http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/v ideo/business/2007/03/19/vo.ca.airbus.landing.cnn [cnn.com]

Re:the roominess is only temporary

[Michael Woodhams]

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

It is a bit more complicated, in that the max takeoff weight depends on runway length, temperature, wind speed and direction, and possibly other factors as well. (I suspect you knew that, and were deliberately simplifying.)