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.'"

Gotta love meaningless PR junkets...

[Anonymous Coward]

"It took a mere 16 seconds for the largest airplane in the world to lift off runway 4L at JFK International Airport."

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.

Re:

[rew]

The machine has a takeoff weight of 560 tons. 300 passengers less-than-max, means at 100kg/passenger (person plus luggage) 30 tons. Nah, that doesn't make the machine much lighter than normal. (maybe 350 passengers at 120kg, 50 tons?)

What DOES make it lighter than normal is that the flight only took 2 hours. So they possibly had only for about 3.5 hours of fuel on board. For a longer flight they may need for 12 or 14 hours worth of fuel. That's going to make a difference of about two hundred tons.

And to kee

Re:Gotta love meaningless PR junkets...

[flappinbooger]

From my traveling experience, the time it takes from hitting the gas at the start of the runway to "wheels up" is meaningless. It could take 16 seconds or 160 seconds.

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:

[xmas2003]

Ditto what parent and others have said. In fact, engine/thrust requirements are sized by the need to continue take-off with an engine failure after V1. So all else being equal, for a four-engine plane, there is 33% "extra" thrust ... whereas in a twin-engine plane, there is 100% "extra" power. So put the Popular Mechanics dude on a light twin, make sure the takeoff-thrust is NOT de-rated, and you'll really see a fast liftoff.

A more interesting parameter that relates to all of this is the balanced field l

With all of the hype Airbus put into it...

[FrankTheCrazy]

I was expecting it to fly itself!

the roominess is only temporary

[phayes]

walk down a crowded aisle from one end of the plane to the other without having to say 'excuse me.'

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.

Re:

[Bios_Hakr]

I would think that too much compression would increase the weight of the plane. You figure an average 200lbs/person and then another 100lbs for luggage.

At what point does the plane get too heavy to fly?

"seat map" and Weight and balance programs

[aepervius]

The total weight will naturally not go above the total capacity of the plane. So there will be as much row and aisle as they can pack them in, and still set off.

But what about imbalance ? You could end with one side moreheavier than the other (latterally or longitudinally).

This is where most good check in programs are linked to a little application called "Weight and balance". The seat repartition does not follow random rule. If the system see that this would put the plane out of balance it force the

Re:"seat map" and Weight and balance programs

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about imbalance ? You could end with one side moreheavier than the other (latterally or longitudinally).

Well... I guess they just have to make sure Americans are evenly distributed inside the plane.

Re:

[PPH]

Nah. You just need to make sure there are no Poles in the right half of the plane (Engineering inside joke. Sorry.).

Re:

[samkass]

People are such a small part of the total takeoff weight of this aircraft that I can't imagine, barring a hugely improbable distribution, that the A380 will ever select a seat based on W&B.

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:

[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.)

Re:

[rew]

I was going to type a couple of numbers for you, but they are all there:

http://www.airbus.com/en/aircraftfamilies/a380/a38 0/specifications.html [airbus.com]

well, duh!

[Jeppe Salvesen]

people are willing to sit more cramped in order to save a few bucks.

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 r

Re:

[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:

[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 tha

Re:

[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

Re:

[rew]

Wouldn't speed be the most important factor when designing airplanes?
Yes. Except that when you pass the sound barrier (or come too close) aerodynamic effects cause fuel costs to skyrocket (pardon the pun). So, Mach .89 is close to the best you can achieve.

What kinda damage would this make if you crash it into a building?
I'd think: "Total destruction".

History shows that if you crash a big plane into a skyscraper, the building is destroyed. If you crash a big plane into a large, horizontally layed out buildi

NIH and patriotism

[Anonymous Coward]

For a country that prides itself on making everything bigger, there sure is a lot of not-invented-here antipathy and patriotic vitriol against the first major upsizing of passenger airplanes in a long time.

Bullshit!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the "patriotic vitriol" here? So far, the comments I've seen rightly point out the logistical difficulties with this aircraft, not any vitriol because it is an European airplane.

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:

[amabbi]

Now that the 747 is no longer the largest passenger aircraft, size suddenly is a showstopper because apparently people would rather walk than fly with a few hundred other people on the same plane.

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 747-40

Re:

[dreamchaser]

Your incorrectly modded comment was the first hint of nationalism I saw in this discussion. The negative comments had nothing to do with where it was made and would apply just as equally to Boeing or Lockheed given the same data.

Who is being vitriolic now?

Re:

[amabbi]

For a country that prides itself on making everything bigger, there sure is a lot of not-invented-here antipathy and patriotic vitriol against the first major upsizing of passenger airplanes in a long time.

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

Re:

[rimmon]

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?
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 b

Re:

[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

Re:

[amabbi]

I think it's quite a waste of time to argue with someone who so clearly admits that he has no idea what he is talking about. Let the market decide, I'm pretty sure that the A380 will be a success (as will be the 747-8).

So you're telling me that I shouldn't bother arguing with you? Could you maybe point to one fallacy in my argument?

The market has decided. 144 orders in 7 years; with 20 recent cancellations and multiple deferrals of deliveries. A few airlines (like Emirates which bought a third of the ba

Re:

[Toreo asesino]

The market hasn't decided. The plane is very new. Yes it's late, but ultimately it's the most efficient plane for price of fuel per passenger, and that it why it will be a storming success. Very early days yet.

Airlines care about one thing alone; profit margins. The A380 delivers better than the 747 does - even the 800 series. Money talks.

It won't look spacious ...

[Anonymous Coward]

when filled with Americans!

Try the super-sized veal burgers. I'm here all week.

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.

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

I've always found flying in the US strange. I've never really had to make a connection in Canada, but you can't get anywhere in the US without doing it.

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

That's the milk run, yes, but I've never failed to get a direct flight from any Canadian city to any other unless somebody was being REALLY cheap. I would think that it would be much more economical to run direct flights between the relatively larger US cities than it is to run them between, say, Regina and Winnipeg.

A PeeCee on the flight deck

[Alioth]

In some flight deck photos, there appears to be what looks like a normal PC running (gah!) Microsoft Windows built into the flight deck, complete with a full AT-style keyboard that can be pulled out. It's to the left of the captain, and the first officer has one also, to his right.

Now I wonder if anyone has run MS Flight Simulator yet on the flight deck PC of the A380? Or in an attempt at recursion, I wonder if anyone has run MS Flight Simulator on the flight deck PC of the Airbus A380 flight simulator :-)

Despite the problems, a good thing

[caseih]

If you read the forums on airliners.net, you find a *lot* of anti-airbus sentiment and blind pro-boeing supporters. There are a lot of legitimate grievances against the A380 and airbus. But I still think the A380 is a marvelous airplane. There's nothing wrong with a group of countries deciding they want to build a new airplane and deciding it is worth tax dollars. Even Boeing benefits from the US government's support.

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.

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:

[DrDitto]

Holy crap, MOD PARENT UP! The plane was on the verge of spinning out.

No.

[Marton]

You don't know much about this stuff, do you? This is what a problem landing looks like:

http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?id=22 3249,223248,223247,223246 [airliners.net]

Re:Did anyone see the "Landing Anomoly" on CNN (LA

[IpSo_]

I don't think that had anything to do with breaks, I'm not a pilot, but my father is and usually you don't apply the breaks until ALL wheels are on the ground to help prevent just this sort of problem, and to prevent the front wheels from coming down too hard. This clearly happened well before the front wheels touched down. Having one set of tires touching down before the other set can cause enough drag to twist the plane some too, so that is a possibility. Not only that but on large planes the breaks are n

I'm not American

[theolein]

But if I was I know that my air-penis envy would be enormous because the Euros would have such a big one, and I would be forced to make all sorts of ridiculous claims that my 787 air-penis's size was not important, and that I didn't feel emasculated because of it.

Giggle.

Re:Wing Flex

[polar red]

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

Re:

[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.

Re:

[Don_dumb]

Sit in a window seat in an Airbus A300 and you will see the wings flex up and down, not much but enough to be clear. I would imagine all plane wings do this.
I for one would prefer a flexible wing rather than a brittle one, considering the forces involved.

In fact tall buildings need to do this as well, I seem to remember reading (I cant find a reference) that the Empire State Building can move up to 8m at the top, not sure that would help my vertigo.

Ummm...get a window seat in *any* 'plane....

[Joce640k]

Ummm...get a window seat in *any* 'plane and you'll see the wings flexing when it trundles along the runway, when it takes off, when you hit turbulance, etc.

PS: Yes - even the ones made by Boeing!

Wing bending

[omnirealm]

My uncle just retired as a commercial pilot. I asked him about the bending wings once, and he told me that one of the standard certification tests done by the FAA on new aircraft is to basically twist the wings until they break. He told me that sometimes the wings bend to a full 90 degrees before that happens.

Re:

[thhamm]

the whole plane is more flexible than you think. think about it that way, that the whole wheight of the aircraft is hanging on the tips of the wings. remember those planes can take quite a bit more than just 'hanging' there at 1G, they turn and pitch. the wings bending at the tips about 2-3m isn't unusual, they can take much more. if they wouldn't they would just break.

now those big airliners can't take much G force compared to fighterjets or sailplanes, and they have relatively short wingspan.
open class

Re:

[MichaelSmith]

open class sailplanes like nimbus 4 are a different story. they look quite funny at takeoff. the wings are hanging through and wobbling until the airflow is enough to produce lift, then they bend and the planes takes off. quite a nice view.

I once had a chance to fly in one of two aircraft on a dual tow in Benalla, Australia. We did it just after dawn, using the flight which does a temperature trace. The glider on short tow pulled first and I had a fantastic view of it climbing and turning right.

If you get

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:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[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:

[Alioth]

The bigger the plane, the more the wings will flex. At one extreme, take a Cessna 140 - you won't see any wing flexing at all (until they actually break). Go a little bit bigger - say, a Cessna 310, and you'll see a tiny amount of wing flexing during taxi operations as you go over bumps in the ground.

Then at the other end, get in a Boeing 747. Watch the wings as you trundle off down the runway. The don't flex, they almost flap. When the pilot flying 'rotates' (brings the yoke back, lifting the nosewheel, in

MD-11

[dbcad7]

Perhaps my favorite plane to fly on. Not many left for passenger service though. When American Airlines had it, the seat layout was more comfortable than KLM's (which I recently flew), That aside, I have always thought that the MD-11 had one really smooth ride. Boeing of course killed it when the bought McDonnell Douglas. I guess most are now Freighters.. I don't think American even uses it now.

One other note on KLM.. I found their in flight service to be excellent on all legs of my trip. Their cityhopper

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:

[jrumney]

Heathrow have already modified gates for the plane, as have most other major airports where it will be flying into.

Re:

[MtViewGuy]

I can understand your concerns, but the A800-800 was designed specifically to fly long routes between the really large international airports, not fly to secondary airports. That's why airports like New York-JFK, Chicago O'Hare, Miami International, Los Angeles International, San Francisco International, Denver International, and Dallas-Fort Worth are upgrading their facilities to handle the A380, since just about all A380 flights will fly to these American airports I mentioned.

Indeed, San Francisco Interna

Re:

[Lars T.]

As a test on Sunday, organizers boarded more than 500 people onto the aircraft using two jetways with an impressive time of less than 20 minutes. [iht.com]

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:Too big:

[mikkelm]

This is complete and utter bullshit. I saw the demonstration. The people taking part were average people, not especially fit people like you make it out to be. The FAA has -strict- control over the tests and the people participating in the A380 tests were the same kind of people who'd participate in any other test of any other aircraft. You'd have to be seriously ignorant to think that the FAA would allow anything else.

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:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Teun]

I consider 10 seconds off to be "barely".
It's a death trap.

It seems you have never looked at the statistics of other wide body aircraft.
12 seconds off a 90 second limit is quite good!

This plane is certainly no worse than anything in use today.

Re:First Air Disaster

[jb.cancer]

seems as unreasonable as saying tht we shudn't have cities, cos there are too many ppl in there. A large enough city could as well be a target for a terrorist and result in similar casuality figures (same case with disasters). it's just economical to deploy something like this monster airbus (read *mass* transport).

Re:

[DrWho520]

But you cannot take out a large city with an rpg.

Re:

[Lars T.]

But you cannot take out a large city with an rpg.

But you can with just a tiny amount of poison in the water supply.

Re:

[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:

[MichaelSmith]

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

You are getting flamed for it but I think you have a point. Each aircraft has two people flying it regardless of whether it is carrying 100 or 600 people. Pilots do occasionally fuck up [abc.net.au] and when there are so many lives at stake it makes sense to dedicate more people to the job of flying the plane.

Should the flight deck be required to have three or four positions? ATC controllers often operate with a planner and a controller in

Re:

[jrumney]

Each aircraft has two people flying it regardless of whether it is carrying 100 or 600 people. Pilots do occasionally fuck up and when there are so many lives at stake it makes sense to dedicate more people to the job of flying the plane.

The number of pilots required is based on distance, not number of passengers. In newspapers reporting the recent court case [aero-news.net] against a AA pilot who turned up to Manchester airport drunk when he was scheduled to fly to Chicago, it was reported that the plane had to be diver

Re:

[Rich0]

Should the flight deck be required to have three or four positions? ATC controllers often operate with a planner and a controller in parallel. Maybe there is a role for strategic and tactical control on the flight deck of the A380.

I wonder if it would be better to mandate that the flight deck have zero positions...

How many accidents could have been prevented by having computer-control of the flight vs how many near-accidents have actually been recovered by having a human on-board (that a computer couldn't h

Re:First Air Disaster

[stunt_penguin]

Computer control can work quite smoothly, and the human brain is very, very far from perfect, but when shit meets fan (or a flock of geese meets engines #1 & #2), there is no current computing substitute for 3 pounds of meat trying to figure out how to land the thing. [terrybisson.com]

Re:

[Rich0]

Well, that sounds nice, and maybe even sounds intuitive. However, is there really any evidence that a human can land a plane without engines any better than a computer can? Sure, the human has more incentive to try to survive, but other than evoking our sense of heroism does that really equate to more lives being saved?

Re:First Air Disaster

[badasscat]

Well, that sounds nice, and maybe even sounds intuitive. However, is there really any evidence that a human can land a plane without engines any better than a computer can?

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:

[Rich0]

And how many disasters have been caused by having a human in the loop? How many cases of runway incursions, etc?

And if you want to talk about mechanical failures - how about when the pilot has a heart attack? His body is a machine just like any other and is subject to the same principles of maintenance and failures.

A computer doesn't need to be perfect - it just needs to be better than a human. And how many more software bugs could be fixed with the money we'd save by not paying pilots?

Software doesn't h

Re:

[segfaultcoredump]

Perhaps you have never heard of the gimli glider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider [wikipedia.org]

The computer would only be good for scenarios that it has been told how to deal with. Running out of fuel at 41,000 ft is probably not one of them. Using a 767 as a glider is another. I can also bet that the computer would not have known that there was a decommissioned air force base within glide distance either.

Re:

[Rich0]

If I were designing a flight control system I'm sure that running out of fuel would be one of the first scenarios I'd put on the list - right after engine failures. I'm shocked the flight manual didn't even have the optimum glide speed.

Anybody designing a system to cope with failures should certainly pull out the NTSB logs and look up every failure to date - after all, the known failures are the easiest ones to handle. Running out of fuel would have to be in there somewhere.

Re:

[segfaultcoredump]

Thats the kicker. As evidenced by the air ram generator, the designers took into account full power loss. It is easy to account for the issues that have already occurred, and probably a handful of ones that have not yet occurred.

The fun thing is that in a system with that many components, the failure scenarios are endless. As soon as you think of all of them you will run into another. Accounting for all of them are next to impossible.

In the case of the gimli incident, not only would the computer have to kno

Re:

[zippthorne]

With a computer, every crash is the last of its type. With a human, there's a chance of the problem being solved the first time.. but not the second or third times.

So I think the statistics would be on the side of the machines.

Especially since, with enough scenarios, eventually there would be some overlap covering unanticipated situations.

Re:

[Deadstick]

I wonder if pilots exist only to absolve the plane manufacturers of liability even at a cost of human life...

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:

[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

Airbus 380 - Bug Report #213571.

[Glonoinha]

Bug report #213571.
Description : Airbus 380 went inverted and then went into a tailspin when flying at 32,768 feet. Airbus crashed.

Comments ---
Code looks correct. Please attempt to recreate and describe precisely the process by which the issue was recreated.
If the problem does not happen repeatedly this is an incident and not a bug.

Bug log closed.

What the bug is

[scwizard]

Overflow. If it's a signed short then 32768 + 1 = -1 :P

Re:

[Teun]

Yeah and a single Air Controller has a dozen or more planes in his schedule, big deal.

Besides, most accidents happen on take off and landing, lowering the number of those (by more passengers on a single flight) must improve overall safety.

Re:

[rew]

lowering the number of those[takeoffs and landings] (by more passengers on a single flight) must improve overall safety.

"safety" numbers are done by the passenger-km. So when the geese hit the engines, more casualties.

More passengers on a plane don't make it safer: Every passenger has exactly one ("risky") takeoff and one landing.

Re:

[drsquare]

Surely with modern technology, we should moving away from pilots, not towards them. More high pilots wages just squeezes tight margins even further.

If planes aren't fully automated within the next twenty years then something has really gone wrong.

Re:

[Fred_A]

Cars should be automated first, they are much more dangerous than planes. I know I'd feel much safer on the roads if my fellow simians weren't in control.

Re:

[jabuzz]

The logical conclusion of which is that fewer larger planes are safer to transport a given number of people.

Re:

[hachete]

I wonder if this comment would have been made if the aircraft had been made by Boeing?

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

Actually, it was. That kneejerk reaction is a duplicate of what people said when the 747 was introduced.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[vertinox]

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.

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

Re:

[regularstranger]

"It just looks bad on the news," I think there is also a psychological effect of being powerless to control a situation, as in the case of being on an airplane. Driving to work, people can take steps to reduce their chances of being in an accident if they choose. This is not the case in a plane.

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

It's an illusion of control. In most car crashes half the vehicles and more than half the people aren't doing something stupid.

Re:

[wasted]

There is a high-density, single class version of the A380 planned which will top out with over a grand crew and pax.

Re:

[Jeppe Salvesen]

you wanna know what a terrorist's wet dream is? five of 'em with bombs approaching the line before the airport security check..

seriously, who cares? i don't give a damn whether i die with 600 other passengers, 50 other passengers or alone in the dark.

btw, the largest airplane accident fatality count is currently from 1977 [wikipedia.org] at 583. maybe they'll finally break that record?

Re:

[MtViewGuy]

I think we went through that very concern when the 747 went into service in 1970. Remember the collision between the KLM and Pan Am 747's in Tenerife in 1977 that killed a staggering 582 people?

terrorists wet dream!

[way2trivial]

Combine them! crash the plane into a city! Oh, wait a second.....

Re:Europe rules!

[cortana]

You talk as if the economy and politics have nothing to do with each other, but that is not true. We are mired in economic sclerosis because no European company is free from the greedy, interfering tendrils of the organs (can I say organs on this web site?) of the European Union. Imagine a picture of prehistoric creatures trapped in a tar pit, slowly but inexorably sinking until they suffocate, only the creatures are businesses and the tar is miles and miles and miles of red tape.

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]:

When countries get together to co-operate on prestige economic projects, take cover. Concorde and the Channel Tunnel spring to mind, both excellent pieces of hardware, but financially unsuccessful. The A380 superjumbo is the latest example. Now that UPS has cancelled its order for the freight version, the A380 has no orders at all. Damian Reece in the Telegraph says that if Airbus had been a real company it would have acted earlier to put right the accelerating problems.

Then again, Airbus would never have built the A380 superjumbo in the first place if it had been a market venture, rather than the instrument of a European political elite with great power illusions.

...

Now the arguments rage over restructuring, with politicians circling like jackals with what Reece calls "a mix of toxic national jealousies and bureaucratic paralysis." The prospects seem bleak. The plane will lose billions, and taxpayers will bale out its parent company. I see no prospect at all for improving it; it's structure puts it in the political domain, not the commercial one, and I don't think anything can save it.

Re:

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

You talk as if the economy and politics have nothing to do with each other, but that is not true. We are mired in economic sclerosis because no European company is free from the greedy, interfering tendrils of the organs (can I say organs on this web site?) of the European Union. Imagine a picture of prehistoric creatures trapped in a tar pit, slowly but inexorably sinking until they suffocate, only the creatures are businesses and the tar is miles and miles and miles of red tape.

European Union as greedy

Re:

[Moridineas]

European Union as greedy interfering tendril of the organs? I think that you really don't understand what European Union does and what it has achieved.

i think you actually missed the parent's point! You go on to describe exactly what parent meant! All governments act the same way, and as time goes on they grow, the areas where they interfere grow, and you have greedy interfering tendrils all over the place! I would describe the US government in the exact same way.

I'm not an EUian, so I won't claim firsthand

Re:

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

What you and the parent have completely missed is that government interference has been decreased by the actions of European Union and the development of common European market. Let me educate you from the past: in past individual European governments saw companies and industries as national strategic assets and tools for government control both in inside the country and also in international scene. What this meant was that some industries where completely protected by formation of national monopoly to an i

Re:

[mike2R]

I actually followed your link and skimmed through the begining. Gave up when I saw the graph on page 4.

If the author really believes global warming is just part of a natural cycle, WHY DOES HE CUT THE TEMPERATURE GRAPH OFF AT 1900?

The only reason I can think of is that he's trying to fool the ignorant about the significance of the temperature variation over the last 1000 years, and he knows damn well that even they won't fall for it if he shows them the last 100 years.

Just another dishonest crackpot,

Re:

[Nick Driver]

Because the biggest airliner in the world probably also has the tiniest bathrooms and they're afraid to admit that ;-)