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This topic comprises 9 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
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Topic: A380 - world's largest pasenger aircraft - makes maiden flight
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Mark Gulbrandsen
Resident Trollmaster
Posts: 16657
From: Music City
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-27-2005 07:37 PM
Just found these two hilarious things about Airbus on the net and thought I'd post em here.....
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"I could give thousands of reasons why boeing is better than airbus,
but they are all from a maintenance point of view.
you seem to want a pilots input on the flying qualities,
so suffice to say for now, from my observations,
boeing pilots appear more competent with their machine,
maybe they are more comfortable with the boeing way of doing things.
airbus technology is more look, don't touch, have faith, sort of stuff.
thrust management is a perfect example of that.
when something out of left field happens, airbus normally comes up with the old
"but monsieur, this cannot happen"... bull$hit it can't.
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"
Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 05-28-2005 06:15 AM
I don't know much about flying, but a friend of mine who flies for Lufthansa told me that many pilots indeed were more comfortable with flying Boeing planes, because according to him, there is more the pilot can influence directly in unusual situations. More "a pilot's plane". The whole Airbus philosophy, backed up by the indisputable fact that a lot of crashes are actually caused by pilot errors, could also lead to a fatal development when managements think that flying is now easy, because more automated, so we need less well-trained, in other words: cheaper pilots. I think a few years ago there was a huge discussion going on which also made the papers in Germany about the all-too-powerful flight computer vs. traditional flying expertise. In the end, the pilots' association insisted on being able to overrule the computer and won. So if I remember correctly, they can now switch it off. In any case, at Lufthansa they seem to have very few accidents (I can't actually only remember ever hearing of one) with both manufacturers, so it seems to come down to the same old truths: good pilot training and maintenance can not be substituted with anything. Kind of like in the cinema.
What's going on with McDonnell Douglass these days? Do they still make passenger jets? When I was younger and in the having-lots-of-books-about-airplanes-and-building-model-planes phase, the DC-10 was still around, I think. I even had a model of one which I handpainted in KLM colors (because the logos were included in the set), then attached it to a string and blew it up with firecrackers.
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Paul Mayer
Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under!
Posts: 3836
From: Albuquerque, NM
Registered: Feb 2000
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posted 05-28-2005 02:47 PM
Yeah, sad to see the old Mickey D go away. The old buildings where the DC-8s, -9s, and -10s were built have been razed to make way for another office park. The only facilities left are across Lakewood Blvd where the last B-717s are being finished, and on the west side of the field where the C-17 line and C-130 modernization programs continue apace. But no more airliners will be born in Long Beach.
From my lofty ivory tower position of being a part-time instructor of an AV220 Air Transportation course at that most vaunted of academic institutions, a community college, I gaze into my murky crystal ball and henceforth issue some predictions about the future of piloting as a profession. All of which are probably worth what you're paying to read them here. But like all pilots and most teachers I very much like the sound of my own voice, or in this case the flow of my words, and thus will not be deterred by the possibility of sounding like a Compleat Foole. And so I prognosticate and pontificate a worst case scenario thus:
Piloting as a profession will go the way of the projectionist some time down the road, and I'm pretty sure I will live to see most of it. We're already seeing the devaluing of the traditional traits and skills that "good" pilots were thought to possess, and the deprofessionalization of the job is accelerating. Some evidence:
Bigger 70-110 seat regional jets are coming on-line now and being flown by crews paid at puddle jumper rates. And the industry is finding all the crews it needs to fill those seats at that pay level. Fly a 737-sized aircraft for Metroliner wages? Sure! It's a jet! When it comes to pay, pilots have always been their own worst enemies. The owner of Scenic Airlines used to tell us, "You guys are just a bunch of bus drivers." Which wasn't true of course. At Scenic the shuttle bus drivers got paid more than any of the pilots. Scenic was a pioneer at the new pilot pay scales--the rest of the industry is just now beginning to catch up.
The technology of glass cockpits and GPS has reduced the need for much of the old-fashioned expertise of the old crews. Very few of the new pilots I see today are what we used to call "stick and rudder" guys. And they don't really need to be. Today's pilot is more a system manager and monitor and expert video game player. In the new big airplanes the electronics can handle most of the finesse stuff. Airbus thinks the pilots just get in the way, hence the Airbus design philosophy of minimizing pilot presence in the control loop as much as possible. There's no need to pay a system manager or video game player anywhere near what a pilot or any other finesse person would demand.
"But what happens when the magic boxes screw up?" you ask. Fortunately that doesn't happen very often. And when it does it usually happens in a way that leaves the crew with little or no time or ability to deal with it prior to impact anyway. Is there a need for an expensive crew capable of "heroic measures" in such a scenario? As long as this doesn't happen too often, the answer appears to be "no." The industry just needs to define and refine what "too often" is.
But people say, "You can't put a value on human life." Bullshit. The industry figured out long ago just what it costs to have a fatal airliner crash--it's about $2.5 million per fatality when all is said and done. As long as the fatal screw ups don't happen too often, insurance will take care of it, and today's ADD-addled public won't make too much of a fuss. No need for expensive operations help when you can afford to lose a hull and the cost of a few funerals once in a while.
Future pilots won't have to be trained in the old labor-intensive techniques the way they are now. The FAA and the University of Middle Tennesee are currently experimenting with a new pilot curriculum that teaches glass cockpit and GPS navigation right from the beginning. No need to do it the old way with charts and plotters and E-6Bs and the rest of that stuff. All you have to know is how to program the box. This streamlined training combines Private Pilot and Instrument training into one smaller cheaper faster easier package. Commercial, multi-engine, and ATP training will eventually follow suit. Won't have to pay these graduates as much since they won't represent as much of an investment as before.
Presently, light training aircraft still have to be hand-flown, which does require some finesse at times. But advances in aerodynamics will give us essentially stall-proof, spin-proof, and ice-proof aircraft. And advances in autopilots and autothrottles will give us aircraft that can land in even the squirrelliest of winds and in weather conditions with little or no visibility. These advances will eventually be incorporated in all airplanes, from light trainers to transports, with acceptably low failure rates. So there will be no need to pay future "pilots" much. To them "flying" will be no more difficult than running a cash register.
Worldwide, the old legacy carriers are dying, and with them will go their high-cost staffs, most of their unions, all of their pension plans, and all the rest of their high-cost ways of doing business. Here in the US, United just walked away from their pension obligations and is now petitioning the court to simply terminate its labor contracts under bankruptcy law. In response, the unions are planning a mass walkout, which if it happens will be the final nail in United's coffin. The other US Legacy 6 carriers, all on the edge of financial collapse themselves, are now looking at those options too. They're also looking at things like outsourcing aircraft heavy maintenance to China--it's cheaper now to ferry empty airliners to China for C- and D-checks than it is to do the work here. Some crew scheduling and dispatching is already being done out of India.
But the US Legacy 6 are still dying. The fact is we have too many seats flying around with too few butts in them (too many ASMs, not enough RPMs), which forces us to give the product away. The planes are flying damn near full and the airports and air traffic control systems are jam packed, but nobody's making any money. Industry analysts say we could do without about half the current capacity.
So, who's it gonna be? Until a month ago I was betting US Airways would be the first to go in this round, but America West prolonged their agony by agreeing to buy them. A marriage made in hell, they will both eventually go down in flames, much like PanAm did after swallowing National. So now United looks like they will be the first goner, with Delta and American not looking good for more than another year or so either. If you've got miles on any of these guys I'd advise you to use 'em up. Now. Which will of course cut their revenues even further.
Oh, and let's add some more fuel price increases while we're at it, since that's so easy to predict. Nothin' like a little lube on the slope to speed things up.
Of the US Legacy 6 that will leave the struggling Continental and Northwest, which maybe won't be struggling so much after this. And they'll have lots of ex-AAL, -AWA, -DAL, -UAL, and -USA employees, aircraft, and gates to pick through for any expansion--at closeout prices. Boeing and Airbus will both be in the used aircraft business a lot more than they want to be. No need to offer high wages in such a market. The survivors will consider themselves lucky and will be thankful to be working in the industry at all.
In the end the unions will still be around, but they will be representing much smaller bargaining units and won't be able to negotiate the kinds of compensation packages we saw before deregulation. The future belongs to the LCCs (Low Cost Carriers) like Southwest and JetBlue (both great companies to work for BTW), the regionals, and those that fly international routes. The forces of deregulation and globalization will forge a smaller, lower-cost, lower-wage air transportation industry, much more in line with the rest of the world. In this new world, the term "professional" as it applies to wages will be redefined. Lower.
Obviously that was a worst case scenario. Hopefully for my aviation students their future won't be quite that bad. But those are the trends. I always advise, "Plan for the worst, but hope for the best." Successful pilots are very good at being "optimists by nature but pessimists by profession." Doing things that way gives the best chances for happiness, success, and satisfaction in any career.
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