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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 07-07-2006 08:51 AM
Himm, Sometimes catch up takes a cople of years but it appears that Boeing is now trouncing on Airbus receiving a whopping 350 orders for the new 787 Dreamliner plane and it hasn't even left the gound! Whilst Airbus 's new chief wades through the their 140 plane order for their new competing plane the A-350 and is deciding weather to even put it into production or not... all this whilst the hige A-380 is experiencing enough problems and delays of its own. An interssting turn of events and a good indication of who is really the more sucessful plane maker. Perhaps the article below should have been titled "Boeing Kicks Ass!"
Link To Article
LONDON (AFP) - European aircraft maker Airbus, which faces delays to production of the A380 super-jumbo, may be forced also to delay the launch of its long-haul A350 jet, London's Times newspaper has said.
The new setback was because Christian Streiff, set to be confirmed as the new Airbus chief executive, needed time to approve the venture, the newspaper said citing sources close to EADS on Friday, which owns 80 percent of Airbus.
The group has been busy redesigning its A350 model, a new mid-sized airliner that has been poorly received by potential clients.
According to The Times, sources close to the European Aeronautics Defence and Space Company have warned that Streiff may not make a decision by the company's deadline of the Farnborough Air Show in England which runs from July 17-23.
Streiff, the former deputy chief executive of French construction materials giant Saint-Gobain, was nominated as Airbus boss last week after his predecessor Gustav Humbert was ousted because of delays to the flagship A380.
However, the daily newspaper said that his appointment was not expected to be confirmed until next week -- around the same time that Airbus was understood to have scheduled meetings formally to approve the A350 plane.
"There is a possibility of him (Streiff) saying the A350 project is too much for him to give an OK when he is just days into the job," the Times quoted an anonymous source as saying.
The A350 jet carries at least 250 passengers and will compete with Boeing's new 787 aircraft which has been dubbed the Dreamliner.
The 787, which has a capacity of 250-300 passengers, has attracted 350 orders since its commercial launch in 2004 compared with about 100 for the A350, which was launched by Airbus as a competitor to the Boeing plane.
In a severe blow for the company, Airbus reported on June 13 that it had experienced problems with the production of its A380 model, its flagship product which is set to become the biggest civilian airliner in the world when it finally enters service.
The problems, which arose from problems in installing wires and cables, led to the departure of Humbert and are set to cut the number of deliveries of the A380 in 2007 to nine instead of 20-25.
Airbus, caught in a storm of bad publicity, has been trounced by US rival Boeing since the start of the year according to figures showing orders received by the two companies.
The figures, calculated by AFP, show that at the end of June Airbus had received only 142 orders since the start of the year compared with 445 for Boeing.
Mark
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 07-08-2006 04:45 AM
Assuming (for example) 4,500 miles from Amsterdam to Minneapolis and two flights a day for six days (daytime east to west, then overnight back again), then a six-day stint is still 54,000 miles between services. I wish my car needed that little maintenance!
I'm off to a conference in Maine the week after next, and seriously hope that Northwest sold their clapped-out DC10s to Mugabe for $1.99 - or at least, taken them off the route I'll be flying. On my last trip we were delayed three hours coming home 'due to a technical fault with the aircraft', then none of the reading lights worked (great on an overnight flight, you can't sleep on planes and you want to read) or the headphone jacks (so no film either).
I got the strong impression that the plane was just so old and worn out that they were doing the bare minimum needed to keep it airworthy while they raised the money for something better, because they weren't planning to keep running it long-term. Still, the fare for this forthcoming trip was a lot cheaper than any other airline was offering, so I guess you get what you pay for (and NW is about the last airline left that still gives you a free G & T in economy class - so maybe the DC10 isn't so bad after all).
As for the A380, a pilot friend tells me that the problem is electromeagnetic interference in the cable runs. Apparently it was a pretty major blunder - the shielding and separation for each cable was designed with the tolerances of an analogue signal in mind, but apparently the A380 sends digital data down the wire to little computers situated right next to the servo motors which operate the control surfaces etc. From what she tells me, these are much more sensitive to the electromagnetic noise which exists in that environmnent, and they're gettting unacceptably high error rates in flight testing. The word on the grapevine is that upgrading and rerouting the cable runs is likely to add a significant amount of weight, with a consequent hit on fuel economy.
Forgeard, meanwhile, appears to be a graduate of the Ken Lay school of personal finance, having offloaded several million of his Airbus shares just before news of the A380 woes broke and their value went into a tailspin.
I'd guess that by the time all is said and done, the A380 probably won't perform as well as the initial hype suggested, but that it'll find a niche market for high volume routes. By the same token, I gather that the 787 is the first attempt by Boeing to design and build an all-composite airframe, so I wouldn't be surprised if that has similar teething troubles once the first prototypes get into the air, too.
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