Posted on 03/21/2005 11:55:43 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
The Airbus A380 has long been expected to steal this year's Paris Air Show.
It will be the public debut of the world's biggest plane at the world's biggest air show, at none other than Le Bourget, one of the world's most storied airfields.
Paris in June will be all about one airplane.
Or will it?
Facing a breakneck test flight program to get the A380 certified and the first plane delivered to Singapore Airlines in the second quarter of 2006, Airbus claims it has not decided on its plans for the A380 at the air show.
"It remains to be seen whether the A380 will be parked ... nothing is definite yet," an Airbus spokeswoman said.
Airbus was asked to comment after Charles Champion, the project's chief engineer, told at least one reporter at the January unveiling of the first A380 in Toulouse, France, that the plane would only make a flyby at the air show and would not be parked there.
Don't bet on just a flyby or two.
The Boeing Co. certainly expects to see the A380 in Paris. It is flying over its 777-200LR, which Boeing touts as the world's longest-range jetliner. The jet, which recently began a test flight program, will be on static display and will not be making daily flights.
A Boeing insider with knowledge of the aircraft seating chart for the Paris show said Airbus has reserved space for the A380. It is supposed to be parked one spot over from the 777-200LR.
And a spokeswoman for the air show said officials at Le Bourget told her last week that the A380 will not only be parked at the airfield throughout the show but also will be making daily flights.
Held every other year, the air show runs from June 13 through June 19. But only that last weekend is open for the public.
The rollout of the first A380 in Toulouse in January was by invitation only. Paris will be the public coming-out party for the new Airbus giant of the skies.
When it enters service next year, the double-deck, 555-passenger A380 will supplant Boeing's 747 as the world's biggest commercial jetliner.
Thirty-six years ago, in June 1969, Boeing's new plane was the sensation of the air show. The first 747-100 arrived at Le Bourget 42 years after Charles Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis there on his historic non-stop flight from New York to Paris.
The 747 approached Le Bourget through a thick overcast.
"Onlookers could hear the whine of the turbines before the giant snout suddenly poked through the clouds, and the 747 appeared out of the cloud cover like a stately galleon emerging from a fog bank," wrote Robert Sterling in his Boeing book, "Legend and Legacy."
The 747 had made its first flight in February, four months before the show.
The A380 is still waiting to get off the ground. Airbus has refused to give a specific date for that first flight, but it has slipped into at least early April.
The 13-month A380 test flight program, using four planes, was to have started this month. Any delay could affect when Singapore Airlines takes delivery of the first A380 next year.
Emirates, a Singapore rival, will be the second airline to receive an A380. Slippage of the second-quarter delivery date for Singapore means it will have less time to boast that it is the only airline flying an A380. So Airbus is under a lot of pressure to get the test flights under way as soon as possible, and taking one of the four test planes out of action for the Paris show won't help to get back on schedule.
Even so, the air show is a major political, flag-waving event in France, and it is hard to believe that the A380's arrival at Le Bourget will be treated as anything less than a state ceremony.
All about winglets: Last week, a 757-200 belonging to Continental Airlines flew from Everett to Los Angeles, with a brief stop at Boeing Field. But instead of passengers, this plane carried something else -- winglets.
It was the first test flight in a series that is expected to lead to certification this summer of blended winglets for the 757-200.
Produced by Aviation Partners Boeing, the blended winglets improve performance and can save an airline on fuel. They have almost become standard on Boeing's next-generation 737s.
Continental Airlines and Icelandair are the launch customers for the 757-200 winglet program, with Continental providing the test plane.
Aviation Partners Boeing believes the 8-foot-tall winglets will lower fuel consumption on 757-200s by as much as 5 percent, allowing about 200 nautical miles of additional range. Icelandair has said it expects to save about 160,000 gallons of fuel annually for each of its 757-200 equipped with the winglets.
With fuel prices soaring, that can mean significant savings.
Boeing ended production of the single-aisle 757 last year, but there are more than 600 flying today, many with U.S. airlines such as Continental.
The modification work on the first 757-200 with winglets took place at Goodrich's Everett site. The flight test program and certification by the Federal Aviation Administration is expected to take about eight weeks.
After the 757, the 767 will be Boeing's next jet to get the winglet treatment.
I havn't been on an A330 yet, so I'll withhold judgement on that one, but I agree about the older ones... and the MD-11? Yuck.
I guess I'll wait and see how good of a plane the combined wealth of the european countries can really build ;0)
Or Tupolev's appearance in 1974.
The problem is, in Asia, there are, for all intents and purposes, mostly JFKs, with DFWs and IAHs (or even smaller places) being the exception. Massive concentration of international operations. Airfields there are either really huge (international) or barely big enough to handle 737s (strictly domestic). Obviously there are excpetions to this rule, however, the way things are here in the US is not the way they are in Asia.
Another problem for SFO is that the runway length is marginal for the 380. You can thank green whackos and NIMBYs for that one.
The 777-200LR is doing something that the A380 is not.
I will never understand why there is so much hype for a giant model
Thanks for the info.
Actually, SFO just recently finished upgrading their longest runways and associated taxiways (Runway 28 Right/10 Left west-east and Runway 1 Right/19 Left) so it could handle the wider stance and weight of the A380.
But the problem is the length (plus the separation, in the case of IFR). There was a grand plan to use landfill to both extend the runways and increase separation. It was shot down by the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside). You'll see ... when the time comes for routing, very few if any 380s will actually touch SFO ...
Thank you!!!!
I thought that was 73? Either way, yeah, that was a minor setback ;0)
How do you increase separation of runways that already exist? Doesn't that imply tearing out existing portions of runways?
You add a new one, parallel to the two existing ones.
I think I was 20 or 21 and had befriended, through my job, a guy who lived a couple blocks from me. He invites me over to a party one night and at some point someone else who lived in the building started talking to me so I handed him a bong.
As he's taking a big hit I ask him, "So, what do you do?" and - in that voice that only a stoned person can make when they're trying to hold in their hit and talk at the same time - he says to me, "I'm an engineer at Boeing."
I think I just stared at him.
I do know that's the only thing I remember about that party.
Hey - it will only take an hour to board the plane. So just plan on sitting there for an hour. Read a magazine. Sleep. Play a game.
So you think all of us Boeing engineers are sitting around at night toking joints? :)
A little, pink wing.
Like a piglet is a little, pink pig.
Those are winglets on the side of the piglet's head, by the way.
And you'll spend 30-60 minutes waiting in line to take off after the plane leaves the gate.
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