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.
This sounds disturbingly like the hype leading up to the debut of the Tupelov TU144 at an earlier Paris Air Show.
Will the Airbus 380 suffer the same fate?
Remember, Murphy is an optimist. Particularly where the arrogant are concerened. And the French are as arrogant as any on the planet (with very little reason).
Can you give me any instances of what exactly was "poorly built" about the MD-11's? All of the structure down to the frames, windows and skins belongs (built/designed)to MDC and Boeing - all other interior items such as lighting, tvs, seats, carpets lavs, etc. belong to the airline because they choose the way the interiors are finished. In many cases, the interiors are not even completed by the manufacturer but by an aftermarket mod shop specialing in just interiors.
I bet your gripe has to do with the airline's portion and not the manufacturer's end of the business, right?
I will play. Hydraulics. MD-11 is the redheaded stepchild of the horrendous pile of crap that killed a bunch of folks in Sioux City.
"The winglet's function is to break the vortex that forms at the tips of the wings"
I believe I read that the effect would be the same if the wing were merely extended, but that winglets have the same effect without having to increase the horizontal wingspan......
Oh, you mean that crash that should have killed everyone but didn't because the plane held together better in the crash than thought in the design? Hydraulics did not fail in that instance - they were subjected to a catastrophic failure that had never been imagined during all of the design reviews by the manufacturer, the airlines, the FAA and all of the red-headed step-child pilots who participated in the design reviews. You mean that one?
My gripe with the MD11 is that the range and GTOW were below what was advertised, the dispatch rate is not high enough. It was a failure, as seen by the number of airlines that dumped plane soon after getting it, and the dwindling number of planes in passenger service. It works well for freight, but I know that American and Delta dumped theirs, and I believe Swiss got rid of theirs. I know Finnair has a few, Thai has some, and Varig. EVA relagated theirs to cargo.
Actually, according to SFO officials, A380 operations will be like that of 747-400 operations--no side-by-side landings and takeoffs. Given the fact that relatively few airlines will fly the A380 to SFO until at least 2010 (only Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa has planned flights to SFO officially for now), the runway spacing issue will not be significant.
The Tu144 crash was not a fault of the designers. The 144 was to do the same amount of time in the air as the Concorde, but at the last minute, the french cut the time in half, and changed its route. Then, the pilot had to do emergency action to miss a french fighter jet that strayed into the path of the plane, the pilot could not recover, as the action was past the stresses of the airframe.
Source: Soviet SST, by Howard Moon, great book about the 144.
Why the hell would there be any other aircraft in the air anywhere near that airport during the airshow? Were the French deliberatly trying to sabotage the TU-144?
Everyone of your points (which are true and an issue)have more to do with profitability and usage rates of the operator and very little to do with flying-customer issues - except the DRR one. But again, most DRR issues have to do with operators and not the manufacturer. The MD11 had enough issues, as you pointed out, without having the additional burden of poor operator interior installations and shoddy maintenance added to its record. And that was what I was reacting to.
It was truly sad that American, which had one of the largest (and loudest) pilot-driven design inputs of any operator on the MD11 Launch Team, undercut its team by badmouthing the plane prior to delivery. When EIS occurred, it was an uphill climb to overcome the stigma and closed minds. Sadly, the pilots were getting the lesser bugs worked out when American shut the model down.
Can't wait! (NOT!)
Oh - this summer they are going to do an emergency escape. They have to get everyone off the plane in 90 seconds. Can you imagine what the escape slide looks like that far off the ground? I think there will be 315 people on the second deck.
Nope, it was just bad planning and bad range operations.
Tupolev made 17 or so planes, with a few dramatic design changes. Considering the resources they had, they put together a pretty good plane, however, it had terrible range, and the passenger cabin was deafening, and the fuel economics killed it for good. The US, smartly, killed the Boeing SST before it became a cash monster.
Remember when AA dumped the 11? They went to that joke of an airline USAfrica, which was a disaster waiting to happen.
I was a pax only once on an MD-11, Swiss Air (not the follow along, Swiss, who just got bought out by Lufthansa), LAX to Zurich, we sat on the ground for 4 hours (center seat!) tackling hydraulic issues before take off.
Nasty.
1. They reduce spanwise flow by damming it at the wing tip. This puts more (and faster) airflow over the upper camber and increases lift, and
2. They act as "tip sails". (At least on lower speed wings) they are canted slightly outward at the aft edge. That same spanwise flow pushes against the winglet, and the angle nudges the wingtip forward.
.
That's how Boeing got Juan Trippe to get interested in a wide bodied aircraft rather than a double decker as the basis of the 747. He refused to exit the second deck mockup fuselage using the emergency escape slides.
Boeing didn't kill it; Congress killed it. And that was well before the OPEC oil embargoes that followed the Yom Kippur war in 1973 which made the SST uneconomic.
Like I said, the US killed the SST, not Boeing, it was a gravy train for them.
You may be right......
The two things I have heard regarding manufacturers implementing winglets were:
1. You effectively increase wingspan, lowering vortex drag without actually needing to modify ramp accomodations
2. Look cool
I'm not a pointy-headed aero type, but I know there are a few around here who may be able to speak to the technical issues more succinctly.
The only reason anyone lived is because the pilots were heroic and badasses.
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