Posted on 02/07/2012 7:37:50 PM PST by Gamecock
Edited on 02/07/2012 9:26:45 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
SYDNEY
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
The A330 is one of my favorites.
“Well, guess what? You’ve flown on all kinds of planes with cracks all over the place. There are a number of places where cracks can form without any structural integrity issues at all. To keep all cracks under control the plane would need to be built like a sky scraper.”
But did these other planes show these cracks in the first year of service? Where these other planes made from carbon fiber components like my car which is delaminating in front of my very eyes?. Is this the material that in tests doesn’t fatigue but sans warning suffers complete catastrophic failure?
I’m not an Airbus bigot by any stretch, but their prestige has taken a few hits with the 380 and the Air France crash.
Listen up gang.Words to live by.”If it aint Boeing,I aint going.Carry on.
The Dreamliner an albatross? I don't think so. You do realize that they don't compete for the same market space, right? The Dreamliner is a far smaller plane intended for smaller markets.
cathay already bought one, but I think it’s cargo only
http://www.aussie-traveller.com/2011/11/first-photos-of-cathay-pacific-boeing.html
I work at NWA for 17+ years and we call our A320’s “Scarebuses”.
All Airbuses are socialist, subsidized designs with minimalism written all over the design specs.
The A320 family is fraught with either crack warranty work for framing members that join the main deck to the fuselage where the wings meet the fuselage or warranty work on the pintles for the landing gear that had fasteners that were close tolerance fasteners, instead of interference fasteners, that led to the worrying of the holes and eventual replacement of said fasteners with interference fit fasteners which led to reaming, cold working, reaming and dedicated fasteners for each hole in the rear spar (part of the wet wing[fuel]), instead of one type/size fastener. All of these dedicated fasteners have to be tracked for the rest of the airframes life. What a maintenance nightmare.
There was also warranty work for the framing area of the tail strike area.
All of this warranty work was subsidized as was the original design and production of the A320 by the EU...no wonder they're collapsing.
BTW, the A350 is the wannabe competitor for the 787.....good luck with that Airbus.
Airbus is only short term competitive on price because of the subsidizing....it's as simple as that.
Even the avionics are cheap...Team, an Airbus avionics supplier, doesn't use gold plated pins internally in the board interconnect connectors.
I fought with them for several years before they would admit the the “dirty pins” was in fact galvanic corrosion occurring.
Pieces of crap....is all I can say....(after all that????).
Not necessarily.
My money would be on some deficiency in material or processing.
Years ago, Airbus management decided to support European contractors for the Electric Power Generating Systems (EPGS) on their new aircraft and the new A340-600 was to be the first to have an all-Lucas Electrics (UK) EPGS. This was too much even for the biggest users of Airbus products, including Lufthansa in Europe and Northwest Airlines in the U.S.
The major carriers refused any aircraft with Lucas (aka “The Prince of Darkness”) as the primary EPGS. So, Airbus compromised and was forced to use the UTC Corp. Hamilton-Sundstrand EPGS as primary and Lucas for Auxiliary Power. But, as a final slap at Lucas, Hamilton-Sundstrand did all the aftermarket support for engineering and spare parts for Lucas products! Lucas was a world leader when it came to non-customer support and the airlines weren't about to be stuck with the Lucas albatross.
Entry of the A340-600 into service was a mixed bag. The Hamilton-Sundstrand EPGS performed well, but the Lucas Aux Generators were failing like popcorn due to main rotor bearing failure. When the main bearings failed, the debris fouled the cooling oil and, since the Aux Gen and APU turbine shared the same oil supply, this led to failure of the very expensive APU. Lucas was unable to fix the problem, so H-S had to come up with a working fix, the service bulletins to fix the problem, and field the kits for operators to make the fixes. Once implemented, the bearing failure in the Lucas Aux Gen went away.
I will not fly on an A320 of any kind. The A320 has the reputation of a flight control computer system that has been either the direct or contributing factor in at least three fatal and one nonfatal (that scared both crew and passengers almost to death). One of the fatal incidents was the crash of the A320-111 demonstrator on 26 June 1988. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320_family#Accidents_and_incidents.
My next flight to Oz WON”T be with Qantas, everyone knows how cheap they are at maintenance. The A380 just makes the problems bigger.
“But did these other planes show these cracks in the first year of service? Where these other planes made from carbon fiber components like my car which is delaminating in front of my very eyes?. Is this the material that in tests doesn’t fatigue but sans warning suffers complete catastrophic failure?”
Yes. No. No.
Your car’s carbon fiber is a far cry from the type used in aircraft. All kinds of airplanes have been made with thousands of flown hours without any known failures. I fly a composite aircraft and love it.
For anyone in the engineering field, Airbus chose Java as its platform of choice for its computer systems. Java is not a critical systems platform and has no business on an airplane.
You're only about 792 off on the dash number. ;^)
The new 747s are designated -8I for the pax version and -8F for the freighter.
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