...And the Airbus A380 snapped a wing off during stress testing. If I were investing now, I would be buying Duct Tape manufacturers.
For real? That does not sound good, hard to believe.
Your post is misleading. All new wings are tested to failure. The 380 wing failed a little short of it's design specification. I remember that the C-17 wing also failed short of it's design specification but production went on anyway. Here's a related article
On Friday came the shocking report that the wings on an Airbus A380 had ruptured and failed during testing. That led to lurid reports like "Airbus: On a wing 'n' a prayer?" in the Financial Times of India.
But the fact is that the wings were supposed to fail during the tests. Both Boeing and Airbus test key components (like wings) "to failure." Basically, they put them in big monster machines and torque the suckers until they snap. I've seen videos and it's pretty dramatic, and my inner 8-year-old is seriously hoping to be on hand when Boeing does that kind of test on the 787.
What the test is designed to prove is that the wings will withstand 1.5 times the stress that they'll encounter during normal operations, and that's what's significant about the news - the A380 wings ruptured 3.3 percent short of the target.
Airbus downplayed the event. Alain Garcia, Airbus' executive vice president for engineering, told an industry publication that "essentially no modifications" would be required to production aircraft as a result of the tests.
And Airbus spokeswoman Barbara Kracht told the Associated Press that while the wing may need to be tweaked, that shouldn't be a major issue.
Airbus engineers and officials from the European Aviation Safety Agency and U.S. Federal Aviation Administration will decide what if any modifications are required, she told AP. "We will need to find out from the data what is really needed, but it's certainly not a redesign of the wing."
But that is the issue. If U.S. or European regulators require changes, that will send Airbus back to the digital drawing board to design and build a new wing, which means further delays for a program already running six months late.