Free Republic

Emirates has presented Airbus with a damning list of defects in the new A380 super-jumbo jet. The airline, which has ordered 58 of the aircraft, warns of a possible "loss of confidence" in the giant plane. In a 46-slide presentation, the aviation experts painstakingly listed what they viewed as the giant jet's serious growing pains. To illustrate their points, they included snapshots of singed power cables, partially torn-off sections of paneling and defective parts of thrust nozzles in the engines as evidence of what they described as a shoddy work ethic at Airbus and its suppliers. The confidential manufacturer's information...

At 35 000 feet above the Caribbean, Air Transat flight 961 was heading home to Quebec with 270 passengers and crew. At 3.45pm last Sunday, the pilot noticed something very unusual. His Airbus A310's rudder -- a structure over 8m high -- had fallen off and tumbled into the sea. In the world of aviation, the shock waves have yet to subside. Mercifully, the crew was able to turn the plane around, and by steering it with their wing and tail flaps managed to land at their point of departure in Varadero, Cuba, without loss of life. But as Canadian...

Another Airbus Rudder Problem? Mon, 07 Mar '05 Several Air Transat Planes Grounded After A310 Almost Lost Vertical Stabilizer Ten Air Transat aircraft were grounded Sunday after the rudder on an Airbus A310 "nearly fell off," according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. On Saturday, a spokesman for the airline said the aircraft, flying from Varadero, Cuba to Quebec City, developed "mechanical trouble" about 30-minutes into the flight. Pressed for particulars, the spokesman told CBC the rudder "partially fell off." The aircraft immediately turned back to Varadero, landing normally even though part of the rudder was missing. All 261 passengers were...

You have just taken off in a DHL A300 cargo plane from Baghdad and you're on climbout. Boom! You feel a shudder and you know you've been hit by a ground to air missle. You have damage to one wing and it's on fire from leaking fuel. All hydraulics are lost, so you have no control over flight surfaces. Miraculously, both engines are still operating. Can you successfully fly, and land the aircraft? The link leads to site which has the Powerpoint document prepared by Airbus Industries describing the response by the DHL aircrew.

Pilots using rudders may have unwittingly conducted potentially dangerous maneuvers to control aircraft during turbulence, but the risk became clear only after the in-flight breakup of an American Airlines jet last year, a captain at American testified Wednesday while defending the carrier's training program. In the second day of a hearing into the crash of American Flight 587 last year in New York, the National Transportation Safety Board examined how the airline trains pilots to stabilize aircraft from lateral rolls or side-to-side movements that may place excessive stress on the tail fin.