grahampros

If the FAA launched a full scale review, that tells you something major is up. Seems electrical issues. Will they resolve them likely, but its gotten a bit more serious then usual teething pains once this start happening. No great surprise given the history of the program.

jec6613

If it was that big of a deal, they would have grounded the aircraft, vis a vis the DC-10's.

Also, of course the problems are electrical. EVERYTHING on the plane is electrical. Even the hydraulics are electrical. Airbus decided not to touch that option with a 10 foot pole even on their next generation aircraft, but Boeing of course chose to go right ahead with an all-electric aircraft for the large long term benefits.

grahampros

We'll have to see how it plays out but no getting around big deal the FAA investigation. On the note of the DC-10 if you review it closely it should have been grounded before it was ( and it was a very brief one) but wasn't because of cozy relationships with certain people. The good news is that unlike the DC-10 we've advanced enough in saftey enough back up sytems makes crashes very unlikely, does it mean there are not serious issues to be worked out no.

FN-GM

You should go on the A380 the cabin altitude is lower than the 787, its quiet and has the old shades

FWAAA

That's been posted a few times since the debut of the A380, but the only published references that have been cited to support that claim are a couple of poorly-written news articles.

Does anybody have any material from Airbus to support the claim that the A380 features higher pressurization and humidity than other conventional aluminum-bodied widebodies, let alone the carbon-fibre bodied 787?

If the claim were true, you'd think that Airbus would be screaming it from the rooftops, no?

jec6613

The A380 supports 5,000 foot pressurization at 3% humidity to prevent corrosion.

The 787 supports both 6,000 foot pressurization and 15% humidity, with larger windows.

The 747-400 is 8,000 foot pressurization at 4% humidity.

One other random tidbit about the A380: it's only the most efficient use of seats taking off per unit time if the airport services nothing but A380's, otherwise it's still the 747 which has far lower wake turbulence allowing other aircraft to follow much closer behind on the same runways. 4 nm separation between A380's on takeoff, but if a 747-8I is taking off behind the A380 it requires 6 nm of separation, and it goes up as the aircraft gets lighter.

FWAAA

That's the claim that Airbus doesn't appear to make - but it does appear in a wiki article with these two "sources":

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/inside-a380-57068.html

http://www.globalaircraft.org/planes/airbus_a380.pl

Those two "sources" don't even quote anyone from Airbus to substantiate the claim of lower cabin altitude. Like I said before, if it were true, I gotta think that Airbus wouldn't remain so silent on such an important characteristic. Here's an Airbus brochure touting the A380 that omits any mention of a 5,000 ft cabin altitude:

http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/medi...ce_leaflet.pdf

Here's a data sheet from the company that builds the cabin pressurization system:

http://www.hamiltonsundstrand.com/St...une%202011.pdf

If the A380 routinely flew at a cabin altitude of 5,000 feet, it's not mentioned among the capabilities of the system.

IMO, it's a wiki myth. Same result as last time this subject came up.

FWAAA

A couple of weeks ago, AA filed motions to approve its assumption/affirmation of all of its outstanding aircraft and engine purchase agreements, including the Airbus neo and Boeing MAX orders placed in 2011. Some interesting tidbits contained in the heavily redacted documents, including hints of price reductions for the Boeing single-aisle planes and the 787s, as well as price reductions and improved terms for the Airbus orders as well.

In further provisions describing the changes to the aircraft purchase agreements in a Restructuring Agreement negotiated this past year, this is one of the few non-redacted parts:

Interesting. That's the first mention by AA anywhere that it may be interested in 787-8s.

Speculation: Perhaps management doesn't want to wait until late 2014/early 2015 for its first 787s? 787-8s could be delivered earlier than waiting for 787-9s.

Of course, events in the past couple of weeks may cause further production delays of all 787s (these motions were filed on January 2, several days prior to the JAL fire and subsequent fuel leak incidents).

Motion to approve assumption of Boeing orders: http://www.amrcaseinfo.com/pdflib/5956_15463.pdf

Motion to approve assumption of Airbus orders: http://www.amrcaseinfo.com/pdflib/5959_15463.pdf

Motion to approve assumption of GE agreements: http://www.amrcaseinfo.com/pdflib/5957_15463.pdf

Motion to approve assumption of Rolls-Royce agreements: http://www.amrcaseinfo.com/pdflib/5958_15463.pdf

Hearing to be held on all of these motions on January 23. Late that day we'll know whether AA can proceed with these orders or whether objections arise that cause the court to deny the motions.

jec6613

Airbus does claim lower cabin pressurization. Of course, they do it with fancy charts showing cabin pressurization as a function of altitude, extrapolate that to normal cruising altitudes for the aircraft and voila, the sources in the Wikipedia articles.

The 787 is still easily the superior cabin to fly in from the standpoint of pressurization and humidity, but Airbus does claim it.

FWAAA

Thanks for posting that - haven't seen it before. Looks like the A380 spends more of its typical 6000nm mission at lower altitude than would a 747, translating to a lower cabin altitude. Except for that last 30% of the typical flight (when the plane is finally light enough to climb above FL350), causing the cabin altitude to rise to almost 7,000 feet (page 60).

According to the Airbus documents, a 5000 foot cabin altitude would require that the plane climb no higher than FL340, and not too many long-range flights are going to stay that low - so the 5000 foot claim of the Arabian Times article is unsupported. Airbus' own document shows a 5,500 foot cabin altitude for that first 70% of the typical flight. Thanks again.

hillrider

I agree, and actually am amazed at how few incidents the A380 (airframe) has had in comparison to other aircraft introductions. And the airframe did survive a major uncontained engine failure notwithstanding engine shards piercing through the wing. The A380 engines, as we all know, are another story.

itchief

Don't forget about the wings, this problem was discovered due to the uncontained engine failure.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...wntime-372813/

hillrider

I didn't; the cracks are not a risk to current flying and did not cause an incident; new aircraft are still being certified with the current wings. It's an Airbus snafu, for sure, but not a current safety item. It's normal for new aircraft do have plenty of problems; making sure that they are discovered and fixed before they cause an issue is good. Heck, the 737s are still sprouting problems and have been grounded because of this (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42437823...cracks-so-soon), and thousands of the original rivets holding the first 787s had to be removed and replaced; I am sure plenty more structural issues will be discovered as the airframes gain hours.

Uncommanded fuel pumping (which is the root cause of the fuel leak in BOS) and fires onboard the 787 were incidents that could have had serious (negative) outcomes under other circumstances.

jec6613

There are a few reasons for the A380 having so few issues. First, the A380 doesn't break any new technological ground, Boeing even played with an even higher capacity version of the 747 than the A380 has in the 1980's, with a full length second deck. Everything on it, aside from the scale, is pretty standard, just evolved to the current generation of technology.

Secondly, on large aircraft like the A380 and 777, you have additional redundancies, they're designed to be nearly, "Uncrashable." On both the 777 and A380, the only severe problems have been with their Rolls Royce engines. The DC-10, 747 and L1011 all provided the blueprint for building highly reliable widebody aircraft, and so the 777 and A380 learned from that. Cargo doors and reinforced floors come to mind, but there have been a variety of improvements.

Despite the DC-10, 747 and L1010 providing the proving ground for the underlying construction, let's take a look at the early service history of the 747 early hull losses through the first two decades:

1. Pan Am 93: Terrorism.
2. JAL 404: Terrorism.
3. Lufthansa 540: Pilot error.
4. ULF48: Lightning strike causing a fuel tank explosion, wing later separated.
5. KLM 4805: Struck PAA Clipper Victor after taking off without clearance.
6. PAA 1736: Struck by KLM 4805.
7. Korean Air 007: Shot down by USSR.
8. Avianca 011: Pilot error.
9. Air India 182: Terrorism.
10. JAL 123: Improper repair.
11. South African Airways 295: Cargo fire.
12. Pan Am 103: Terrorism.
13. Flying Tiger 66: Pilot error.

I've bolded the ones where it was really an aircraft problem (terrorists blowing them up really doesn't count, after all). So although I might get blown up or shot down, there were only two hull losses caused by the aircraft design of 13 total over 12 incidents: 16% of the aircraft losses were caused by faulty design.

The 787 is all-electric and all composite, the first such aircraft, so minor issues such as have been creeping up are not unexpected. Even so, I'm much more likely to have a pilot screw up and kill me or a terrorist blow me up than I am to have the airplane design kill me.

FWAAA

From an 8-K filed a bit ago:

Other parts describe the Airbus and engine OEM agreements.