A380 Maiden Passenger Flight

[Fat Tone]

Time for a good news story with this plane.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7061164.stm

There's been a few digs on murc about the development of this plane in the past, and strangely no mention of Boeings troubles, so someone should redress the balance and report the successes of Airbus. Yes its late and overbudget, but what isn't these days .

Go Airbus

[Brian Ellis]

Bravo!

[jms]

[Elie]

Awesome

[rylan]

Cool. But I'll still make sure I never fly on one.

[Fat Tone]

Scared of heights? You could always book for the lower deck

[az]

Cool. But I'll still make sure I never fly on one.

Why not?

[VJ]

Why not?

Same question...

Think of the consequences for Airbus should anything happen with the A380 (just from a business point of view: reputation, financial damages, ...). They'll have done everything they can to prevent such scenarios.


Jörg

[Brian Ellis]

Presumably because it out-Boeinged Boeing. I would love to fly on it (as much as I detest flying and, above all, airports) but doubt I ever will. The comfort and silence is apparently remarkable.

[rylan]

Same question...

Think of the consequences for Airbus should anything happen with the A380 (just from a business point of view: reputation, financial damages, ...). They'll have done everything they can to prevent such scenarios.
Jörg

That doesn't mean something outside of their control will happen. Something that large with that many people on board is a terrorist target. Even discounting the possibility of terrorist attack (which is still relatively low), I personally don't feel comfortable flying on something with that many people.

[degrub]

#1 reason to avoid any Airbus plane - the controls philosphy is the computer is always right and has the last say. Boeing's is the pilot always has the last say, even if the pilot is wrong. One of the Airbus test pilots was killed at the Ramstein airshow a few years ago because of that.

[Brian Ellis]

#1 reason to avoid any Airbus plane - the controls philosphy is the computer is always right and has the last say. Boeing's is the pilot always has the last say, even if the pilot is wrong. One of the Airbus test pilots was killed at the Ramstein airshow a few years ago because of that.

That is nonsense. The pilot always has over-ride.

5 more errors in what you say, just to add a little weight to others' judgement of your credibility:

1. The Ramstein disaster did not involve an Airbus: the Airbus airshow crash was at Mulhouse-Habsheim in Alsace/France in 1988. (The Ramstein disaster was caused by a display of the Frecce Tricolori with Aermacchi MB-339 PAN jets.)

2. The crew survived the crash

3. The captain, Michel Asseline, was on full manual control at the time of the accident, so the computer was not involved.

4. The crew was Air France, not an "Airbus test pilot"

5. The official enquiry resulted in the cause being pilot error, as he opened the throttle to gain altitude too late to avoid the undercarriage pruning the trees. He claimed that the altimeter was reading higher than the reality, but there is no proof of this.

Incidentally, this was the first A320-100 made and had just been delivered to Air France.

Maybe you would care to scan the following statistics and compare the accident rates, especially with the more modern planes, remembering that Boeing/Airbus have had pretty similar production rates of recent years, above all forgetting the 1st generation 737s which were probably because of vast numbers made and sold used, after 20 years, to Asian and African uncapitalised airlines (as have some of the early A300s and A320s).

Airbus A300 26 accidents
Airbus A310 6 accidents
Airbus A320 16 accidents
Airbus A321 1 accidents
Airbus A330 4 accidents
Airbus A340 3 accidents
Concorde 1 accidents

Boeing 737 124 accidents
Boeing 737 Next Gen 3 accidents
Boeing 747 40 accidents
Boeing 757 8 accidents
Boeing 767 11 accidents
McDonnell Douglas MD-11 5 accidents
McDonnell Douglas MD-80/90 17 accidents

There is nothing to prove that Airbus planes are any less safe than Boeing/MD ones, rather the opposite. I agree that if an A380 fell out of the sky with 800 pax aboard, it would be an unprecedented disaster but many more have already died in just the 40 747 accidents to date.

[degrub]

Brian,

You are correct. i got my accidents mixed up. Here is part of the basis of my comment on the design issue though-

http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/nasa-report.pdf

page 95, I,S1

Nancy is usually pretty accurate.

i wasn't commenting on the numbers of accidents for either manufacturer, nor implying that the planes were "unsafe" since there are many factors that go into the creation of an accident, design being one of them. Both companies have had their share of design issues and maybe Boeing has changed their philosophy with the upcoming 787, don't know.

[Brian Ellis]

The Airbus philosophy of not using the control wheel movement for switching off autopilot is sensible. It would be too easy to switch it off by an undesired movement, such as the pilot knocking it accidentally when getting up for nature's call. Instead, they have a large, accessible switch in the normal thumb position on the wheel, so it needs a deliberate action, without risk of sending the plane into a nose dive!