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The cockpit of a a Airbus A380

You would think some sort of government agency would be against this after 9/11....

Very detailed layouts of buttons/gauges/etc.... and clearly able to be read.
 
We had one of those do a fly over at Pratt & Whitney in November.

Pratt's GP7000 engine (a voint venture with GE) is one of two engines that customers can choose for the A380.

It's an incredible aircraft, the largest passenger carrier in the world!
 
moki said:
The Air Pig! The A380 is turning into a pretty massive boondoggle for Airbus...
Click to expand...

I dunno Andrew, yes they had some problems with this but they're working through them and I think this will be a pretty darn good airplane in the future. It performs better than Boeing's 747-400 with respect to fuel useage and the large Asian carriers like Singapore Airlines are plannning on using these in their fleets in the near future. Emeriates Airlines is another big customer for these.

The GP7000 engine was derived from the PW4000 which are used on the newer Boeing 747s. Boeing is looking to replace the 747-400s with their new 747-8 which so far is only offered with GE engines.

I'm pulling for success of the A380 over the 747-8 for obvious reasons. ;)

So far, half of the firm orders for the A380 are fitted with Rolls Royce (Trent) engines on the other half are Pratt & Whitney/GE engines (GP7000).
 
CoventryCat86 said:
I dunno Andrew, yes they had some problems with this but they're working through them and I think this will be a pretty darn good airplane in the future. It performs better than Boeing's 747-400 with respect to fuel useage and the large Asian carriers like Singapore Airlines are plannning on using these in their fleets in the near future. Emeriates Airlines is another big customer for these.
Click to expand...

Time will tell, of course, but... Airbus has already had to pay out billions in fines to airlines who ordered the A380 because of the delays:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-154723592.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/04/another_a380_delay/

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/sto.../aw111306p2.xml

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews...965279820070309

...and it's only gotten worse in 2007. There have been a number of cancelled ordered, UPS being one of them... and EADS is left with zero orders for the freight version of the A380.

I also think Airbus simply guessed the market wrong. The Boeing Dreamliner is going to clean up, IMHO. People would much rather be able to fly non-stop point to point to regional airports than wait to load up the massive A380, and fly into the few major hubs that can accommodate it, and then wait again to de-plane and hop on a regional jet to take them to their destination city.

Certainly you could argue that the A380 has a market in long-flight overseas travel... and you'd probably be right. Even then, few airports are equipped to handle it.

The A380, despite the delays and woes, is a nice bit of engineering... but I think it will end up being a misguided one. It'll sell for niche use for certain long-haul routes, and it'll sell to billionaires who want to travel with their entire entourage... but I think the Dreamliner will end up being seen by history as the better decision.
 
moki said:
This is a pretty interesting article as well: Airbus A380 - Big Mistake For A Big Airplane?

I'm sure there are counterpoint articles as well, but only time will tell. If I were betting, I'd bet against the A380 ever turning a profit for EADS though.
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I think the writer of that article is pretty much an a$$hole. It's kinda funny, I never realized they had spin masters in the commercial airplane field like this chucklehead. :laugh: LMAO, people talk about misinformation and propaganda in the political world, this guy takes the cake. He reminds me of James Carville, long on opinionated bullshit and extremely short on substance. :rolleyes:

He makes a series of stupid and asinine statements like trying to compare a 787 with an A380. That's like saying a Cadillac strech limousine and a Ford Taurus are competing against one another for market share. :rolleyes: The 787 Dreamliner is pretty much a replacement for the 767. The 747 and the A380 are much more like one another than either is to the 787. I don't argue that in today's market the 767/787 are probably more useful to many customers than a 747 or an A380 but again, they are really two separate markets, like my Ford Taurus and Cadillac stretch limo example.

Yep, Airbus has certainly had it's problems with this program but it's not like this is the first program in the history of passenger jets that has had it's share of problems. Now that I think about it, I don't know if any totally new airplane project went perfectly smooth from the get go.

Then of course you have Rolls Royce who went into receivership in the 1970s caused pretty much by their pathetic inability to develop their RB211 engine in the late 1960s. They were lucky enough to become a welfare case of the British Government and survive.

Who knows Andrew, maybe EADS will get lucky like that too if the A380 program is as bad as the know-it-all market analyst Mr. "Boeing777" claims it is. Then Boeing will know how it feels to compete against a European welfare case with endlessly deep pockets like Pratt & Whitney and GE have had to with Rolls Royce! :laugh:
 
Ugh, I couldn't imagine flying on that thing unless it's a 12+ hour intercontinental flight. But, I guess that's the niche market these are designed for. Just imagine waiting for everyone (and their bags!) to get on and off that thing...

---John Holmes...
 
I went through the Rolls mess in the early '70's as a young avionics engineer with one of the L1011 launch customers (EAL). Turned out to be a good aircraft even with the delay but bad for Lockheed. Was with another operator who had the A380 freighter version on order (FedEx). Was not looking forward to that introduction after having been through introductions of A300 to the US, B757, and MD11. I retired then the order was cancelled. The pain was always with early reliability and learning curve problems. Some were worse that others.

Nothing like this to bring back memories both good and bad.

Terry
 
CoventryCat86 said:
Yep, Airbus has certainly had it's problems with this program but it's not like this is the first program in the history of passenger jets that has had it's share of problems. Now that I think about it, I don't know if any totally new airplane project went perfectly smooth from the get go.
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Agreed... but weren't Airbus's failures with the A380 directly responsible for EADS losing about $10 billion in share value? It's a moot point, to an extent, since as you noted it's all back by the welfare state of several countries (France and Germany being the principles), but the Airbus A380 has to date seemed rather like a boondoggle I think.

The downside of being backed by a welfare state is that Airbus is also a political organization; jobs will HAVE to stay in France, work will HAVE to be split among France, Germany, England, etc. That may affect their competitiveness.

Anyway, I think it'd be fun to fly an A380... but I think odds are good that I'll be spending more time on Dreamliners in the future, just because I think they will do better in the market. Clearly they serve two slightly different needs, but I think the usage patterns do overlap, it's just that the philosophy is different.
 
moki said:
CoventryCat86 said:
I dunno Andrew, yes they had some problems with this but they're working through them and I think this will be a pretty darn good airplane in the future. It performs better than Boeing's 747-400 with respect to fuel useage and the large Asian carriers like Singapore Airlines are plannning on using these in their fleets in the near future. Emeriates Airlines is another big customer for these.
Click to expand...

Time will tell, of course, but... Airbus has already had to pay out billions in fines to airlines who ordered the A380 because of the delays:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-154723592.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/04/another_a380_delay/

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/sto.../aw111306p2.xml

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews...965279820070309

...and it's only gotten worse in 2007. There have been a number of cancelled ordered, UPS being one of them... and EADS is left with zero orders for the freight version of the A380.

I also think Airbus simply guessed the market wrong. The Boeing Dreamliner is going to clean up, IMHO. People would much rather be able to fly non-stop point to point to regional airports than wait to load up the massive A380, and fly into the few major hubs that can accommodate it, and then wait again to de-plane and hop on a regional jet to take them to their destination city.

Certainly you could argue that the A380 has a market in long-flight overseas travel... and you'd probably be right. Even then, few airports are equipped to handle it.

The A380, despite the delays and woes, is a nice bit of engineering... but I think it will end up being a misguided one. It'll sell for niche use for certain long-haul routes, and it'll sell to billionaires who want to travel with their entire entourage... but I think the Dreamliner will end up being seen by history as the better decision.
Click to expand...

The same can be said about the Boeing 787. Nothing but delays for that plane as well.
 
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