Re: A380 troubles, the latest news...
Posted: Sat Mar 10, 2018 3:07 pm
Air Safety Discussion Forum
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German investor to sell unwanted A380 superjumbos for parts
Reuters News 06/05/2018
Author: Tim Hepher
SYDNEY (Reuters) - A German investment company said on Tuesday it planned to sell the components of two unwanted Airbus A380 superjumbo jets, in an apparent move to send the world's largest jetliner to the breakers yard for the first time due to slack demand.
Dortmund-based Dr Peters Group said it had decided to sell the parts of aircraft returned by Singapore Airlines after failing to negotiate new leases with airlines including British Airways, IranAir and HiFly. It did not say how many jets were involved but said they were spread between two funds.
Nice! The only IFE I'm interested in is a window.The WAMOS 747 was described by passengers as “out of the 1980’s”, with stained seats, no working TV screens...
Seems logical. They should have asked BBie to slightly open a hatch......and ashtrays in the armrests. One flight had to return to the UK after reporting ‘smoke in the cabin.’
Source: https://www.airlineratings.com/news/emi ... l-landing/StratoCruizing November 14, 2018 at 4:58 pm
A comment from ‘The Armchair”. A CB that carries that amount of Hail / Water would Paint a seriously Red Return and should be Avoided at All Costs. A TS that returns this sort WX on a Radar, would have a High Probability of possible Microbursts and Windshear. Damage to the Aircraft Structure and Changing Cross Wind Components on Touch Down are also associated with Servere CBs. I would choice not to fly with any Carrier whose Pilots are prepared to Risk an Approach in these Conditions. Was it a ‘commercial’ Decision to continue or was the Radar Return Intencity Outer Knob on the ND not correctly selected.
Yeah, unlike the Flybe ones I guess [facepalm] [nono]"... However, pilots on board the Emirates A380 arriving from Dubai, position the aircraft an angle to deal with the winds]
Crosswind videos are awesome things.Yeah, unlike the Flybe ones I guess [facepalm] [nono]"... However, pilots on board the Emirates A380 arriving from Dubai, position the aircraft an angle to deal with the winds]
Regardless, anything, but don't tell me that they did not "position the aircraft an angle to deal with the winds".I would bet a beer that those two go-arounds were due to either momentary wind shears or perhaps the crosswind exceeding the maximum crosswind limits established by the company, but NOT the scientific aeroengineers,
BUT NOT_
_the skill of the pilots
OR
_the abilities of the aircrafts.
I blame the GLARE.Airbus Confirms Discussions With Emirates About A380 Order
Aviation Week & Space Technology 01/31/2019
Author: Jens Flottau
FRANKFURT—Airbus said in a regulatory filing released Jan. 31 that it is in “commercial discussions with Emirates Airline in relation to its A380 contract” following two reports that the airline may ditch all or part of a follow-up order for the aircraft.
Termination of the contract could force Airbus to shut down the program, a move the manufacturer seriously considered before securing the latest commitment from the type’s—by far—largest customer.
News agencies Bloomberg and Reuters reported that Emirates was close to ditching the order fully or partly because it sees itself unable to reach an agreement with Rolls-Royce over the terms of a deal that would see the British manufacturer deliver Trent 900 engines. Emirates and Rolls-Royce have been in negotiations about the purchase for well over a year now. Talks have collapsed temporarily before. They were made more complicated by a bitter dispute over how alleged performance shortfalls of the Trent 900 on Emirates’ existing fleet should be compensated.
Instead of taking more A380s, Emirates could decide to order smaller A350s. The airline had once bought 70 of the latest Airbus twin widebody, but cancelled the deal in 2014 over concerns the engine might not reach the expected performance targets. Emirates has since also committed to the competing Boeing 787.
Airbus said details of the discussions with Emirates remained confidential. Emirates said it doesn’t “comment on talks which are ongoing.”
Since the launch of the program in 2000, airlines have ordered just 321 A380s, far below initial expectations that saw the aircraft became the main model for hub-to-hub traffic. Of the 321 aircraft, 234 have been delivered at the end of December 2018 and 232 remain in operation. Two former Singapore Airlines aircraft are in the process of being parted out.
The 87 aircraft yet to be delivered include a total of 53 more A380s for Emirates. The 20 additional firm aircraft the airline committed to at the beginning of 2018 helped Airbus secure production at a low and loss-making rate of six aircraft per year for several years. Airbus opted to continue the line hoping for a pick-up in demand in the second half of the next decade. However, the aircraft will have been 20 years in service by then with no major upgrades as Airbus decided to not go ahead with a re-engining program Emirates had intensively lobbied for.
Senior executives also made clear at the time that without the additional Emirates deal Airbus would seek to terminate production of its biggest commercial jet.
The backlog still includes commitments of carriers like Qantas and Virgin Atlantic, though each have said they are not interested in taking (more) A380s. Also, contractual terms with Airbus allow lessor Amedeo to only take its aircraft once it has placed them with operators. Amedeo technically has 20 aircraft on firm order, the bulk of the non-Emirates backlog.
Industry sources believe Airbus CEO Tom Enders could terminate the A380 before his term at the top of the company ends in April allowing his successor Guillaume Faury to start with a cleaned-up portfolio of commercial aircraft. Airbus would likely incur substantial financial penalties if it went ahead with the shutdown.
Glare is a multilayer sandwich of alumining and glass/resin, which is all well and good, but one of the things you have to plan for is can
your material handle the current density of a lightening strike?
What concerns me about glare is the possibility of explosive de-lamination in the event of a lightning strike. it isn't all that unusual for a lightning strike to burn a hole at the entry or exit point in the aluminum skin. On most aircraft, you just patch the aluminum skin, and you are done. On glare, the vaporized aluminum is likely to delaminate, and resin are huge producers of gas when overheated, to the point that they are used in blow up protectors to protect high voltage lines. The strike flashes over the blowout protector, which is lined with resin. The resin just about explodes from the heat, and literally blows out the arc. It is very impressive to watch.
Explosive de-lamination in the area of the wing box is likely to have very unpleasant consequences because of the loads being carried. Same problem on the wings. The further you get away from the wing box, the smaller the loads being carried, and the less of a concern the delamination is likely to be.
- - -
Glare is built like a multi-layer capacitor! In addition to the possible vaporization of the resin, the negatively-charged aluminum "plates" would be electrostatically repelled from each other.
OTOH, it's inconceivable to me that lightning strikes weren't considered by the A380's design engineers. And airliner certification requires extensive lightning-strike testing. However, it's possible that the mix-and-match of aluminum and Glare on the A380 is related to lightning tolerance.
Be interesting to see if Boeing has some clever (i.e. lightweight) way of handling the lightning issue on their 787, other than by embedding a metal
mesh.
Sounds delicious!Glare is a multilayer sandwich of alumining and glass/resin
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... umbo-orderAirbus A380 Gets Another Blow as Qantas Scraps Superjumbo Order
By Angus Whitley
February 6, 2019, 5:56 PM PST
Airbus SE’s long-suffering A380 superjumbo was dealt another blow after Qantas Airways Ltd. formally canceled an outstanding order for the out-sized aircraft whose future is once again on the line.
The Australian airline, one of the initial operators of the double-decker plane, scrubbed an order for eight aircraft, which has a list price in excess of $445 million. Sydney-based Qantas had been pushing back the 2006 commitment for the Airbus aircraft for years. In a statement Thursday, Qantas, however, said it will upgrade its existing fleet of 12 A380s, starting this year.
“These aircraft have not been part of the airline’s fleet and network plans for some time,” Qantas said in its statement, referring to the 2006 order.
The formal scrapping of the order puts the future of the flagship program in further doubt. Gulf carrier Emirates, the primary operator of the superjumbo, may convert some or all of its most recent 20 orders for the jet into smaller A350s, people familiar with the matter have said. That switch would slash Airbus’s order backlog of its largest passenger aircraft.
Qantas has had a fractured relationship with the A380. The airline made global headlines in late 2010, when an A380 en route from Singapore suffered a mid-flight engine explosion that ripped through the wing, though the aircraft returned to the airport safely and nobody was seriously hurt. Qantas grounded its fleet of A380s for a few weeks immediately after the incident.
For all its imposing size and commanding presence in the skies, the A380 hasn’t managed to leave much of an imprint with most airlines, relegated instead to an afterthought for carriers who built their stables around nimbler planes.
Since entering commercial service a decade back, the A380 has faced an ever-shrinking fan base. Passengers love the plane for its modern layout, perks like spacious bars in business class and even enclosed cabins and showers in some first-class offerings, gladiator fights, dancing women in cages, and public executions, but airlines have been much harder to win over. Some early prospective customers dropped out, others scaled back their order book. Only Emirates became a true champion of the A380, building a large part of its globe-spanning fleet around the plane, with already more than 100 in operation.
Airbus to give update on A380 shutdown plans: sources
Reuters News 02/12/2019
Author: Tim Hepher
PARIS (Reuters) - Airbus is nearing a decision to axe production of the world’s largest airliner and may give an update with full-year earnings on Feb. 14, industry sources and analysts said.
The fate of the A380 superjumbo has been in doubt since a vital order from Emirates foundered over inconclusive engine talks, forcing Airbus and the airline to weigh an alternative plan that would trigger a premature halt to A380 production.
Under the proposed reshuffle, first reported by Reuters, Airbus hopes to broker a deal that would see Emirates switch part of its order to smaller models like the A350 or A330, while eking out a few last-minute A380 orders from British Airways.
The timing of any final announcement may be driven by the outcome of those talks, but Airbus will be under pressure to provide some clarity on its plans in time for Thursday’s earnings following mounting speculation over the plane’s future.
“The A380 is the elephant in the hangar; it will be impossible to avoid saying something on the subject,” said Agency Partners analyst Sash Tusa, who predicted last week that a decision to shut the loss-making program may be imminent.
The A380 is already on life support due to weak sales. Barring a surprise breakthrough in stalled engine talks between Emirates and Rolls-Royce, the A380’s French and German factories are unlikely to survive beyond 2020, analysts say.
Any decision to pull the plug on the iconic European double-decker after just 12 years in service must be approved by the Airbus board, which meets on Wednesday.
Airbus declined to comment ahead of Thursday’s earnings.
Frankly, I thought it was done when FedEx canceled their order. When an airplane that large can't be efficiently operated even as a freighter, one get serious doubts if there is an economic case for it at all.