What's up with Airbus?

[FTJR]

09.05.2005 Mandala Airlines Boeing 737-230(Adv) 101 died

I forgot this bit, in the rush to compare the 2 manufacturers crash record dont forget the pilots/ground staff, who on the above occassion combined to cause this crash. The ground staff overloaded the plane by 2000 kilos, and the pilots forgot to set the takeoff flap.  Its not the planes fault it got to the end of the runway and wasn't ready to fly.

Ravels, with respect  to your Qantas mate, well IF he equates finely engineered to cheap and nasty, well I dont think thats the case.

However, his life cycles comment has some merit. As the airbus IS a high maintenance machine,  I dont think you'll see too many airbus bumping around the skies of the 3rd world, like you do the old -200. When Indian Airlines A320's start falling apart then Ill take notice, since I am pretty sure they are the oldest fleet in service, and in a fairly harsh environment

But we're in the 21st century now, when Airbus come out with their fly by wire it  was a jump in technology and faith. Now Boeing have their own version of it, and have improved on the Airbus version. Everyone has their own view (as planely seen here) but every year there is improvement in aviation design/manufacturing from lessons learnt over the recent years. Composites is a big one of those advancements, so we will have to live with aeroplanes made less robust than they were 20years ago. Lets just all hope that aircraft crashes for whatever cause decrease.

regards

[straffo]

Originally posted by ravells
The americans build things with lots of over engineered and inefficent redundacy (Cadillac) the Europeans build them with panache (Ferrari) ... if there was a collision, I'd want to be in the Caddilac.

Ravs

Well in my case I prefer to be in the Volvo/Mercedes you didn't mention

[Holden McGroin]

You misspelled Volvo... it's spelled f-o-r-d

[Yeager]

Why did they go with AIRBUS as a name anyway.  Riding a bus is not traveling in style if you know what I mean.  Might as well be AIRTAXI...or AIRRAIL.....

What would a good name be today for Airbus?  something that has some class...

Dassault sounded pretty cool.  Hell...Luftwaffe sounded cool.

Come on folks, chime in here.  Lets give Airbus a name worthy of a great copier of Boeing!  

[deSelys]

Originally posted by Chitownflyer
...
Now this was demonstrated a few years back, when an Airbus was taking
off and then the onboard computers, for their own reasons, decided that
the plane should be in “landing mode”… on film you see the Airbus
taking off, and promptly landing in the grove of trees and crashing and
burning.  The PIC being helpless to do any thing but go along for the ride.
...

Now this is a seriously misinformed statement: this happened during an airshow and the pilot was "showing off" and ended up doing a gross mistake, putting the plane beyond its limits.

[Scootter]

Originally posted by deSelys
Now this is a seriously misinformed statement: this happened during an airshow and the pilot was "showing off" and ended up doing a gross mistake, putting the plane beyond its limits.

How is a "go around" putting any plane beyond its limits??

I dont want an aircraft to continue to land when I want a go around, but that is just me.

The plane was NOT put beyond its limits, the programing of the computer was, there is the problem.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I felt really safe was when I was 14 years old and we picked up a brand new Boeing 737 from Seattle

How old are you? If it was a first generation 737 you could well have died on that maiden flight as it sports a flawed elevator control valve. If the valve freezes during landing the action is reversed and the pilot will lawndart the plane when the controls push down as he pulls the stick up.



So you see, feeling and being are two different beasts.

[cpxxx]

Originally posted by Scootter
How is a "go around" putting any plane beyond its limits??

I dont want an aircraft to continue to land when I want a go around, but that is just me.

The plane was NOT put beyond its limits, the programing of the computer was, there is the problem.

The laws of physics applied in the Air France Airbus case. There is no appeal when it comes to the laws of physics. You are right, the aircraft was NOT put beyond it's limits.  When the pilot went to go around, our old friend inertia came into play. It takes a critical few seconds to stop the descent, level and then climb. Unfortunately there was a forest in the way.

The accident happened because the pilot tried to go around too late. That will kill anyone whether in a Boeing or Airbus.

It is true to say that the same accident wouldn't happen in a contemporary Boeing. Simply because the pilot would never made such  a low, slow, high alpha pass. In an Airbus, you can because of the built in stall prevention.  

This whole Airbus/Boeing argument is all very amusing. But at the end of the day both manufacturers make excellent aircraft with a superb safety record. I could care less about the manufacturer. I'm more interested in the fares I pay and the safety record of the airline flying them.  Of course I have no patriotic interest either as neither are built in my country.

[Ripsnort]

Originally posted by Yeager
Why did they go with AIRBUS as a name anyway.  Riding a bus is not traveling in style if you know what I mean.  Might as well be AIRTAXI...or AIRRAIL.....

What would a good name be today for Airbus?  something that has some class...

Dassault sounded pretty cool.  Hell...Luftwaffe sounded cool.

Come on folks, chime in here.  Lets give Airbus a name worthy of a great copier of Boeing!  

Airbus is a copy of a Boeing name, I'll take a picture when I get home of the first 747 on its maiden flight, the name on the plane, believe it or not, is "Airbus".

[beet1e]

See Rules #4, #5

[ravells]

Originally posted by straffo
Well in my case I prefer to be in the Volvo/Mercedes you didn't mention

Well if it was a choice between being in a volvo and a boeing in a collision, I'd probably pick the volvo

We always had volvos in our family when I was a kid. One of them was an estate car we had for 8 years and never gave us any trouble. Back in the 1970s I was in the boot of the estate along with some other kids when my mum hit a Toyota. We had a scratch on the bumper, the Toyota was a write off. It's a shame Volvo don't make planes!

Beetle! Good to see you!

Ravs

[eagl]

ravells,

One of the reason that volvo was so safe was because some of the euro car manufacturers caught on to the concept of having the body dissipate and distribute the force of an impact around the whole car except for the passenger compartment.  One manufacturer, either volvo or bmw or mercedes, went so far as to set the passenger compartment in a steel cage, attached to the rest of the car and floor pan with shear bolts.  In the event of a major impact, the passenger compartment would partially detach and lift as the force of the impact was taken by the rest of the car.

This had an unfortunate side effect though...  On rare occasions, these cars would be involved in a relatively minor impact causing no visible damage, but the car would be in fact totalled.  The impact would be transferred to these deliberately weak links, and they'd fail even though there was pretty much no external evidence except for clues like the doors not closing quite right, the gas/brake pedals being slightly out of place, etc.

Under the car though, if you knew where to look you could find major buckling and sheared bolts, as it was designed to do.  A very safe design, but an impact that might be repairable in other less advanced cars could total one of these.

[ravells]

Thanks Eagl, that's news to me...I just thought they were built like tanks.

We sold her in the end not because she was failing but because they just wern't making spare parts for her anymore and my parents were worried about maintenance costs.  Blow me, when I saw her some 6 years later painted blue and still driving around the streets of Kuala Lumpur!

Ravs

[MrRiplEy[H]]

9 out of 10 Volvos ever made are still being used in traffic.

[eagl]

If you get a good one, some of those older cars will just keep running forever.

My parents got a 1980 Ford Fairmont wagon in a year that was later determined to be a banner year for lemon law enforcement, and their car model was usually considered a complete piece of crap.  Strangely enough though, they managed to get the exact right combination of options and avoided almost all of the problems.  They had the 3-speed auto which never gave them real problems except for simply wearing out after 120k miles of hauling trailers up mountains, etc., the 255 V8 which was waaaay overbuilt and only died because my Dad didn't change the oil often enough and it chucked a rod at 105k miles, and the rest of the car was pretty much stripped of options except they got the "squire" model which had crappy fake wood paneling and a nice bonus, a thick and very effective underbody coating from the factory.

Due to the coating, the car went 20 years in southern california and colorado without rusting.  They coated almost the entire underbody and bottom 12 inches of the doors, unlike most cars today which only get underbody coatings in specific "problem areas".  It survived almost 200k miles (on it's second engine and second transmission) and several coast to coast road trips, when my sister in law wrecked it.

It needed some interior work due to the fabrics and vinyl falling apart, but there was pretty much nothing mechanically wrong with the car after all that time.  If it hadn't been crashed, it would probably still be running.  Yea, I had to swap out the occasional part, but never anything that I couldn't do in a parking lot with the toolkit I kept in the car.