Airbus Tanker loses boom during refueling

[Babalonian]

Some chick on the Pentagon's procurement staff for Air Tankers....

    


wrongway

It's like one of the largest and longest-lasting contracts to come along in a long time, everyone that wants the pot is playing hard ball, such as AB being accused of tickling some people in the pentagon that then conveniently dropped for them specs and documents on their competition's (Boeing's) proposed tanker very early on in the competition.  To me, that's real dirty.  At least with "the Pentagon Chick" Boeing can understandabley claim that they hired her based on a good and longstanding previous work relationship with her, especialy if an investigation proves there was nothing fishy going on otherwise (I do agree it is suspicious, but feasabley well intentioned).

[camnite]

now, i hope none of y'all take this against me, but i'm from mobile, the place where the kc-45 is planned to be built. ain't the 767 line behind like 4 years or something like that, and with the airbus being bigger, wouldn't be able to carry more fuel, cargo and passengers? lets not forget that airbus came in with a new boom design, verses boeing that is going to use the same design as the 135, accidents can and will happen during development. heck, an mechanical device can break until you work out the kinks. end rant

[Yeager]

all I can say is that this is Boeings sale to lose.  Just like the JSF bid.  If it does go to AB, which wouldn't at all surprise me,  then perhaps everyone will know once and for all what a piece of crap Phil Conduit was as CEO for letting McDonnell Douglas and Harry Stonecipher soil the once great name of Boeing.

[flight17]

now, i hope none of y'all take this against me, but i'm from mobile, the place where the kc-45 is planned to be built. ain't the 767 line behind like 4 years or something like that, and with the airbus being bigger, wouldn't be able to carry more fuel, cargo and passengers? lets not forget that airbus came in with a new boom design, verses boeing that is going to use the same design as the 135, accidents can and will happen during development. heck, an mechanical device can break until you work out the kinks. end rant

nobody can fault you for wanting to improve your local economy, as we all do, but i do have some issues with people thinking their economy should be the only one to be improved (that wasnt directed right at you) especially when a home grown bid could bring more jobs to more economies within our country.

now onto the a/c. the 767 is currently in low rate production, only 1 per month, but is set to have its output increase this year to help finish off the commercial backlog of ~50 a/c. Boeing just finished up assembling the 1000th 767 two weeks ago and every plane after that will be made in the new modify assembly line (they took half the building and turned it into part of the 787 assembly line. If they do get the contract then the increased rate is already in place for KC-767's to be immediately started in the production process.

you are thinking of the 787 i believe which currently is looking at a 3 year delay in certification and is also running on a low rate assembly line.

Now the KC-45 is signifcantly larger than the 767 so it can indeed hold more fuel and passengers/cargo. However the aircraft it is replacing is only the size of a 737-900. Yes i know it is pretty much a 707 (and no its not actually a 707), but i want to show a modern aircraft comparision. The 767 has a ~29% larger footprint than the KC-135 already but the KC-45 is about 81% larger than the KC-135. So there would be a big need to upgrade A LOT of bases to even be able to handle the KC-45 which the 767 can easily fit in without major mods. Also the KC-45 is considerably more expensive to buy and own which with our country's spending habbits, might not be the best decision. So it can hold more cargo and pax, which that could be taken advantage of, however the increase in fuel load is as big as an advantage as the A330 will burn more fuel to carry that fuel around than the 767 will. Also its offloadable fuel amount isnt that much greater than the 767's.

The KC45 would be a much better KC-10 replacement than a KC-135 replacement. However when it comes time for the KC-10 contract within the next decade, i hope Boeing's KC-777 aircraft wins! come on, you know a 777 would look SICK in AF colors!

now for the booms, you have it backwards. This is Airbus's first or MAYBE second generation boom. However this is Boeing's 5th generation boom which is all FBW. Boeing has continuously developed their booms over the years.

[Denholm]

Den,

Fly-By-Wire technology is proven.  There are other aircraft manufacturers that produce FBW airplanes as well and while I haven't spent a career flying them I did fly one such airplane for about 1000 hours in airline service.

It seems you're confusing multiple autopilots (as required for CAT III approaches that aren't hand flown via HUD or Heads Up Display) and adding in flight control laws, flight control computers and flight control disconnects to the mix as well.

Multiple autopilots still kick off with the little red button that you push with your thumb when you ask "what's it doing now?"

Flight control laws are built into the flight control computers and apply based on various levels of failures in the system.  This generally speaking provides stall protection, overstress protection, overspeed protection and roll protection in an Airbus.  They do more but that isn't really important.  These can be disabled but the only reason you'd ever need to in normal service would be if you wanted to do a roll in your airliner.  Since you don't want to do that, you leave em alone.  As systems fail or are load shed in an abnormal or emergency situation some of these control laws and their protections degrade or revert to lower levels until you're left with what amounts to raw data going to the FCU's.

Flight control computers, flight control units, actuators and such are all part of the flight control system and turn what the pilot inputs with the stick into movement and allows the airplane to fly in a conventional manner.  You don't really need to mess with it and if you do the airplane does it for you.

Flight control disconnects (Aileron, Elevator and Rudder) are common and depending on the type of certification the airplane was subjected to required to be installed.  The airplane I currently fly has Aileron and Elevator disconnects which enable the left and right sides to operate independently of one another in the event of a jam.  It's happened and these are honest to goodness levers that you pull to disconnect the interconnect between the yokes in the case of an elevator control jam.  This separates them and whichever sides cables are the ones that are stuck you can still manipulate the split elevator with the free side.  You have less control authority but you also don't die because you can't control the airplane which is a positive.  Roll disconnect in the same airplane take the aileron cables completely out of the loop and you steer the airplane with the pilot side yoke which has a built in RVDT (Rotary Variable Differential Transformer...aka Joystick Pot basically) which controls the left and right spoilers to give you roll control.  It's actuated by flipping a mechanical switch on the pilots yoke in the event of a jam and it enables the yoke to turn freely without engaging the clutch that actually moves the cables.

In other airplanes they can work similarly or differently (real deep, right?) but the end result is the same.  I've sat in the jumpseat of Boeing and Airbus airplanes enough to know that there isn't anything ceremonious about turning off the autopilot.  Click a button and she's gone with the aural announcement that the autopilot is off (required for certification after Eastern put their airplane into the Everglades when nobody knew the AP kicked off) which can be any number of voice messages of alert bells/chimes.  Once you click that button you're hand flying like you would any old airplane.

Thank you for the well-needed correction. I was referring to the fly-by-wire system which I confused with the A/P (as you already suggested). I still have an itchy feeling Airbus FBW systems were responsible for a few hundred deaths. Yet I'm not going to start another war of brain over electronics and Boeing vs. Airbus.

Once again, thank you for the much-needed systems lesson.

[F22RaptorDude]

I demand a video of this accident...is there one?

[Denholm]

If there is, no doubt YouTube has it.

[flight17]

I demand a video of this accident...is there one?

pilot error but im pretty sure the flight computer had some blame with it as well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EM0hDchVlY

plus it is thought that AF 447 might have had issues with its AP system.

I know a couple of times the flight law systems have failed which resulted in tailstrikes. AB's are hard wired though to not allow the aircraft to rotate past a point that they could have a tail strike. Boeing on the other hand adds tail skids which take the impact should the pilot over rotate.

[F22RaptorDude]

I see the first plane crash a ton, its all over You tube. As for the song, i used it in my Tybee island video 

[camnite]

flight17, mobile(pronounced moe-bill) isn't the only economy that would improve from this. i read somewhere that jobs would be helped all around the southeast and a good portion of the nation. i also read that one of the reasons boeing didn't win back in 07-08 was that thier plane design was already 10 years old at that point(purely conjecture).

as far as the winglet falling off is concerned, none of us really knows what the circumstances the two planes were in before or during the accident. we just have to let the engineers figure out the cause.


on a personal note, i just dont believe that it is wise to have most of america's planes built in one part of the nation, as demonstrated by german in ww2. and before anone says southerners cant build fliable aircraft, who built the saturnV rockets that got us to the moon?

[rpm]

who built the saturnV rockets that got us to the moon?

Germans?

[-tronski-]

pilot error but im pretty sure the flight computer had some blame with it as well

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EM0hDchVlY

plus it is thought that AF 447 might have had issues with its AP system.

I know a couple of times the flight law systems have failed which resulted in tailstrikes. AB's are hard wired though to not allow the aircraft to rotate past a point that they could have a tail strike. Boeing on the other hand adds tail skids which take the impact should the pilot over rotate.

UA 744's must not all have tail skids, one had a tail strike out of Sydney last year and I saw the patch work.
Also AP system problems aren't purely an Airbus problem, a MH B772 which is an excellent aircraft had a major issue out of Perth a number of years ago.

 Tronsky

[RTHolmes]

Germans?

 

[RufusLeaking]

… and with the airbus being bigger, wouldn't be able to carry more fuel, cargo and passengers?

My personal experience in the KC-135 with regards to cargo is that it is a secondary consideration.  A -135 with full fuel has no weight left for cargo.  The layout of the cargo door makes a scissor-lift required at both ends of the flight to get cargo on or off.  Either that, or the cargo has to be in small enough units to man handle onto the plane.  The only time cargo capacity comes into play is on deployments.  It was at a premium for the Desert Storm build up.  But, in practice, I refueled C-141s and C-5s more often than carrying the cargo myself. 

So there would be a big need to upgrade A LOT of bases to even be able to handle the KC-45 which the 767 can easily fit in without major mods.

Back in the SAC days, we had 12,000 foot long, 300 foot wide runways.  Most of those bases are closed, but they could easily handle any airplane. 

lets not forget that airbus came in with a new boom design, verses boeing that is going to use the same design as the 135, accidents can and will happen during development. heck, an mechanical device can break until you work out the kinks.

now for the booms, you have it backwards. This is Airbus's first or MAYBE second generation boom. However this is Boeing's 5th generation boom which is all FBW. Boeing has continuously developed their booms over the years.

Boeing has been doing this since the KC-97. I agree that Airbus can work out the kinks, but in process of grading the two options, Boeing vs. Airbus, the decades of experience has to count in favor of Boeing.

[Denholm]

...I know a couple of times the flight law systems have failed which resulted in tailstrikes. AB's are hard wired though to not allow the aircraft to rotate past a point that they could have a tail strike. Boeing on the other hand adds tail skids which take the impact should the pilot over rotate.

My discussion with airline pilots revealed that tail skids are there as a last resort. Should a pilot over-rotate, it's available to keep the tail off the ground. However, as an A343 pilot once told me, "It's worthless, just something to make you feel better."