I've flown on the A380, would probably fly on them again if I had a chance. I think that every time you board a plane you risk your life, may as well be on a gigantic awesome plane. gear pockets under the window on the top level ROCK MY WORLD.

^^ Ditto that. :)

giant steel tube

If it was made of steel it wouldn't get in the air to start with.

Yes, some metallic aircraft components are designed to crack and can have up to 100+ mm long cracks depending on the component.

A lot of newer aircraft have composite structural components. Composite components cannot fail in any way, because they tend to fail catastrophically when they do.

If you're scared of cracks etc, then you wouldn't fly on any aircraft. Trust me, I've seen many boeings through various stages of heavy maintenance, done plenty of inspections myself and found plenty of problems. The problems / cracks they're talking about aren't the wing rib, it's the little angle foot that attaches the rib to the skin. Same thing happens in boeings.

Now if the cracks occurred actually in the rib or the skin that was inches long, you have a serious problem. We found one like that in a 747 that was bought from Malaysian or Asiana airlines, it was a fatigue crack that was caused from use of steel scrapers, scraping out sealant from a joint. Steel scraper and. Aluminium skin = bad news. Combined with pressurization cycles, the gouges turn into cracks.

That aircraft is no longer flying for my employer, can speculate as to reasons why they decided to withdraw it from services and keep older ones flying, but I dont know officially.

http://www.pprune.org/dg-p-reporting-points/103593-qf-b744s-vh-oec-vh-oed-grounded.html

I don't recall the same level of media at the time..



last edited by cainer at 18:56:20 09/Feb/12

so, Qantas has grounded one of its (although in some media reports it sounds like all, but i'll go with the newsradio report for that tid bit)

it seems there are a few schools of thinking the European air agency has ordered all A380's to be checked and so forth

Airbus maintains the aircraft is safe, and there is no risk,

now I know that on race cars there are stress parts that are designed to "crack" or so cracks and not snap, (easier to find cracks in parts that might be failing, than to, without warning have a part fail, and I can only guess wings on modern aircraft are the same in design)

so in this sort of thing where the manufacturer is saying that a product is safe,
the users relaying on the product to deliver a service
and an agency having concerns

it sounds like the early comet jets (but no loss of airframes/lifes at this point)

how do people feel about this, would you (if you have the choice) fly on an A380, or would you go on a different aircraft?

Firstly, forget media they only have 1/1000th of any story, most times it's wrong or a beat up.

Don't make comparisons between low tech "race cars" and high tech "aircraft design".

I've never thought planes of this size were sensible. 500-800 dead in a single flight? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

Airbus

Main thing to check is that the plane hasn't just been serviced :) Most accidents (mechanical at least) happen straight after the plane has had a routine service.

I've never thought planes of this size were sensible. 500-800 dead in a single flight? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

If it's still doing more than one flight per day then it's hardly "all your eggs in one basket". It's not like you can simply just add more aeroplanes to all routes, air congestion is a real concern.

For all of those people absurdly scared of airline travel, look up the Discovery documentary 'Worlds Biggest Airliner'.

It's specifically about the Airbus A380, and the tolerances and stresses that aircraft has been built to withstand, it should really put to rest all of the 'having all of your eggs in one basket' worries.

This won't address people's concerns when it comes to air crew's maintenance, or pilot error; but if these things still genuinely concern you, do some research and learn about the fail safes that are put in place.

Whilst the show 'Mayday' / 'Aircrash investigations' show essentially only 'worst case scenarios' it should be noticed that whenever there is a significant accident, the entire airline industry sits up and pays attention (as do government airline safety authorities).

All in all, as 'un-natural' as powered flight might feel, the entire airline industry is watching what all of the operators, manufacturers, pilots and passenger's are doing to ensure that a 800 person incident doesn't occur.


Every time QANTAS grounds an aircraft, or lands minutes after takeoff, remember... this is that larger safety system at work.

I've never thought planes of this size were sensible. 500-800 dead in a single flight? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

JAL 123 crashed killing 520 people on a 747.

I've never thought planes of this size were sensible. 500-800 dead in a single flight? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

Why would less people die if we split them up into lots of smaller planes?

wicker basket, it will get thru the scanner

I myself wouldn't have an issue flying on the aircraft, at this time, however from a business point of view, I would expect to be get better mileage out of the part on such a new aircraft, no idea how much time it would take to repair/replace these parts, but it would be a fair bit of time on the ground I would think

it also poses a problem when/if this plane makes it into the cheaper airlines, where there will be greater loads of people on the aircraft, (therefore I would guess higher weights, and loadings) also pilot training isn't always to the same standard of the current operators

hardware, back of a c-130, or a black hawk is uncomfortable

a 767 in the tailend of a cyclone, is uncomfortable,


most airtravel I have undertaken has been (aside from the above) pretty good,
apart from one time years ago, i had a major tooth infection (I didn't know it at the time) and the change in pressure after a 2 hour flight, was killer

Yeah I don't buy into "oh dw gaise it's rly saife" how many people have drunk that kool-aid before ending up swimming with the fishes?

The main part I dislike is the waiting till something catastrophic happens and going "oh now we know lol" I'm sure that's a real big consolation to the families of the dead.

That all said, If I want to go somewhere I'll chance it that the maintenance cunts did in fact follow the entire checklist instead of going "fuck it, we're on smoko, she'll be right"