No Airbus A380 wings are going anywhere -- simmer on down folks.
“If it bleeds it leads” — a nice classic saying of writing sensational stories to get more traffic.
When I first heard of small cracks being found on Qantas and Singapore Airlines A380s I read up on it and found it to be a non-issue and not really worthy of writing a story. The majority of media covered it the way that they should — that cracks were found and they are no big deal. Some examples:
Then I start seeing more and more sensational headlines that were very misleading and it started to frustrate me. They acted like planes were going to start falling out of the sky and everyone needs to panic. Some of those examples:
What interests me is that those “some say,” and “engineers” all turn out to be the same one person in all these stories…
“We can’t continue to gamble with people’s lives and hope they make it until their four-year inspection,’ said Steve Purvinas, federal secretary for the Australian Licensed Aircraft Engineers Association.
What almost all the news sources do not say is that Purvinas’ organization has been fighting against Qantas’ decision to outsource maintenance jobs. Interesting huh? It would seem to me that this guy and the ALAEA might have an agenda.
Safeskies (an organization specializes in airline safety) chairman David Forsyth stated that, “I doubt the ALAEA union which made the comments, is technically trained or qualified to argue against Airbus structural design engineers about cracks in their aircraft. Airbus will investigate these cracks and promulgate an inspection program, agreed by the safety Regulators.” He continued with, “Using safety as a weapon in IR disputes, without reasonable grounds, is like the boy who cried wolf. Repeated ad nauseam, the impact will lessen over time, and if eventually there is a valid safety issue, it might be dismissed as just another rant.”
Airbus has confirmed the cracks, but stated that they are not a safety issue. “We have traced the origin to a material-related manufacturing issue and developed an inspection and repair procedure which will be done during routine, scheduled, maintenance checks. This is not a safety issue. Aircraft performance is not affected. Any fix, if necessary, can be done during regular (4 year) maintenance.”
Every single airliner ever build has had issues that do not affect safety. Aircraft manufactures issue thousands of service bulletins and the huge majority of them are very minor.
This really is a non-story that should have never received much coverage outside airline trade journals. Yet, it was too tempting for some journalists and their editors to write that an engineer stated that the fleet of A380s should be grounded. The airline business is a disproportionately mis-represented business already and stories like this do not help the situation.
I wish I had some additional news to share about Aviation Geekfest 2012, but right now the Future of Flight and I are still working things out and since nothing has been 100% locked down, I am unable to share the details. I can say that #AGF12 should be bigger and better than any one before it and I am very excited.
It looks like it will probably start either late morning or early afternoon and go into the evening on Sunday February 19th. There were will be parts where you must sign up (because of limited space) , but others when anyone and everyone can show up (later in the event).
We aren’t sure what will happen right now, but I can tell you that something WILL be happening — so make plans to be here.
What you can do for now is sign up for the #AGF12 mailing list. By signing up, you will make sure to hear about all the updates as soon as we have them. Although I will keep updating my blog about details, it is best to be on the list since there were will be limited slots for the really cool stuff and you do not want to be late to register.
Waiting for your luggage at baggage claim can be a real drag. Passengers who just arrived just after midnight on Christmas day at Qubec City Jean Lesage International Airport received a special little surprise.
While the 36 passengers waited for their luggage, wrapped packages starting coming out, each with one of their names on it.
“People were very surprised. They were waiting for their luggage and when they saw the first gifts, they watched in disbelief. One of them found that each box was labeled in the name of a passenger and all began to make the distribution supported by our employees,” said Jonathan Trudeau, airport spokesperson.
The presents ended up being fleece blankets with “YQB” embroidered on them (the airport’s code). The flight was the first one of Christmas day and the airport wanted to celebrate with something a bit different.
Thanks to James Burke for pointing this story out to me. Note that the original story was in French and I used Google to translate — meaning the quote might not be spot on.
While in Toronto, I quickly caught glimpse of a livery I was not a fan of. I wasn’t able to catch the name, but after a little research I found it to be Sunwing Airlines. It took a bit longer to actually find what their “real” livery was, since there were quite a few hodge-podge mixture of different liveries. Some examples: Viking, TUIfly, Hapag-Lloyd, Thompsonfly, Boeing Green, Euro Atlantic, did I miss any? It became obvious that this airline likes to lease planes. I actually had to go to their website to make sure what their “real” livery was and it turns out, it is the one I saw in Toronto.
With leasing out so many planes, of course they need to keep their livery simple, but this one just doesn’t work for me. I think what really bothers me is having the words on the fuselage and then on the tail where they are hard to read. I really like their sun logo and think it would have looked nice on the tail. Also, for some reason the engines being blue bothers my eye — they probably would have look better orange. I mean this is by no means a horrible livery, but a few simple changes could really make it shine.
Although fun for airline spotters, it does make it kind of hard for your customers to know your brand when there are so many different looks, but I guess that is the down side to leasing aircraft from airlines.
Sunwing was founded in 2005 and operates a fleet of about 20 aircraft (all Boeing 737-800s). According to their website they are, “Canada’s leading high frills, low cost airline.” They call their high frills the Champagne Service, which actually gives a lot of complimentary things not seen on most airlines today (like champagne, food, headsets and more). They operated scheduled and charter service to the US, Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, South America and of course Canada.
Have any of you flown them and can describe how the Champagne Service was? Seems like if you can get past the mediocre livery, the flight experience is not too shabby and really that is what matters most right?
The very first Airbus A340 takes shape inside their factory. Photo from Airbus.
I have always loved the look of the Airbus A340. In the early days of jet airlines, seeing a single-deck plane with four engines on the wing was common. By the time the A340 first flew on October 25, 1991, there weren’t too many Boeing 707s or Douglas DC-8s flying around. Even for the amateur aviation enthusiast, it has always been quite easy to spot an A340.
The engines might provide an easy tell on what kind of aircraft it was, but they also drained a lot of fuel. Airlines started to opt for two engine Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s instead of the A340. Due to a lack of demand, Airbus officially announced the end to the aircraft due to a, “changing market dynamic,” (aka no orders) on November 10, 2011.
Although Airbus is no longer making the A340, there are still four that are left to be delivered. Two are set to go to VIP customers and two were ordered by Kingfisher Airlines. It is not certain when the final four will be delivered, but I am going to bet that Kingfisher might never take delivery of their two A340s due to their current financial difficulties.
The first Airbus A340-600 takes off in Airbus livery. Photo from Airbus.
Well, times have changed with ETOPS certification and today, two engine aircraft can fly much farther away from land than they used to. When the A340 was first produced, many passengers (and probably even airlines) were weary of flying over water with two engines and the Boeing 777 wasn’t even in production.
As Boeing Randy Tinseth points out in his blog, Airbus used creative advertising to possibly play off the fears of passengers who might not want to fly over the open seas using a two-engined aircraft. Obviously any fear that people might have had was put to rest with the success of many airliners who have successfully flown over open waters with only two engines.
Lufthansa Airbus A340-642 D-AIHE Leverkusen. Photo by Thomas Becker.
There were a total of 379 of the A340 ordered and 365 are still in service today. Lufthansa Airlines is the largest operator of the A340 with 51 currently in service.
“Technological achievements during the last years today allow to operate aircraft of the size of the A340-300 efficiently with two engines, what hasn’t been the case earlier,” Nico Buchholz, Head of Lufthansa Group Fleet Management explained to AirlineReporter.com. “Still, on some routes the A340-300 is still superior to it’s twin-engine competitors, with regards to payload and flight performance. In light of the huge accomplishments made, however, aircraft of this segment now and in the future are clearly twin-engines, as demonstrated impressively by B777, A330, B787 and A350 aircraft.”
Currently, Lufthansa is not planning to replace any of their A340 fleet anytime soon. “We keep on applying modifications to make them more fuel-efficient, reduce noise or make cockpit modifications,” Buchholz explained. “That being said, our fleet is economically and technically up to date and we have no huge pressure to make a buying decision here. We will decide at an appropriate time.”
Singapore Airlines Airbus A340-500 landing at LAX. Photo by Bob Connolley
Singapore Airlines only operates five of the A340 aircraft, but they are unique in using them to fly the world’s two longest flights: Los Angeles (LAX) and Newark (EWR) to Singapore (SIN). Flight SQ21, from EWR to SIN, is the longest scheduled airline flight in the world, which is 9,535 miles and takes almost 19 hours. Flight SQ 37, from LAX to SIN, is the world’s second longest flight at 8,770 miles and takes about 18 hours. Both of these flights exclusively use the Airbus A340-500 aircraft. “What the aircraft does is create a non-stop link between the US and Singapore for growth,” James Boyd, Singapore Airline’s Vice President of Communications for the Americas explained to AirlineReporter.com.
At the time that Singapore Airlines started the flights, the A340-500 was the only aircraft capable of operating routes that long. Even today, there are only two aircraft that are able to handle the route: the A340-500 and Boeing 777-200LR.
Even though Singapore Airlines also operates the 777, Boyd explained that they are not planning on replacing their A340-500s anytime soon. Recently the airline invested quite a bit of money updating all five cabins on their A340s to all Business Class, providing the same product that is found on their Airbus A380.
Singapore Airlines is unique due to operating aircraft that many see as directly competing against each other: the Boeing 777 and Airbus A340/A330, the Boeing 747 and Airbus A380, and they have the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 on order. Why? Because many of their routes are market and destination specific and each route is specifically matched up to the aircraft it uses and for them, that means a diverse fleet. Singapore’s two routes that use the A340-500s are very profitable and it wouldn’t make any sense to change out aircraft.
Air France Airbus A340-300 landing at the iconic Saint Maarten. Photo by Jordi Grife..
The end of the Airbus A340 leaves only two quad jets that remain in commercial airliner production: The Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental and the Airbus A380. As engines become more efficient, will there be more quad jets into the future? Probably not, but for those of us that get a kick out of seeing jets with more than two engines, at least we will see the A340 still flying for quite some time to come.
