'New delay' to Airbus super-jumbo

Originally posted by carcharodon
No Waynos CATIA didn't misbehave. Hamburg and Toulouse use different software that is not compatible with each other hence he problem. They are so nationalistic that they couldn't choose the same software package...



The A380 has always been a nationalistic project, never a commercial one.


Why not build the entire plane on the same site?

I'd love any proof of that initial statement please. It would be absurd considering DS CATIA is the industry standard worldwide.


There was and is a business case for the A380, if it makes money, its worth it.



Name one modern aircraft manufacturer that does build the entire aircraft on the one site. Just one.


Oh, and the linky is dead for me.

Originally posted by Rightist
There was. It has been announced by Airbus President Christian Streiff.

- Well if you read the beginning you'll see that when this thread was begun it was solely on the basis of a speculative media quote, nothing more.

Neither has the B787, except that there have been so many orders for this plane that the investment has been repaid. You can't say that about Airbust.

- Er, I haven't been going around pretending that either the A380 program is about to stop or Airbus collapse.

I pointed out that the A380 has gained sufficient orders to be about 50% of the way to recouping its' investment.

Maybe you'd care to explain just what that has to do with the B787?

Airbust's end is sure, they are not going to be trusted by customers if they delay the delivery of the A380 three times. Boeing has never done that.

- You can work away at this all you like, you'll find few joining in such silly and rather juvenile 'debate'.

Airbus will be around for a long long time, don't you worry.

I keep looking at the specifications for this behemoth and I wonder if any consideration has been given to the aircraft's weight vs the weight bearing capability of the ramps that it is going to use? First time one of these things breaks through the concrete while sitting at the gate I'm going to be laughing myself silly.

The crash and burn is inevitabel - not of the A380 (not yet anyway), but of EADS:

www.spiegel.de...

An enormous, elegant, monstrous, wonder of a bird, the A380 may soon be the financial equivalent of a titanium/aluminum flying trash can - hope it ain't so; but I'm in the camp that will continue buying Boeing stock.

Bring back the Concorde!

You guys, very funny.

The A380's weight 'footprint' is not an issue (IIRC it is slightly less than a 747-400).

As for Airbus as a company?

'We' are not about to leave the aviation business, to Boeing or anybody else.

Sorry to shatter any ridiculous day-dreams but anyone who really imagines different (no matter what magazine articles you produce) is just fooling themselves.

'We' will continue to maintain our high tech and strategic industries, it's as simple as that.

Sure, it's not been the best year.......but you'd have to be some sort of a fool to pretend that 'we' haven't had much better years and that other people have had bad ones too, right?

If you want to amuse yourself playing 'football' with the issue then of course you can but that's all it is.

[edit on 30-9-2006 by sminkeypinkey]

Been away for a while and I see the thread has continued without me so to quickly recap;

aaaa, thanks for the answer, you've a couple of misconceptions about the nature of Airbus which might have been true a decade ago but aren't now, I'm sure nothing I say can change your opinion however.

Also the 'they did it to Lockheed' thing. I think its telling that you lay the blame for this squarely at Airbus door rather than Boeing, who were equally 'guilty' of driving a competitior out of the market plus Lockheed's own failure to offer a competitive range of aircraft that the airlines wanted to buy (which is the only thing that Boeing and Airbus actually did do to 'drive them out').

I see El Tiante made a brief reappearance under yet another ID posting the same old rubbish as before

Carch, you addressed a reply to me to a question I didn't ask, to be frank I don't even understand what you are telling me about 'misbehaving'

Fred, another excellent and well reasoned post, thanks. I question your conclusion that Boeing 'won round one' with Emirates order though? No A380's were cancelled and it does look as if Emirates has proclaimed the A380 better for passengers and the 747-8 better for freight, if you want to look at it that way of course

Actually I am in full agreement that in the freight market the 747 will do better than the Airbus, because of its hingeing nose for easier loading and unloading. I previously thought that Boeing might struggle to sell any passenger models of this though, and indeed we are still waiting for the first passenger models to be sold (excluding a single extravagant private jet purchase) but each new delay to the A380 must surely strengthen Boeings chances with this model.

JimC, maybe you missed this passage from an earlier post of mine;

In terms of the flying of the plane and the handling of it on the ground, again there is no problem as many of the myths that got built up have been smashed through actual testing, for instance it flies like a much smaller plane and is not a 'lumbering behemoth' as some would like to cast it. Its 'pavement loading' is actually LESS than a 747-400 because of its weight distribution through its 22 wheels, and concerns over handling it on the ground have been dispelled since a 180 degeee turn was accomplished in just 60 metres, thanks to its steerable rear fuselage axle. This figure compares to 59 metres for the much smaller A340.

Unless of course you just plain don't believe me?



Finally, a thought for the doom mongers. Remember a couple of years ago when Boeing had nothing but ageing models with little idea what to replace them with and were being beaten on every commercial front by Airbus and then, on top of that, had that scandal where senior people were sacked etc.?

Odd that with this direct parallel right on your doorstep it hasn't occurred to you that Airbus might actually turn things round and if it didn't spell the death of Boeing why should it for Airbus?

A little more maturity and thinking might be called for if you guys can mange it?

Originally posted by waynos
Fred, another excellent and well reasoned post, thanks. I question your conclusion that Boeing 'won round one' with Emirates order though? No A380's were cancelled and it does look as if Emirates has proclaimed the A380 better for passengers and the 747-8 better for freight, if you want to look at it that way of course

I was refering to the cargo arena. The did not cancel thier A380 but rather coverted it to a PAX version and then ordered the 747-8. Boeing lauched the varient strictly on cargo sales and has yet to secure a major order for the PAX version (not sure if they are offering combi's.) and seem to be fine with it just being a cargo variant. I still believe that the market for A380 will peak as there are simply going to be so many airports/routes to support its load factor and to hit the break even point, they are going to have to sell alot of cargo variants. Add to that you will soon see an influ of A340's and older 777-200's and 747-400's being coverted to cargo as well which will further dilute the market for first run production freighters such as the A380F and the 747-8F etc.

In regards to Airbus going under (and dragging EADS with it) its not going to happen. As Waynos points out, Boeing was in this position not that long ago and bet the farm on the 787 (Kind of like it did with the 747) and turned it around. Airbus has had regime change and cleaned house of the old "politicaly motivated" leadership. While painful in the short term, the long term culture changes will help avoid the debacle they just went through. Also the airlines themselves have signaled they want competition. SIA showed that in buying not only the 787 But the revised A350.

Just to complement the software issue. Toulouse uses CATIA 5. Hamburg uses v. 4. They are incompatible and people need to be retrained from v.4 to v.5.

Airbus wrote it's own translator in order to make the 2 compatible. The translator it seems is full of bugs and creates many anomalies. Therefore the wiring has to be redesigned and setup manually by the technicians without any reliable computer based blueprint.

So either they switch Hamburg to 5, retrain everybody and redesign the whole wiring or fix the translator.

So this begs the question... what is nationalistic about not using the same version of the same software package?


Seems to be more inept management than any patriotic preference.

What seems to be the problem is that both places did what they wanted without consulting or creating a strategy together and somehow thought they could undertake such a gargantuan project without glitches...

And yes it's a management problem. The thing is that they had 2 managers the French and German governments both too proud and too bureaucratic to handle Airbus as a business.

And in my opinion this is Chirac's and former Chancellor Schröder's fault, if they are people to blame. they wanted to beat the US so badly they managed to screw up the company in order to have the biggest plane.

[edit on 2-10-2006 by carcharodon]

Just passing this on.
Part of my agenda.
news.bbc.co.uk...

More stuff. Nothing to see here. Move along, everything's fine. Old news.

www.msnbc.msn.com...

I wouldn't get too smug about this if I were you.

The nub of this is still speculative, unattributed and very general reports, not official statements.

It is true Airbus has announced further delays are expected and will be officially commenting later when their own investigations reveal the extent of the expected delays
(some of which may be 'caught up' later as is the way of these things).

The A380 has hit problems as a real flying aeroplane.

Rumour are rife that 'you know who' and their 'yet to be real flying plane' are about to hit delays and problems all of their own.

It'll be interesting to see similar 'concerns' if this kind of news develops badly and becomes more public.
(one has to wonder about the safety and anti-corrosion effects of removing paint)

I fully expect 'the boot to be on the other foot' at some point in the near future (it happens to all leading edge designs) I just hope those who've made such a deal of all this sort of stuff and had such fun dishing it out can take it when the time comes.

Yeah right.

[edit on 3-10-2006 by sminkeypinkey]

The first link (the BBC one) is interesting as this is the same Tim Clark who was openly dismissing cancellation only a week ago. This begs the question of whether the news source that the reporter is using for the story is bang up to date and follows on from the latest delays (which could of course spell big trouble) or a misreporting of the same event, in which 'looking at all options' was mentioned by Clark whilst dismissing cancellation rumours as silly.

The second link is very straightforward but I don't get your own dismissal of it?

I hope you identifying yourself as a troll (on the other thread) was'n't aimed at my question to you a few days ago? I asked you for your own stance and you gave me a good answer, which I happen to disagree with. I don't regard you as a troll however. Well, not yet anyway.

All of us Michiganders that live in the lower peninsula "below" the Mackinaw Bridge are considered trolls!

The A380 discussions I'm privy to from family and friends who work at Smith, Vickers, and so forth have colored my vision for the vehicle; it can get as lively as the board here gets with pros and cons.

When Condit got the axe at Boeing and Stonecypher took over, my uncle told me to buy, that Stoney would get the stock price up, he did. He's got about 45 years in the aviation industry and predicted the crash of the Sonic Cruiser and some other events as well, and gives a strong case against the 380 everytime we talk shop.

Who am I to argue?

Today a new timetable for deliveries was announced.
The first A380 is going to be delivered in October 2007
'08 = 13
'09 = 25
'10 = 45

That means that SIA's first flight won't occur until 2008. Remember that the plane was to be operational in 2005...

With the first flight always set for 2004 the A380 was *never* expected to be in service in 2005, it was always intended to be this year (this month even, I think).

SIA are still supposed to be getting their first A380 before the end of this year, however I think this is just a 'technicality' thing to say it entered service, there will be a HUUUUGE gap before the 2nd plane is delivered.

I think I've said before, but it bears saying again, I'm not rabidly pro-Airbus, or even remotely anti Boeing. I'm not trying to pretend everything is great, it patently is not and Airbus still has a huge amount of work to do both to get the 380 back on track and to repair its own tattered reputation in the airline Industry.

My belief though is that this same Industry has been well served by Airbus for over over 30 years now and they know that this is a blip, if a big one. They also know that they need Airbus AND Boeing to keep fighting it out between them as a one horse race would be bad news all round.

I also believe that while the airlines are extremely concerned about these delays, and rightly so, it is a basic truth that they aren't waiting on these planes for just one season, they are long term acquisitions that will serve them for more than a decade and so a cancellation (having already decided that they do actually need a plane this big, hence the order) amounts to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the saying goes. The current rumblings are more likely to centre on financial compensation plus extremely favourable lease terms on temporary alternatives, like the A340-600 for example, rather than a complete plug-pull on the A380.

The thing that people who are talking about the whole programme being canned are forgetting is that the plane itself is perfectly sound, it performs exactly as advertised without any major redesigns required (thankfully) and the airlines, having conducted studies over many years DO actually want the type. To call off the entire programme because the wiring needs re-routing would be the most stupid act of all.

aaaaa, I understand perfectly what your saying and understand your point of view. Still disagree though

One thing I will strongly point out.


The delays in the plan are due soley to manufacturing problems, thing of relatively no technical concern. The current airline postering around cancellations is just that, postering as they hope to get some cut price deals.

Now, if the A380 was only producing 90% of the Airbus guaranteed L/D in cruise, or drinking 120% the sfc Airbus said it would, then, the airlines would be considering cancelling.

As it stands, the airlines just have to wait longer to get a machine they need. If they cancel their airbus orders what are they going to do? Buy the comparitively uncompetitive 747-8? Get real - they are buying the A380 as they need it, and they don't have an alternative.

More stuff about the topic; speaks for itself.

www.spiegel.de...

They can rewrite their business plan with smaller planes. Maybe some of them are seeing that such an enormous plane could be a major burden. Imagine you have a problem with your electrical system. Who's going to fix it?

maybe some 747-8 and some 787's can do the job and that huge Hubs things can be replace with multiple point to point flights...

The 747 and Concorde story all over again... and it seems Boeing got it right again...