Another Airbus tries to water ski....

[HuskyMan]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31638822/ns/world_news-africa

[LUVMBDiesels]

Put MY butt in a 747!

[pawoSD]

? Airbus are plenty reliable....tons of Boeings have crashed too.

[pj67coll]

Originally Posted by pawoSD

? Airbus are plenty reliable....tons of Boeings have crashed too.

Yeah. But Boeings don't typically tend to break apart in flight, which seems like it could possibly be a burgeoning problem with Airbusses. Although this particular incident looks like it could simply be bad weather and not necessarily the planes fault.

- Peter.

[raymr]

Originally Posted by pj67coll

Yeah. But Boeings don't typically tend to break apart in flight, which seems like it could possibly be a burgeoning problem with Airbusses. Although this particular incident looks like it could simply be bad weather and not necessarily the planes fault.

- Peter.

I sure hope its not a growing problem. Everyone is flying those things now.

[G-Benz]

The pilots of both Airbus jetliners attempted to negotiate flying in bad weather...

...perhaps that is more of an issue than the structural integrity of those planes?

[pj67coll]

Originally Posted by G-Benz

The pilots of both Airbus jetliners attempted to negotiate flying in bad weather...

...perhaps that is more of an issue than the structural integrity of those planes?

If you're attempting to land on an island in bad weather, you may not be able to avoid it. Not like you can just divert across the ocean. However if your plane has a design flaw, like a weakness in the tail the means the tail will break under severe weather conditions, that is a problem. There are now three cases of Airbus tales coming off their plans. The American airlines crash in NY some years back. The Air France crash where the tail has been found floating a long way from the rest of the wreckage and the Air Carribes' which lost it's rudder, though thankfully not the whole tail and managed to get on the ground without loss of life.

And of course we don't yet know exactly what caused this Yemenia plane to go down.

Boeing has it's fair share of problems but nothing like such a spate of tail incidents that points to a possible serious structual problem with the basic design.

- Peter.

[Brian Carlton]

Originally Posted by pj67coll

Yeah. But Boeings don't typically tend to break apart in flight, which seems like it could possibly be a burgeoning problem with Airbusses. Although this particular incident looks like it could simply be bad weather and not necessarily the planes fault.

- Peter.

I find it laughable that you compare two completely different airliners in two completely different flight regimes without a shred of data from either incident and you make a conclusion that the manufacturer of the two planes is to be condemned for a "burgeoning problem".

Your analytical skills are non-existent.

[pj67coll]

Originally Posted by Brian Carlton

I find it laughable that you compare two completely different airliners in two completely different flight regimes without a shred of data from either incident and you make a conclusion that the manufacturer of the two planes is to be condemned for a "burgeoning problem".

Your analytical skills are non-existent.

There are three Airbus incidents of tailfin or rudder seperation excluding the Yemenia crash.
The investigation into the rudder failure in the Air Transat flight 961 about which I include a quote here indicated issues with delamination of the composite material in flight resulting from freeze thaw cycles of moisture that ingressed into the layers of composite. I'm quoting from memory here so my terminology may be a bit off. This is what another poster on an aviation forum had to say...

*When Flight 961 literally began to fall apart at 35,000 feet, it increased fears of a fatal design flaw in the world's most popular passenger jet

At 35,000 feet above the Caribbean, Air Transat flight 961 was heading home to Quebec with 270 passengers and crew. At 3.45 pm last Sunday, the pilot noticed something very unusual. His Airbus A310's rudder - a structure 28 feet high - had fallen off and tumbled into the sea. In the world of aviation, the shock waves have yet to subside...

...Allow me a little speculation here. What might be up with that could be hinted-at in the Guardian article's subhead, italicized above. See, the commercial aviation market is still gasping on the mat after 9/11 compounded three decades of mismanagement and union avarice. And in the middle of those decades, at the precise moment the dollar/euro exchange rate was at its most cantilevered, came Airbus with free money and cheap, heavily-subsidized airplanes. Voila, as that subhead alludes: "the world's most popular passenger jet".

So along comes 9/11, then hot on its heels comes AA587: The tail falls off; the engines fall off; even the little "Made in France" sticker falls off, and people die. Continuing with my speculation: given that it would've finished air transportation right off to ground the Airbus, the twitchy-footed pilot was made a convenient scapegoat by the accident review board; meanwhile a program of visual inspection of the planes' composite tailfins was quietly mandated.

Trouble is, visual inspection doesn't tell you much about the health of a composite structure. Only costly and frequent ultrasonic, vibrometric or holographic inspection of the detached panels would do that... sometimes. To my eye, the situation is compounded by Airbus' design decision not to use metal structural spars in the panels to distribute shear forces through the composite structure. So when these panels failed, they broke cleanly away from their unreinforced attachment grommets: compare photos of the consistent damage in this latest airplane's fractured tail with the postmortem pictures of AA587's carcass.

What we might be looking at is the chilling leading-edge of a hockey-stick trend of structural failure in Airbus' composite tails. Scary stuff indeed. And scariest of all, if so: how many more hundreds of souls must perish before regulators ground the Airbus? And what happens to commercial aviation and the economy when they do?*

http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/others/rudder-sep_files/airTransatA310rudder-1.jpg

These are not my analytical skills. I'm merely echoing what others, some of them pilots, have said about the situation.

- Peter.

[Brian Carlton]

Originally Posted by pj67coll

There are three Airbus incidents of tailfin or rudder seperation excluding the Yemenia crash.
The investigation into the rudder failure in the Air Transat flight 961 about which I include a quote here indicated issues with delamination of the composite material in flight resulting from freeze thaw cycles of moisture that ingressed into the layers of composite. I'm quoting from memory here so my terminology may be a bit off. This is what another poster on an aviation forum had to say...

*When Flight 961 literally began to fall apart at 35,000 feet, it increased fears of a fatal design flaw in the world's most popular passenger jet

At 35,000 feet above the Caribbean, Air Transat flight 961 was heading home to Quebec with 270 passengers and crew. At 3.45 pm last Sunday, the pilot noticed something very unusual. His Airbus A310's rudder - a structure 28 feet high - had fallen off and tumbled into the sea. In the world of aviation, the shock waves have yet to subside...

...Allow me a little speculation here. What might be up with that could be hinted-at in the Guardian article's subhead, italicized above. See, the commercial aviation market is still gasping on the mat after 9/11 compounded three decades of mismanagement and union avarice. And in the middle of those decades, at the precise moment the dollar/euro exchange rate was at its most cantilevered, came Airbus with free money and cheap, heavily-subsidized airplanes. Voila, as that subhead alludes: "the world's most popular passenger jet".

So along comes 9/11, then hot on its heels comes AA587: The tail falls off; the engines fall off; even the little "Made in France" sticker falls off, and people die. Continuing with my speculation: given that it would've finished air transportation right off to ground the Airbus, the twitchy-footed pilot was made a convenient scapegoat by the accident review board; meanwhile a program of visual inspection of the planes' composite tailfins was quietly mandated.

Trouble is, visual inspection doesn't tell you much about the health of a composite structure. Only costly and frequent ultrasonic, vibrometric or holographic inspection of the detached panels would do that... sometimes. To my eye, the situation is compounded by Airbus' design decision not to use metal structural spars in the panels to distribute shear forces through the composite structure. So when these panels failed, they broke cleanly away from their unreinforced attachment grommets: compare photos of the consistent damage in this latest airplane's fractured tail with the postmortem pictures of AA587's carcass.

What we might be looking at is the chilling leading-edge of a hockey-stick trend of structural failure in Airbus' composite tails. Scary stuff indeed. And scariest of all, if so: how many more hundreds of souls must perish before regulators ground the Airbus? And what happens to commercial aviation and the economy when they do?*

http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_Issues/others/rudder-sep_files/airTransatA310rudder-1.jpg

These are not my analytical skills. I'm merely echoing what others, some of them pilots, have said about the situation.

- Peter.

The only incident of an unknown structural failure was 961. 587 was conclusively proven to exceed the design loads for the rudder by the introduction of a severe sideslip by the pilot. 447 has absolutely no conclusive evidence of any type of structural failure attributed to a design or maintenance flaw at the present time.

It's better not to repeat the fictitious ramblings of others...........unless you want a job with Fox News.

BTW, once I read "world's most popular passenger jet" being attributed to the A310, any sense of competency by the writer was immediately ruled out and I didn't even complete the remainder. Unsubstantiated hyperbole and downright false statements.............nothing more.

[Skippy]

51,900 hours on the one that went down. I wonder if that had something to do with it.

[DieselAddict]

Some of you guys are jumping to uninformed conclusions. The investigation thus far into the Air France crash points to a faulty speed meter. Any airplane will break apart if flown too fast, doesn't matter where it's made. And about this latest crash we don't really know what happened yet. From my news readings I remember more Boeing 737 crashes than anything else.

[tonkovich]

uh, i think that airbus is using a lot of synthetic materials that aren't holding up. they're trying to save on weight, but..

(and no, i'm no "true believer" in boeing either, tho i believe their big problem was planes staying in service longer than they were designed for.)

[pj67coll]

Originally Posted by DieselAddict

Some of you guys are jumping to uninformed conclusions. The investigation thus far into the Air France crash points to a faulty speed meter. Any airplane will break apart if flown too fast, doesn't matter where it's made. And about this latest crash we don't really know what happened yet. From my news readings I remember more Boeing 737 crashes than anything else.

I've been looking at an aviation forum where the AF crash has been discussed a lot recently. Frankly the evidence is far to incomplete to indicate what really happened. However there have been a lot of problems associated with faulty speed sensors on Airbus planes recently, far more than on Boeing although there was one incident on a Boeing recently.

I had no idea just how little margin for error there is at high altitudes. FL350 etc. The coffin corner it's called. If the plane goes to fast or to slow at that height it becomes aerodynamically unstable and extreme buffetting occurs, similar to severe turbulence. I'm paraphrasing here but I'm no expert.

If a plane is too weak such buffetting can cause it to break apart. As I've pointed out three Airbuses lost their tails, or portions of their tails and there is concern that composite technology is not yet mature enough to handle the stresses concerned. Or that Airbus is not implementing it properly.

As I've said, while I'm aware Boeing has it's share of problems structural integrity does not appear to be one of them.

- Peter.

[DieselAddict]

Originally Posted by pj67coll

I've been looking at an aviation forum where the AF crash has been discussed a lot recently. Frankly the evidence is far to incomplete to indicate what really happened. However there have been a lot of problems associated with faulty speed sensors on Airbus planes recently, far more than on Boeing although there was one incident on a Boeing recently.

I had no idea just how little margin for error there is at high altitudes. FL350 etc. The coffin corner it's called. If the plane goes to fast or to slow at that height it becomes aerodynamically unstable and extreme buffetting occurs, similar to severe turbulence. I'm paraphrasing here but I'm no expert.

If a plane is too weak such buffetting can cause it to break apart. As I've pointed out three Airbuses lost their tails, or portions of their tails and there is concern that composite technology is not yet mature enough to handle the stresses concerned. Or that Airbus is not implementing it properly.

As I've said, while I'm aware Boeing has it's share of problems structural integrity does not appear to be one of them.

- Peter.

What about that Qantas plane that recently blew a hole in its luggage compartment, wasn't that a 747? Also I remember some incident near Hawaii or involving Hawaiian Airlines where the plane blew a hole in the passenger cabin and a flight attendant got sucked out. It was probably a Boeing too.