1% of 309 Tons is a Lot

[Len Lanetti]

LATEST NEWS
Wichita Business Journal - 2:58 PM CDT Wednesday
A380 deliveries will be delayed

David Dinell [font=Times New Roman,Times,Serif]Deliveries of the new Airbus A380 superjumbo jet will be delayed from two to six months, company officials said Wednesday.

Wichita played a role in the launch of the new jet, as the wings for it were designed in part by Airbus employees at the company's operation in the Old Town district.

The jet's weight seems to be a challenge for Airbus.

The A380 design and assembly team is working to keep the aircraft's weight down and some parts have been sent back to designers to see if they could be lightened.

The A380 has weighed in at 309 tons without any passengers on board, which is 1 percent above its original working target.

Officials at some of the A380 customers say they expect to receive compensation from Airbus for any delays.

As designed, the A380 will be the world's largest passenger jet, surpassing the Boeing 747-400, which currently has that title.

Boeing has elected to not build a larger model than the 747-400, choosing instead to aim for a model with more efficiency and fuel savings, which its officials say will be available with their 787 Dreamliner model.

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© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

I wonder what parts they sent back that could possible compensate for being 6,180 pounds over weight....or maybe they mean metric tons which would be 3,090 kilo's.

Len

 

[poadeleted3]

snip
I wonder what parts they sent back that could possible compensate for being 6,180 pounds over weight....or maybe they mean metric tons which would be 3,090 kilo's.

Len

Heck, it didn't need all those spars anyway.

 

[wsuffa]

Heck, that's 35 additional passengers that they can shove into the sardine can.

 

[Len Lanetti]

[font=Times New Roman,Times,Serif]The A380 design and assembly team is working to keep the aircraft's weight down and some parts have been sent back to designers to see if they could be lightened.

The A380 has weighed in at 309 tons without any passengers on board, which is 1 percent above its original working target. [/font]

Actually, the more I think about this the scarier it is. You gotta figure that the original engineers knew that this thing was gonna be a big, heavy beast. That those engineers would make margins as tight as possible when designing the components.

Len

 

[silver-eagle]

Read 'All Corvettes Are Red' for an inside look at new product development. Having worked (out on the fringes) for a company that manufactured products, I saw a lot of similarities to what my company went through as to what the GM designers did or had to do.
Remember too, the A380 has already flown. What comes now is tweeking.
'Maybe that spar doesn't need to be THAT strong.'

 

[Richard]

I have just one question. I have not seen it addressed in any of the articles about the 380.


Who is going to pay for the increase in infrastructure to support such a large bird? Rwy strength, wider taxiways, new jetways, increased pax handling, ect at each aprt. Who's gonna' pay?

 

[Jeff Oslick]

I have just one question. I have not seen it addressed in any of the articles about the 380.


Who is going to pay for the increase in infrastructure to support such a large bird? Rwy strength, wider taxiways, new jetways, increased pax handling, ect at each aprt. Who's gonna' pay?

Hint: It won't be Airbus. Fortunately, only a very few airports in the US considering making these changes at this point.

 

[L10MAN]

Not supporting airbus here (can't, son works for Boeing) but that is not unusual. To reduce weight in the 747 they tried a "new" light weight floor made from balsa wood. It worked fairly well except the days of the spike heels were still with us. Didn't take long to go back to the aluminum clad sandwich floor. More weight but lasted longer. Airbus may soon learn the same things. Just hope it isn't something anymore serious than flooring.
Ron

 

[bbchien]

I have just one question. I have not seen it addressed in any of the articles about the 380.


Who is going to pay for the increase in infrastructure to support such a large bird? Rwy strength, wider taxiways, new jetways, increased pax handling, ect at each aprt. Who's gonna' pay?

Hey. Who-do-ya think?

 

[Len Lanetti]

LATEST NEWS
Pittsburgh Business Times - 12:09 PM EDT Thursday
Delay of giant Airbus jet won't hurt Alcoa

Vincent Lara-Cinisomo [font=Times New Roman,Times,Serif]

A six-month delay on the rollout of Airbus' superjumbo jetliner will not have a great financial impact on Alcoa Inc., the aluminum giant which is responsible for more than two dozen of the aircraft's parts, a company spokesman said Thursday.

Toulouse, France-based Airbus said it pushed back delivery of the A380 -- a 550-seater that can be reconfigured to carry more than 800 passengers and is so massive its prototype boasts beds, gambling halls, showers and shops -- as a result of industrial and design modifications to the plane.

Airbus declined to specify what modifications the A380 needed, but insisted the plane was aerodynamically sound.

The superjumbo jetliner is being constructed using aluminum and fasteners manufactured by Pittsburgh-based Alcoa (NYSE:AA).

The plane's wingspan -- "its single biggest showpiece," Alcoa spokesman Kevin Lowery said -- is practically the length of a football field and almost entirely made of Alcoa's aluminum alloys.

Alcoa is responsible for "at least" 30 parts on the A380, Mr. Lowery said, and Airbus North America chairman Allan McArtor has called Alcoa "literally the backbone of the A380."

But Mr. Lowery said the delay -- Singapore Airlines now won't get the behemothian jet until the fourth quarter of 2006 -- was no reason to fret, nor "terribly surprising."

"As it sits, this is standard operating procedure in the aerospace market," he said in a phone interview. "When you have a new plane like this, (delays) are not terribly surprising. Something like this is built into the schedules (of supply delivery)."

Barbara Kracht, a spokeswoman at Airbus headquarters in France, agreed.

"There has hardly been any new airliner in history that was delivered on the date that was set when it was launched," she said in a statement.

However, at least one airline analyst was skeptical.

"The A380 delay is serious," Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm in Fairfax, Va., told the Washington Post. "It might suggest a problem with the weight of the plane, and therefore with the economics. Lateness itself isn't a problem; performance is."

Mr. Lowery said if the postponement was longer, Alcoa would have made an announcement. Even if a delay "was significant enough," the company would likely get through it fine.

"The demand for sheet and plate products is enormous, it's very strong," Mr. Lowery said.

Alcoa had revenue in 2004 of $23.5 billion and has 131,000 employees in 43 countries.

[/font]MR. LARA-CINISOMO may be contacted at vlara@bizjournals.com.



© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.

 

[gismo]

[font=Times New Roman,Times,Serif]"The A380 delay is serious," Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm in Fairfax, Va., told the Washington Post. "It might suggest a problem with the weight of the plane, and therefore with the economics. Lateness itself isn't a problem; performance is." [/font]

I'll bet the problem is they haven't figured out how to keep the water in the hot tub when flying through turbulence.