My wife recvd the following from her cousin yesterday; "While we were taxing into crazy busy LFPB the A380 was taxing aswell but into the display area. Tower error. A380 was about 2-3 meters short and hit the Hanger with right wing and continued taxing for a while dragging the right wing alongside the hanger. Wing stuck now inside the hanger. NOT KIDDING" Anbody know more?
I have to laugh at the A380s. I saw my first in person recently at LHR. HUGE plane. Ridiculous, actually. And, clearly, the infrastructure doesn't always accommodate it. I'm sure it's spacious inside, and they're clearly selling them, but I wonder if they're going to be a "success" for Airbus. I'm sure Airbus will tell us they are, but I wonder if that's the true story. CW
You'd think a demo pilot would be capable of handling the beast... http://www.terminalu.com/travel-news/paris-air-show-a380-grounded-after-taxiway-collision/10808/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2005771/Not-Worlds-biggest-airliner-damaged-striking-building-wing-tip-taxiing-Paris-Air-Show.html?ITO=1490 Ooops
Yea, I'm just not a fan of "even bigger" planes. Not a fan of planes to begin with, but this race to be the biggest scares me. That being said, the 747 is / was a plane I was always comfortable with.
Boeing's looking good and their new version of the 747 is a star at Paris. Airbus looks not-so-good with this mishap plus the gearbox failure of the Grizzly canceling it's appearance. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/defence/8585437/Airbus-pulls-Grizzly-out-of-Paris-Air-Show.html
You guys haven't heard, I guess. Airbus has a new program to produce a short wing version of the A380. They have a unique process that takes up absolutely no factory floor space. Now they have to figure out how to do the left wing but I 'm sure that if they taxied back in the opposite direction their problem would be solved.
No, you got it wrong. This is the new process to improve fuel economy by lightening the aircrarft. You keep taking off parts you don't need until it can't fly anymore! Seriously... you would have thought their pilots would be better at this than they appear to be. You don't see this kind of thing with 747's and I bet there are over a 1000 in the sky everyday.
Bob, bdelp- Think we discussed this before, but think they are going to need wingtip video feeds so they have a clue. They obviously have no clue where the wingtips are now. In the USAF, either incident would have cost the aircrew their wings (on their chests, I mean, not the ones they clipped off). There is no excuse for taxi accidents. Bob- Got the Dr.I photos, many thanks and am digesting them now. Taz Terry Phillips
Again I go back to 1944 when one of our AT-7's pulled out of the parking slot and with an authoritative blast on number two quickly pulled out into a line of aircraft taxiing by but neglected to act quickly enough to see that the line had stopped and plowed into the tail and fuselage of the last aircraft. After chewing the left vertical fin off it put 8 slices in the fuselage, the last of which stopped one foot aft of the navigation cadet seated in the last seat. Then at Langley Field a guy tooling along on the back side of the flight line in a bomb loading truck neglected to consider the height of the overhead rail and took out the left fin and tail turret of a B-24 before he got stopped. These episodes were run of the mill during the war, no worse than landing wheels-up. Saw a few of those too. Taz, hope the photos were of good enough quality.
That big ugly monster is gonna bend more wingtips thats for sure. It reminds me of a time when i was fueling planes at my local airport and some guy came in in a brand new G5 which at the time was brand new. He had a crowd watching him taxi in and his wingtip hit the horizontal stab of a lear jet and turned the learjet about 40 degrees, it was a rather embarrasing moment for that dude.
I had thought the idea of a wingtip camera was just a joke. It is beginning to look like a good idea. How long till the next strike? The over under is one year. I'll go under.
All of this is playing right into Boeing's hands, especially with the 747-8 performing well in Paris. It would not surprise me to see some A380 buyers switch to the Boeing airplane.
Bob- Your comment on WW-II accidents made me remember my father had a taxi accident in a P-38 (probably a P-322) and they tossed him out of P-38s to end up flying P-47s. Of interest is that Allison powered aircraft averaged over 200 class A mishaps per 100,000 flying hours. The A-36 rate was 276 and the P-38 rate was 189, the others in between. The USAF has been below 2 class A mishaps per 100,000 hours for decades. Taz Terry Phillips
I think that your dad probably was lucky to get transferred to the P-47. I have known quite a few P-38 pilots and it seems that their mission was not as flexible as the Jug or P-51. The P-38 was not a good dog fighter but it WAS a good ground attack and boom and zoom attack vehicle. My late friend, Larry Blumer, got all his 7 victories in hit and run attacks and he shot up many more on strafing runs and that is where the Jug shined too. And with an R-2800 up front, the Jug could keep running even with a cylinder shot up. That's when the Allison did not carry on. He said that you did not want to get hit by P-38 fire because it could disassemble a target in a split second but I wouldn't want to be caught in the convergence zone of 8 cal. 50's that a Jug carried either. I can see how there could have been some ground incidents with the P-38 and its 50 foot plus wing span when most fighter pilots had been taxiing stuff that had 34 -36 foot spans. Heck, the B-24 with a 110 foot span had its share of wing tip incidents when newbies were at the controls. Re the A380...Okay, folks, we have a whale in the swimming pool, Act accordingly.
Seriously, you did not read the report: the plane was being towed. Say again? Bd: two wrongs don't make one right. Image Unavailable, Please Login
