A380 Delayed

[mgh 89]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4598779.stmThere was a suggestion on the radio that it's overweight but that's not confirmed.

[Guest bjjones]

Theres no avoiding the fact it's overweight, but they will get it down eventually. To get to what was promised means around another 10 tons have to be shed, one of the main delays is coming from the interior suppliers becuase they are having trouble making what the airlines want (one of the reasons for the 18 month deferral by VS) at the weight Airbus wants, in time.Only this week a new set of wheels were delivered for F-WWOW replacing the Aluminium ones it had been using with composite ones.This will be an expensive exercise for Airbus, SIA and QF are seeking compensation and no doubt Emirates, Etihad and Air France will do the same. We don't know how much the compensation will be but the comparison sake, over a decade ago when the MD11 was seeing delays, McDD were paying the airlines $5000 per aircraft per day for loss of revenue.Say 10 aircraft, all holding 500 passengers, delayed for 6 months or around 120 days, thats a lot of potential lost revenue that Airbus will have to cover a large percentage of to keep the airlines happy and on side.FWIW the whole program has gradually picked up delays, in an old copy of Flight International from 99, the preliminaty A3XX schedule shows that the aircraft should have been certified and have entered commercial service by now (Q2/Q3 2005)

[Guest Divergent Phugoid]

Par for the course. I work for one of the worlds biggest aeronautics firms and I can tell you that virtually nothing happens on schedule!! In our case it seems to me that the majority of the problems are commercial rather than technical.

[victorwest2 0]

Sorry if this sounds a daft question but how can an aircraft end up overweight? The designers know exactly how many parts are needed to build it and how much paint will be needed to cover it. They should be able to calculate exactly how much this all weighs - shouldn't they??

[Sonar5 3]

Simple,Default in design accounts for the overweight problem, IMHO.I would guess that it is a bit more complicated than simply adding up the weight though.When you have potentially thousands of suppliers providing thousands of parts, from all over the world, it would be pretty hard to estimate. It could be a performance problem based upon the engines chosen, and maybe their output just isn't up to standards for Airbus, so the weight begins to get cut.You know, I think Howard Hughes learned a similar lesson with the Spruce Goose. Yes it flew, but at that size and with those engines, it barely flew for the short time it did, and never flew again.I think all the marketing hype, and sleeping areas, bars, nightclub stuff is all balogney the same as it was when they introduced the 747 decades ago.This is simply another cattle hauler, IMHO, and they may just be trying to find a way to meet the Airlines demands for as many seats as possible to justify the cost of the aircraft.Hopefully they will get it worked out, or this is one expensive experiment and collosal waste of money just like the Hughes Spruce Goose.Regards,JoeGrab My FREEWARE Voice recognition Profiles here:[a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fs2004misc&DLID=58334]Cessna 172 Voice Profile[/a][a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fs2004misc&DLID=60740]FSD Avanti Voice Profile[/a].You will need the main FREEWARE Flight Assistant program to use it, get it here:[a href=http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=genutils&DLID=39661]Flight Assistant 2.2[/a]