The... resurrection of the A380s.

[RobPol471 173]

After the almost disappearance of the flights carried out with the A380 due to a pandemic decreed two years ago, the companies that they have A380s in their fleet and are progressively putting them back into service given the increase in passengers on long routes.

Currently, around 50% of the A380s are back in service.

Lufthansa was the latest carrier to announce the plane's return, although not before 2023.

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/a380-superjumbo-comeback/index.html

[shamrockflyer 647]

Now with the AN225 destroyed, can anyone tell me why an A380 cannot be converted to a freighter config so that it can specialise in the type of freight the 225 could handle?

[RobPol471 173]

6 minutes ago, shamrockflyer said:

Now with the AN225 destroyed, can anyone tell me why an A380 cannot be converted to a freighter config so that it can specialise in the type of freight the 225 could handle?

https://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/airbus_a380/

[Reader 2,021]

Next to the An225, an Airbus A380 looks quite small.
You never know, there might be enough parts from the never-built second An 225 to make a replacement.

[FBW737 511]

In that article photo 14 of 16 show two landing gear.

The tyres on the gear on the right are well used.🤔

[lzamm 143]

The A380, large as it is, isn't really suited to carry very large items (short sightedness on Airbus's part in my opinion, but it would have made it even more expensive).  The location of the cockpit makes it practically impossible to lift up the nose for front loading anything too large to fit through the side, and the upper deck is structural meaning that it can't be removed to utilise the entire height of the aircraft.

[scott967 62]

ANA have restarted twice weekly A380 service between Narita and Honolulu now that its relatively easy for Japanese to come here.

 

scott s.

.

.

 

[fluffyflops 1,858]

The qantas 380 on the LHR SIN SYD QF1/2 was put back on months earlier than planned as Qantas UK had absolutely no problems recruiting cabin crew this summer.   Without the need of a '£1000 sign on bonus'

They took  150 new staff and stole around 95 percent them from the likes of easyjet, ba, Cathy, Kim City hopper and Virgin. Again whilst easy and BA and easyjet are tieing themselves in knots due to terrible contracts and bad management (Peter Bellew has just been shown the door) and BA are now giving people 1000 Quid just to walk in the door. 

On the other had you have qantas UK with a holding pool of people itching to start (they have too many applicants) as it's a better salary/conditions of employment than any other UK Cabin Crew Contract around. They also managed to steal crew of varying ranks too for direct entry 'cabin supervisor' and 'business class crew' again from Ba and easyjet. 

They also have only had 2 or 3 cabin crew resigned in the last 6 months, Jet2 are averaging 12 a week.  Easyjet around 150. BA I'm not sure. The attriction rate is also next to nothing at Qantas UK. 

Needless to say the management team there is fantastic with  massive experience, professionalism with a broad knowledge base and basically treat the staff well so much so, that no one leaves and they can easily steal the crew from everywhere else, due to word of month amongst the cabin crew community thats its a great place to work. 

That's the sole reason the 380 came early to Heathrow, and my prediction will be the LHR SYD Sunrise a350 will come earlier than expected, if they use UK local LHR Crew for the rotation /pattern (which they will). 

You get what you pay for in life, and you reap what you sow.   

Treat people well, they will stay.  It's not rocket science 

Edited July 13, 2022 by fluffyflops

[Chock 17,769]

On 7/11/2022 at 3:07 PM, shamrockflyer said:

Now with the AN225 destroyed, can anyone tell me why an A380 cannot be converted to a freighter config so that it can specialise in the type of freight the 225 could handle?

Nothing is impossible of course, but there is a world of difference between the weight of passengers and the weight of cargo pallets. You also have to consider that it isn't just a case of making the floors a bit stronger, there also has to be a cargo loading system fitted, with all of the powered rollers, locks and such, which itself adds quite a fair bit of weight, as indeed do the much beefier doors where the thing is opened up. You also need an improved fire suppression system on the aeroplane, and a bunch of crash nets/bulkhead reinforcements. You might have noticed with some cargo aeroplanes which have been converted from passenger variants, that there are some cockpit modifications required too, such as different windows or hatches, for example, the crew of a cargo aeroplane typically have to be able to evacuate through the windows of the cockpit in case upon a crash-landing, a load shifts and rolls forward, blocking the normal cockpit access door and preventing egress.

Then you also have to consider what these weight zones along the length of the aeroplane will mean in terms of trim and balance, and not just for flight, but also for things such as the risk of tail-tipping during loading. You also need the cargo decks to be easily accessible for loading, which for massive cargo aeroplanes, typically means either having the entire tail section be hinged to swing to one side, or the entire nose section of the aeroplane to do that, or lift up to open, which would be no small thing to achieve. Another consideration is the airport infrastructure, by way of example, at Manchester EGCC where I work, there are only a few stands where the A380 can be accommodated. Part of the reason for this is not merely the size of the aeroplane, but also the clearance of the taxiways and the weight these taxiways are able to support on the shoulders of them where turns are made, and none of those stands are where the cargo ramp is, so EGCC would have to alter some taxiways if it was going to use A380 cargo aeroplanes. As it is at Manchester, airfield ops often have to stop airport traffic when the A380 pushes out because its wingtips pass over some roads during the pushback maneuver.

I should imagine there is plenty of other stuff to have to think about, but the only dedicated pure cargo aeroplane I work on, is Lufthansa's converted A321s. When we work on those things, it's usually a bit more of a complicated procedure than most people might suppose it would be. These come in from Ireland to us at EGCC, then go on to Frankfurt after we've loaded them up. Some stuff is offloaded for Manchester, and some stuff put on, but we quite often have to take stuff off, leave it in the clearway, shuffle things about, then load stuff back on in order to alleviate the risk of tail-tipping. Those converted A321s have a lower deck which takes AKH containers and similarly-sized smaller cargo pallets, whereas the upper deck takes the larger PMC pallets. To facilitate this, on the lower deck it makes use of the standard starboard-side forward and aft cargo doors you find on a normal A321 (with some modification to the door lock systems), then the upper deck has a very large purpose-built upward-opening cargo door on the forward part of the upper port side of the aeroplane (this is massive and it has a ton of fuselage reinforcing), but in spite of having three cargo doors, we cannot go at all three at the same time owing to the need to carefully manage the tail-tipping risk. The standard roller system the normal passenger A321 uses to load in AKHs on the lower deck is retained, but to be honest, it's not really up to the job of moving a lot of heavy cargo about and is frequently either completely broken, or intermittent in operation, which makes things even more tedious when we have to manually shove things around. Several of us have been injured when doing this, including me a few weeks ago, to the point that we have all said that if it comes in again with a completely busted cargo roller system on the lower deck, we will all refuse to work on it!