A380

[igs942]

Hey all,

Anyone else heard of teething problems with the A380? I flew back from Singapore yesterday and post-landing sat on the active runway for around half a hour, waiting for a tow because the steering had failed .

Ian

[expat]

Hey all,

Anyone else heard of teething problems with the A380? I flew back from Singapore yesterday and post-landing sat on the active runway for around half a hour, waiting for a tow because the steering had failed .

Ian

If it has only happened once, nothing special, things break. If it had been a 737 you would have not though anything about it. Because it is the A380 and new and large, every maintenance issue is a treated like a crash.
On the other side, what was it like to flew on. Anything special about it, or was it just another cigar tube?

Matt

[igs942]

Hi Matt,

It's a nice aircraft for long haul passengers. The seats are larger (get about another inch or two leg room in economy), the engines are soooo quiet and it seems to generate lift effortlessly. I was at the back of the aircraft so may not have been in the best position to comment on this but it seemed like the smallest pitch up angle was needed for take off. Also, but again this may be down to the quietness of the engines, it felt like nowhere near full power is needed for take off. We made use of most of the tarmac, with no real huge feel of acceleration pushing you into your seat like on a 747 and then rotation and we were up. Landing speed seems so slow and approach seems to take forever; it's facinating how slow it can go and stay aloft.

The windows are a bit strange. Standards size externally but are frickin huge internally, giving kinda like a light tunnel effect. Let a lot of light in. The weirdest thing though was the fuselage wall. To accomodate the upper deck the huge bulge is noticable, especially if your in a window seat like I was. At deck level your feet are by the wall but by the time you get to head level you're almost one foot away. I like the room but when it came to a nap, I found myself with neckache with no support from the wall (or I'd wake up to find that I was close to changing seats with the guy behind as I slipped through the gap).

As the norm, each seat has a screen in the back. You can do all the regular things but you can also plug your camera into it and review your piccies, learn a language while you fly and do some PC work (it has a word processor, etc. and you can save it via the USB onto a memory stick).

All in all a nice aircraft and I can't wait to go on it again. I really didn't mind the sitting on the active while waiting for the tow because I was comfortable. Must have caused some distruption at Heathrow though, having 300 tonnes of Airbus sat on the active landing runway for 30-45 mins.

[chornedsnorkack]

Hi Matt,

It's a nice aircraft for long haul passengers. The seats are larger (get about another inch or two leg room in economy),

Er, legroom is the part which is up to airline.

the engines are soooo quiet and it seems to generate lift effortlessly. I was at the back of the aircraft so may not have been in the best position to comment on this but it seemed like the smallest pitch up angle was needed for take off. Also, but again this may be down to the quietness of the engines, it felt like nowhere near full power is needed for take off. We made use of most of the tarmac, with no real huge feel of acceleration pushing you into your seat like on a 747 and then rotation and we were up. Landing speed seems so slow and approach seems to take forever; it's facinating how slow it can go and stay aloft.

Comparing A380 with 747, A380 has 845 sq m wing area. B747-400 has just 541 - 64 % the A380 area. Thus the wing loading of A380 at MTOW of 569 tons is what B747 would have at 364 tons - but B747 MTOW is 415 tons. The huge wing allows A380 to land slowly, take off slowly and use low acceleration on runway.

The windows are a bit strange. Standards size externally but are frickin huge internally, giving kinda like a light tunnel effect. Let a lot of light in. The weirdest thing though was the fuselage wall. To accomodate the upper deck the huge bulge is noticable, especially if your in a window seat like I was. At deck level your feet are by the wall but by the time you get to head level you're almost one foot away. I like the room but when it came to a nap, I found myself with neckache with no support from the wall (or I'd wake up to find that I was close to changing seats with the guy behind as I slipped through the gap).

Why cannot they make the seatback wider above the armrests to fill the gaps...

[expat]

Hi Matt,

It's a nice aircraft for long haul passengers. The seats are larger (get about another inch or two leg room in economy),

Er, legroom is the part which is up to airline.

the engines are soooo quiet and it seems to generate lift effortlessly. I was at the back of the aircraft so may not have been in the best position to comment on this but it seemed like the smallest pitch up angle was needed for take off. Also, but again this may be down to the quietness of the engines, it felt like nowhere near full power is needed for take off. We made use of most of the tarmac, with no real huge feel of acceleration pushing you into your seat like on a 747 and then rotation and we were up. Landing speed seems so slow and approach seems to take forever; it's facinating how slow it can go and stay aloft.

Comparing A380 with 747, A380 has 845 sq m wing area. B747-400 has just 541 - 64 % the A380 area. Thus the wing loading of A380 at MTOW of 569 tons is what B747 would have at 364 tons - but B747 MTOW is 415 tons. The huge wing allows A380 to land slowly, take off slowly and use low acceleration on runway.

Add that to derated take off to save fuel and you have the reason for the slow feeling. I had the jump seat on a 737-800 a week ago. The engines where set to 86% reduced take off. The fuel saving is quite worth it. After all, why take off using half the runway, when you can use most of it and half the fuel.

Matt