A400 getting into the wild blue yonder

[ozzy72]

Next week sometime by the looks of things...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8383212.stm

[C]

Good. The sooner the better. The quicker it gets delivered the sooner people will stop babbling on about buying more C-130s.

[Flying Trucker]

Good afternoon all...

Don't know much about this aircraft, is it as large as a C5 Galaxy or a C17?

What is it going to replace and is it a Tactical Transport like the C130 or a heavy hauler?

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

[Mictheslik]

Good afternoon all...

Don't know much about this aircraft, is it as large as a C5 Galaxy or a C17?

What is it going to replace and is it a Tactical Transport like the C130 or a heavy hauler?

Cheers...Happy Landings...Doug

It's slightly smaller than a C17 and is intended as a Herc replacement (or alternative to C17)

I hope all goes well....a lot of jobs near me depend on this aircraft 

.mic

[OVERLORD_CHRIS]

I know the USAF was looking into buying some to replace the older C-130's but since they  are so far behind, they had to get more C-130J's to make due.

[C]

Don't know much about this aircraft, is it as large as a C5 Galaxy or a C17?

What is it going to replace and is it a Tactical Transport like the C130 or a heavy hauler?

As Mic says it's a sort of "in-betweeny", designed to fill a hole between the C-130 and C-17, which the US has chosen not to do as yet (as they can afford lots of C-17s!).

In short, it'll carry more and have a larger hold than the C-130, and be considerably cheaper than the C-17, so affordable in reasonable numbers for anyone other than the US (and their hundreds of C-17s!).

For the RAF, it's directly replacing the C-130K (essentially RAF C-130E/H). In an ideal world we'd have a couple of Sqns of C-17, but we could never realistically afford them!