A330Fs

Airbus talks about making a portable jack that can be stowed aboard the plane.

Most probably. For 747-400F’s with opening nose doors (genuine bulid freighters therefore, not conversions) there is a procedure to place a jack under the nose when nose-loading freight above a certain weight. Can’t see it being a problem on the 330F

Ah yes, missed that.

Seems to me, the folks over at Airbus weren’t thinking about possible future applications of the aircraft.
Still, it’s successful all the same.

Does anyone know why the A330 has such a pronounced nose down attitude when sitting on its gear then?

Explained it at length in a post above. Airbus did not bother stretching A300 nose gear together with main gear for A330.

And invite incidents where the aircraft rolls back and into something or someone?
Parking brakes can fail and sometimes ramp rats forget to chock planes.

The A330 converted freighters that are being discussed (or were, I do not know of the development at the moment), will need a special lift for the nose wheel for loading and unloading do to the slope of the maindeck. Such an arrangement will severely undermine the types versatility as a freighter. It will mean that ad hoc flights will hardly be viable because the required ground equipment may not be there.

The alternative may be to park the aircraft on the ramp and not the apron?!?

Does anyone know why the A330 has such a pronounced nose down attitude when sitting on its gear then? Stability? If so, how do they compensate for this kludge? Extra weight up front?

The A330 converted freighters that are being discussed (or were, I do not know of the development at the moment), will need a special lift for the nose wheel for loading and unloading do to the slope of the maindeck. Such an arrangement will severely undermine the types versatility as a freighter. It will mean that ad hoc flights will hardly be viable because the required ground equipment may not be there.

Airbus talks about making a portable jack that can be stowed aboard the plane.

Kludge it may be, but that is the only way to make the A330 into a self sustaining freighter. Without building a completely new aircraft, I see this as the only way to make a freighter out of the A330.

The A330 converted freighters that are being discussed (or were, I do not know of the development at the moment), will need a special lift for the nose wheel for loading and unloading do to the slope of the maindeck. Such an arrangement will severely undermine the types versatility as a freighter. It will mean that ad hoc flights will hardly be viable because the required ground equipment may not be there.

Looks a bit of a kludge in my opinion.

Does the nose-down attitude of the passenger model affect the takeoff performance in any way?

Bit more here-

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/01/22/211629/picture-airbus-a330f-gets-blister-for-new-nose-gear-as-revised-layout-levels-cabin-floor-to-ease.html

that now makes sense, cheers for the info. 🙂

A300 and A310 have shorter main gear than A330 and A340.

When Airbus developed A340 and A330 and stretched the A300 fuselage, a new, taller main gear was needed, to prevent the longer tail from striking ground at takeoffs and landings. But Airbus did not bother to lengthen the main gear, and accepted that the planes sit nose down on ground.

Not a big problem on passenger planes, but proved a problem on freighters. A330 still did not have the length in nose for taller landing gear (something like avionics bay was in the way), so Airbus built a fairing bulging out of the fuselage for the landing gear.

Sounds fairly straight forward to me. The modification ensures that the aircraft is level when parked. :rolleyes: