Last two A.340's sold.

Completely driven out of market by B777..Airbus lost lot of money on this one..

i remember my first S340 flight on an LH from Frankfurt, the climb after take off seemed very slow, i think it was a fuel saving technique?

The A340 has always been known for having a slow rate of climb. I watched some aircraft leaving Heathrow once while I was waiting for a bus and the A340 was very, very laboured compared to everything else. Fully loaded ones looked as if they would barely leave the ground.
They always looked underpowered to me. Was that the case, or is it just an illusion?

Doors4 – Checkout the video in this thread, and watch closely as the aircraft lands.

I appreciate that if you take a structure like an aircraft and exert forces on it there will be flexing, you only need watch a wing-tip to see that, or look at the skin ripples on some aircraft. What I meant was the belief often held by Joe Public that under normal circumstances an aircraft cabin bends like a piece of rubber when in fact most of what they are seeing are cabin fittings moving.

i remember my first S340 flight on an LH from Frankfurt, the climb after take off seemed very slow, i think it was a fuel saving technique?

Maybe? Or maybe because it has hair-dryers for engines? :p

Doors4 – Checkout the video in this thread, and watch closely as the aircraft lands.

i remember my first S340 flight on an LH from Frankfurt, the climb after take off seemed very slow, i think it was a fuel saving technique?

I’ve often heard the cabin flexing theory about various aircraft over the years. I think in reality what people see is the cabin floor flexing and lockers, galleys and other cabin fittings moving giving the illusion of the cabin flexing.

I never realised until the big Airbus AW article an issue or two ago, that the A340 had the same fuselage cross section as a A330. So the A340 is / was just a stretched version of the A330.

Seems as if it’s true for some airliners. Just had a read through an old topic on airliners.net: http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/287042

I heard a similar thing about the MD80 series, no idea if it’s really true though.

Is it true that you can sometimes actually see the A346 cabin flexing in flight?

That sounds like a Boeing fan-boy myth to me. :p If it were true, the stresses on the air frame would be immense, surely?

I always thought the A345 was the best looking A340, nice big RR engines instead of those weedy, asthmatic CFMs and just the the right length, the A346 always looked a bit too long for me…

-Dazza

Is it true that you can sometimes actually see the A346 cabin flexing in flight? Flew on one once and don’t rememeber anything like that.

A shame, but as pointed out, the A340 has been great for Airbus, it got them in the Long Haul game, and considerably reduced development costs to have two families of aircraft, of which the A330 gradually improved to take over much of the A340’s market.

The A340 was originally designed to take geared turbo fan, which never materialized (with the associated performance gains), that, and the 777, which came out as engines started delivering real performance gains, the advent of ETOPs, fuel etc. killed it.

Where’s your spotting brain gone? 😀

Virgin, SAA and Iberia. 🙂

Hee hee 😀

I always thought the A345 was the best looking A340, nice big RR engines instead of those weedy, asthmatic CFMs and just the the right length, the A346 always looked a bit too long for me…

-Dazza

A shame, because the A340-600 is a beautiful aircraft to look at.

Quite.
The four podded engine layout is a classic.

A shame, because the A340-600 is a beautiful aircraft to look at.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find the A340 (300) a beautiful aircraft to fly in. It was rather cramped and lacked headroom, I seem to remember.

I also remeber Richard Branson crowing about the fact that his trans-atlantic aircraft had four engines for safety rather than two. ‘4-engines-4-safety’, wasn’t it?

How times have changed. It could almost be that the four-engine configuration is going the same way as three, except for the A380/747-8.

Newforest …………

Thanks, surprises me too. Cannot recall an “big” operators of the type, apart from AF and LH.

Planemike

Where’s your spotting brain gone? 😀

Virgin, SAA and Iberia. 🙂

It is not just the improvements to the Boeing 777 that killed the A340, but the improvements that Airbus have made to the A330-300 was squeezing it from below.

Wasn’t one of the main selling points of the A340 its reliability?

When the A340 was planned and designed in the 1980s, engines weren’t nearly as reliable as they are today. It was thought passengers (and airlines) would be more willing to fly aircraft with 4 engines compared to those with 2 over oceanic legs (eg. Atlantic/Pacific).

When South African Airways announced it was looking into ordering a new long haul aircraft in the late 90’s – Boeing and Airbus both sent their latest models to Jo’burg to woo the SAA CEO. Both had scheduled demonstration flights for the same day with Boeing being up first with their 777.
As the aircraft (with Boeing and SAA executives on-board) reached 80 knots on take-off the port engine experienced a compressor stall and the take-off was abruptly aborted.
Whilst the Boeing engineers scratched their heads, the SAA CEO was lead to the A340 by, then CEO of Airbus, Jean Pierson. The A340 demonstration flight went without a hitch, and afterwards Pierson said jokingly “You see, with the A340, you always have three extra engines – just in case.” And with that, the deal was pretty much sealed… Of course, back then oil was around the $20 per barrel mark.