Obviously you don’t fly professionally nor understand what leads to fatigue. Fatigue isn’t a culmination of a months work of flying, it’s a result of events leading up to an event, hours perhaps a day before. How many hours off duty did this crew get prior to the flight in question? How many of those hours were restful? Did the hotel hold a Cinco de Mayo event outside the crews rooms leading to no sleep on there part?

Legal limitations don’t guarantee a rested crew unfortunately. Legally a crew only has to have 8 hours of rest between duty days (domestic US). Now that 8 hours isn’t really rest but 8 hours of not being on duty which is roughly from the time the door opens to 30 minutes before the next flight leaves the next day. Now the crew has to be transported to and from the hotel, check in, eat, go to bed, wake up, great ready for the new day, etc. I’ve had van rides from 2 minutes up to 30 minutes one way to the hotel. That 8 hours can easily, and legally, be nothing more than 6 hours of actual rest. Legally a crew can be scheduled for 14 hours of duty, 8 hours of rest followed by another 14 hours of duty not to mention that duty days can be extended to 16 hours for weather and maintenance. I’m sorry, but rest/duty rules suck and do little to insure a rested crew.

Fatigue is rarely used “magically” by crews. I can’t think of another accident where fatigue was mentioned by a crew as a cause. Given your attitude towards it you must have quite a list though so please share.

I am not disputing that crew rest legislation has many holes in it, and airlines really working on the legal limits can easily overwork their crews.
But I don’t like the reasoning: close to 100hrs a month => fatigue. That conclusion is drawn in that article.
You can have 100 duty hours a month without having 14 hrs a day. Actually, if they fly 10 block hours with 20 hour off in between, it is 5 trips a month.

As all people survived there is plenty of possibility to find out if crew was deprived of sleep. So I guess we’ll wait for the report to tell if the crew did remain
– within legal limits
– within commonly acceptable human limits (which I would consider at least 10 hours, preferably 12 hours between two shifts)

Fatigue can do amazing things. CFIT’s are a perfect example. No pilot would intentionally fly their airplane into the ground. If something as severe as that can happen due to fatigue a simple error in button pushing is nothing.

Fatigue can also be used magically in favor of any pilot in nearly any situation.

I think the pilots have some friends that help them tossing **** on Emirates, even though I think say that the accuses maybe hold some truth. But if there is a limit of 100 hours monthly, and Emirates stays below it, where is the problem? Does Emriates need to fly substantially less than the legal limit to comply with the rules?

One thing that has always struck me as rather odd about the B737 is the way the main wheels still remain exposed even after retraction. Presumably there must be at least some aerodynamic penalty for that, so does anyone know if Boeing ever considered “fixing” it?

The aerodynamics of the B737 are “dirty”, especially in that area. You have quite a thick boundary layer, due to many influences (antennas, air conditions, heat exchanger). That is the downside.
Advantage is less structural weight, less complexity, better cooling for the brakes (remember: the B737 comes without brake fan, big issue for some operators).

That’s right Sens.:)

I live in Northern Norway.
We have 3 major millitary sheltered airbases in the North that can hold 2-3 regiments of NATO aircraft .

That would be ANDØY airbase, EVENES airbase and BODØ airbase.
All are placed at about 600-800km from the Russian border.

Of course the Russian would have the chance to do some serious damage with Cruise missile and some bombing raid on our infrastructure, but no way in hell would they get very far south with the army.
Basicly Northern Norway consist of high unclimbable Mountains that hits the atlantic sea, so against any big ambfibie attack would be quite easy to defend.
Also there are very little roads/infrastructure that can carry any mass armour division..

The Norwegian/NATO strategi in the 80’s was that we would hold out in 5 days before we are reinforced by any big numbers of NATO troops/equipment.

Thanks

Besides, if the Russians destroy NATO airbases they would destroy the only possibility to support their own advance. Any meaningful seizure of Norway would only be possible if paratroopers are landed close to the airport and take them in a quick raid. I guess that is quite easy at EVENES due to the terrain (you need a 360° perimeter), quite impossible at ANDOYA, as Andoya is a bl00dy swamp without any cover (and the airport can quite easy be sealed off).

Anyways, as shown in 1940, Norway can be taken with very little troops if the strategy focuses on surprise and local strong points (see Narvik War Museum). Although being superior 5:1 (and the German troops consisting half of sailors), one month wasn’t enough to achieve victory.

Any mechanic/aerial advantage an attacker might have, a clever defensive can deny these advantages. 12 guys with 4 Panzerfaust may end most advances in Norway.

Yes. And now that Pratt and Whitney geared turbofan is available for small thrusts, like 10 500 kgf Cseries, but widebody twin sized GTF is ruled out, would this require development of a GTF trijet to make better use of GTF?

I recently read that P&W does not completely rule out a large thrust GTF. But the question is how the benefit compared to latest technology turbofans really is.
Would be interesting to know if a A340-300 with GTF could compete with new twins.

No need now.
The trijet was to overcome the ETOPS “No twins” attitude. Now that twins can cross the pond, and the engines are getting safer and safer…..and more economical, I doubt if we see a trijet again. 3 engines is 50% more maintenance costs than a twin, too.
You could build a twin engined design to lift the A380, but the wings would need to be considerably higher off the floor (Probably top mounted), which would mean a fuse mounted undercart.
It would also mean a dihedral wing, which is not as economic as the anhedral, and doesn’t lend itself to winglets or other aerodynamic improvement ideas.

3x GE90-115B would yield round-about 155t reference thrust.
With 560t MTOW that would result in a thrust/weight ratio of .27ish.
So, very roughly, should work thrust-wise.

Currently the A380 has up to ~135t reference thrust, or a thrust weight ratio of .23ish.

But the engine of choice was the Superfan, which could not be built. CFM56 was emergency replacement, and an unsatisfactory one. Let´s see if Pratt and Whitney GTF works.

What was wrong about, say, 3X Trent 600?

The original idea to build a twin and a quad from the same basic airframe denied a tri-jet configuration. The differences in CG, VTP arrangement and fuselage strength would have meant that both airframes would have been entirely different.
The CFM56-5C surely was no tailor-made solution, but I think it provided a useful solution due to the ambiguous availability of spare parts. The -5C bares very strong resemblance to the -5A and -5B, and also to the -7.

McDonnell-Douglas seriously tried to buy A330/A340 wings for their MD-11 stretch. This fell through; but Airbus also might have done something similar themselves.

I think a tri-jet is always a compromise to fit an aircraft into a mission with a certain engine in mind. The DC-10 and L1011 profited from sharing the same engine as the B747, A300 and later B767. It is interesting to see that all widebodies were basically built around 3 engine families of similar thrust capability:
P&W: JT9D/PW4000
GE: CF6-50/80
RR: RB211
That changed with arrival of the A330 and B777.