I’ll leave the assigning of responsibility or fault to the authorities, but it’s already pretty clear what happened based on what’s been reported so far. The Comair jet never cleared taxiway Mike because their gate area wasn’t clear. Did they alert the controller they weren’t clear? Were they required to? They held short while waiting for the equipment to be cleared with their tail still too close to Mike, at least for an oversized jet like the A380. The AF A380 came along at what appears to be a fairly rapid rate. I have no idea if he was moving too fast, that is for authorities to decide.

The limiting A380 design factor for use at current airports wasn’t runway length or even MTOW, it was width of taxiways and size of gate areas. There are still areas like this at many airports where the margins are just too close when it comes to the A380. If there had been a fire there would have been nearly 600 people at risk in just seconds. I’ve seen the emergency evacuation test footage for the A380 and I know they passed, but I sure wouldn’t want to be one of 525 people trying to escape an A380 with a transcontinental fuel load, while burning on the tarmac. I don’t like Airbus aircraft for dozens of technical reasons, and while the A380 is a beautiful aircraft I don’t ever want to fly on one. Way too many people on board.

The pictures show the M29 Weasel rigged under a Douglas C-54 Skymaster. This was the only aircraft that carried and dropped an underslung Weasel. The C-54 had previous experience with carrying the M22 Locust Tank in this fashion, and even though the Locust was designed to be carried by the C-54, I don’t think it was very practical. The Weasel was easier to rig underneath the aircraft due to the lack of a turret. Broken down into parts, the Weasel still wouldn’t fit inside a C-47, but several were dropped from Fairchild C-82 Packets and many were landed by gliders. The underslung fast-drop snow vehicle was a concept from the 1930’s, and by the time someone actually got around to trying it the vehicles had grown in weight so much that their options were quite limited.

A request was made to Air Chief Marshall Harris for Lancasters, but he believed they were better utilized dropping bombs instead of tracked vehicles.

The Weasel was originally called the T-24, I’m not sure when the name was changed to M29. The M29C was the amphibious version, although the M29 would float enough to ford streams and calm waters.

“…resorts to calling someone they don’t even know a moron.”

How strange that nobody understands that what I was saying was, “If he can call a person he doesn’t even know a con artist, does that make it all right for me to call him a moron?”

Obviously not. But I was unaware that I had to explain that.

As for flying an airplane one-handed, that’s hardly the worst I’ve done in the air. (Mr. Page, are you a pilot? Didn’t think so.)

There you go again, assuming you have all the answers. Why bother to wait for a response when you already know everything, right? And bragging about the bad things you’ve done in the air, that’s the sign of a mature pilot. Don’t bother responding to me, you already know everything and you won’t make it through my troll filter. Have a nice flight.

Looks like they waited until the last minute to comply with AD’s they had known about for years, that affected nearly 100 aircraft. Great management skills.

That’s McDonnell Douglas.

Alex,

Most B-24/LB-30/C-87 types had some variant of the Hamilton Standard 23E50 prop with 6477A-0 blades. G-AGZI (AL557) and G-AGKU (AL547) were somewhat different in that they were built for the RAF and weren’t lend/lease aircraft from USAAF production. As such they were built to RAF specs and weren’t like most aircraft built by Consolidated at that time. They were built with an enlarged nose, widened tailplane and Curtis Electric props with long hubs. I’m not sure what changes they went through in civilian life but since there were only 140 Liberator II models built for the RAF, this version would have been a very rare subtype when you consider there were more than 18,000 B-24 type aircraft produced. Some of the RAF Liberator II’s were armed and some were delivered unarmed as LB-30 transport variants.

Thanks for sharing another thumbnail Mr. Allen!

His money, his planes, he can do whatever the hell he wants.

Thanks for the detailed explanation, very insightful. Thanks.