Go the Block 52 onwards F-16’s, they are a better all round package.

Of course the latte crowd on here just lurve the little Gripen, but the only thing a Gripen has ever knocked out of the sky is itself, so I’d stick with the proven platform.

The F-35 ain’t totally ugly, but it’s not sleek and graceful like say an F-14 was.

The proportions of the F-35 make it look somewhat baby-ish, the canopy is so big and with the plane somewhat chubby means that it ends up looking ‘cute’. If it were an animal it would be ‘Babe’. La la la, la la la…

Hard to say, there is really nothing as cool as the F-14 anymore as it appeared in Top Gun. I mean that plane was the definition of ‘cool’ as a kid.

Nowdays, the Raptor is not bad, but it’s not F-14 level sleek and cool. By their nature Navy fighters are cooler than Air force fighters, and there ain’t no Navy Raptors unfortunatley, just F-35’s which are about as cool as a Toyota Camry, and Superbugs which are well, Hornet eye for the straight guy.

Rafale is okay but too small and too niche, and only really cool from front on. Plus it looks gumby taking off with it’s long undercarriage.

Sad fact is, there isn’t really anything nowdays that is super cool for a movie, they gotta make **** up like in Stealth. I think the F-14 was the pinnacle, even in the way it influenced Japanese animation like Macross, or appeared in films like ‘The Final Countdown’, ain’t nothing like that nowdays.

Sounds the a380 is out of the woods finally.

So how quiet is the a380 then? Cabin noise is something that bugs me. I’ve been on a340’s and they are meant to be pretty quiet. I did notice the a340 were quieter than say a 777 but it still sounds like someone has a vacuum cleaner on. If the a380 can better an a340 then that would be neat.

Lol, talk about the show must go on, the commentator talks about it like it was all planned “watch them as they get off the high speed turn off, look at that, skidding around and stopping”.

YF-23 sure was purdy. One of the greats that never was it seems.

The point is, yes the a380 may be having teething issues in the short term, but in the mid to long term, it’s prospects are still solid. Five or ten years is a LONG time in the aviation business, let alone twenty or even thirty years! Can any of us see that far into the future? To that end I feel the a380 will, when all is said and done, quite possibly prove to be a big success for Airbus, as unlikely as that seems to some right at this moment.