Originally posted by Bhoy
It’s underpowered in as much as if one of the engines were to fail during a takeoff roll, the three remaining engines wouldn’t have enough thrust to complete the takeoff. Each of the CFM56’s they use generate 31’200lb st. Compare that with the 64’000-72’000lb st generated by each of the A330’s engines (depending on which engine is used), and you can already see that 1 330 engine is more powerful that 2 343 engines. The 345/346 however, are certainly not underpowered (but then, they have engines built by a proper manufacturer. ;))
Ahhh the old 2 engine versus 4 engine misunderstanding. If an aircraft needs, say 60,000 lbs of thrust to climb away to meet minimum performance requirements then to cover the engine out scenario a twin needs 120,000 lbs of thrust, a tri requires 90,000 lbs of thrust and a quad needs 80,000 lbs of thrust to be safe. Therefore a twin is carrying 150% of the thrust that a quad needs and is therefore inefficient when considered over very long sectors.
Also and more importantly, if the aircraft could not meet performance group A criteria to operate out of JNB it wouldn’t be certified to do so. Airbus themselves describe A343 performance as ‘adequate’. :rolleyes:
Another thing to bear in mind is that if the take off performance does not naturally require the use of the full length of the runway then we as pilots will invariably derate the take off thrust and deliberately INCREASE the take off run in exchange for extended periods between service intervals on the engines (while ensuring that legal performance requirements are still met.
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