Originally posted by martin_EGTK
Thanks for the compliments chaps, much appreciated! Kev, the whole thing cost me £116, not too bad for flights booked 12 hours prior to departure. I certainly consider this money well spent to get the names and direct numbers and addresses for the chief pilot and chief recruiting officer for the two airlines, this really should help no end!

Excellent. Too many people get their licenses and then sit back and think the job should come to them. This is exactly the sort of networking that I’m convinced WILL get you your break while others on your course won’t.

Good stuff, keep at it.

Sorry Ali but I think it was the inboard aileron that he saw. Boeings only use the outboard ailerons when flap/slat is deployed. Once clean they lock out in the neutral position and the inboards are used on their own. At higher speed their reduced distance from the fulcrum of the motion gives a smoother ride. Airbus don’t need the mechanical complexity of a second set of ailerons as they just use the computers in the fly by wire system to reduce the control output according to the speed.

Tempest – In that position you would have been traversing an area known as the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) where massivelt unstable airmasses meet violently and carry severy storm activity up to 40+ thousand feet. The weather avoidance would probably have been required in any commercial aircraft (it doesn’t just pop up in front of Airbus types!) however the A340 would tend to give a more oscillatory ride than an overpowered, overweight brick sh1thouse like a 747. It’s swings and roundabouts…the A340 may have temporarily given a few minutes of mildly bumpier ride than the 747 but at least you would only have put 60-70% of the pollutants into the atmosphere! 🙂

On the subject of brakes…Airbus have always had difficulty with brakes. They may sound and feel a bit juddery but if they were unsafe the CAA wouldn’t allow them to operate.

It’s more a question of wing area rather than span. If anything the ride would probably be smoother with reduced area however that would bring about other complications. The A340 works well because it shares certain principles with the U2 which are effectively similar to that of motor gliders. They gain efficiency through reduced power and high lift to drag ratios.

Come on AO put some effort into it. If you ask a straightforward question I’ll give you a straightforward answer.

OK so trying to work out what you mean by ‘and are you supposed to leave it loosely’ – I suppose you meant to actually finish the sentence with another word or perhaps you didn’t mean to put the ly on the end of loose. In that case, yes I leave my lap strap loosely fastened all the time.

Now if only you had just worded the question better rather than becoming infantile with stuff like ‘yer!!! whatever’.

What do you mean by ‘are they decent’? Do you mean upstanding pillars of the community!?! :rolleyes:

There are 3 half inch pins holding 60,000 lb thrust motors on. I don’t think we’ll have too much difficulty hanging onto more powerful motors yet!