Ship 741What do you actually know about the MD-11? Have you flown it or maintained it or do you just “believe it” because someone told you it’s flight characteristics were very different? (Wheres the head against wall smiley when you need it)
Well my first experience with the airplane was when I attended a two and one half week systems class on the airplane to become qualified to work on it as a Line Mechanic.
Several years later, I had the Chief Line Check pilot on the fleet at my employer, which was the 3rd or 4th largest airline in the world at the time, tell me how poorly it handled.
Since then, I’ve done a lot of reading on the beast.
But I digress, because you have attacked me and my qualifications, instead of answering my arguments. One of the moderators has asked that you desist in the personal attacks. The record doesn’t lie, there have been far too many crashes on this airplane type, and IMHO it should be grounded.
Ship 741The design of the MD-11 triggered most accidents. The stability issue and the high landing speed.
Ding Ding Ding we have a winner!
Agree completely, even a cursory investigation will reveal that the MD-11 is a very dangerous airplane.
Ship 741Why bother having an official investigation when so many of you know what happened already:rolleyes:
Reports say it had a cargo fire prior to touchdown. The aircraft could have had structural damage prior to touchdown and the crews priority wouldn’t have been a greaser.
Call the NTSB, tell them what happened and save them some time and travel expenses:rolleyes:
Just for the record, I have thought the aircraft should have been grounded for some time, ie., before the latest accident. If it turns out that the problem was a cargo fire, so be it. I still believe that this is a very dangerous aircraft with very different flight characteristics than other commercial aircraft. The record bears me out. The accidents aren’t over for this fleet.
Ship 741lets not widen the conversation too far. I’m talking MD-11, not DC-10. The horizontal stabilizer is too small, the LSAS trims the stabilizer without pilot input or knowledge, PIO occurs, hard landing ensues, landing gear breaks off and airplane rolls over and burns. Has happened too many times already (though not perhaps in this case, it looks like this may have been a fire in the cargo but we shall see). As unfairly maligned as the DC-10 was, the MD-11 has gotten a relative pass considering it absolutely malicious handling characteristics on landing. They really are two different airplanes. And all this has been said before on this forum.
There will be more MD-11 landing accidents/incidents.
Ship 741IMHO the MD-11 should immediately be grounded.
For reasons I have posted numerous times on this board, MD-11 landing accidents will continue to occur.
Ship 741But the A350XWB already has over 500 orders on the books – a great number in anyone’s books – not to mention the MoU’s signed at Farnborough this year and the options tally too.
Its true that 500 orders are nice to have.
Yet, I think I have seen them wooing GE, without success. IIRC there have been threads on airliners.net about the topic of Airbus wanting the GE option for their customers, but GE engines are not sized correctly for the A350….apparently the GEnx is too small and the GE90 is too big and GE refuses to build a new engine just for the 350, at least so far.
Ship 741Now all we to do is wait for the A350XWB to take to the skies.
Rolls Royce have a monopoly on this plane and its doing really well orders wise. Well over 1,000 engines will need to be made at Derby to get them all airbourne. Exciting times for the UK.
Historically, a single engine choice has not been very successful. For example, the L1011 only offered RR engines, and only 250 were sold, vis a vis the DC-10/MD-11 which offered multiple engine types and sold 4-500 airframes. In my experience, airlines generally want competition among the engine manufacturers.
Ship 741Uh……are you aware that PW engines have never been offered as an option for the 787?
The “optional” engine offered for the 787 is the “all new” GEnx engine offered by GE.
Ship 741I have always been amazed by the quietness of the 146. It’s incredible to be half a mile or so away from one taking off or landing and basically not be able to hear it.
Also, I’ve always thought it was ironic that for such a quiet aircraft EXTERNALLY, it was perhaps among the most noisy INTERNALLY. The high wing generates a lot of flap and engine noise which is picked up in the cabin, and the fact that the gear bolts right to the fuselage seems to cause a lot of noise also during extension and retraction. I must say that I have no quantifiable data to support this claim, just a second hand report from my father, who once rode the beast.
Ship 741I remember the Lockheed Tristar being branded as “The Whisperjet” by Eastern Airlines in the 1970s. 😎
It’s even worse than you remember, the 727 was labeled “The Whisperjet” by Eastern IIRC. Seems ridiculous now, doesn’t it?
Ship 741This is another one of those topics that has been simmering for awhile….I suppose the day will come eventually. IMHO, it is much more likely that the rules for long range flying will change first. For example, in the US, any flight over 8 hours in duration has to have an additional pilot and anything over 12 needs 2. During the Bush 41 administration a trial balloon was floated that would have extended those limits to 10 and 14, but it died.
Ship 741The A321 has a wing area of around 1320 sq ft, the 757’s wing area is around 1950, or 47% more. There is no way that the A321, even with winglets, can approach the payload-range capability of the 757. And, don’t forget, airlines are equipping the 757’s with winglets also. In fact, many of them have been equipped for several years…..it’s nice to see airbus finally catching up :). IMHO the reason it hasn’t happened sooner is that the payback for the winglets is less for short haul flying, and the 321 wasn’t really built for/isn’t capable of long routes that the 757 can/does fly.
The A321 is a great airplane for flying around Europe, but isn’t really a competitor to the 757.
The 757 has been around awhile, but it was really a leap forward when it came out. The 727 burned around 85-90 lbs of fuel per pax, the 757 around 38, so it was/is hugely efficient, especially with the unreliable PW2037 engines. The RR engine is MUCH more reliable, but weighs more and burns slightly more fuel, a double whammy payload wise. Still, if I had 757’s in my airline fleet, I would want the RR, due to fact that it runs 20-30,000 hours on the wing whereas the Pratt rarely makes it beyond 10,000 hours, and the average is something like half that.
Finally, I would add that Boeing only recently closed down the 757 line, so there are some fairly young frames out there that will soldier on for many years. IMHO, what killed the 757 was that Boeing just wanted too much money for it.
Ship 741Are they being over optimistic?
At this point, with their (Boeing) poor record of meeting schedules on this program, one has to be a little bit guarded. Still, one hopes they are finally over the protracted gestation.
Ship 741It’s not just down to differing definitions and here I show my scars of countless ICAO/EUROSTAT (and IATA) stats meetings trying to get statistical definitions harmonised between differing organisations so that even the definition of a revenue passenger was the same across the board.
I frequently had problems at meetings with differences in the system financial results that IATA published in World Air Transport Statistics and the Form EF-1 results published by ICAO because of definitional aspects like non airline activities etc etc etc.
You have to remember that IATA is a trade association and there to represent and lobby on behalf of its members. It does not represent all carriers and given that people like Easyjet, Ryanair and Southwest are not members (although FR was for some years) it probably represents less of the industry now than it did ten years ago.
Back in the late 80s the IATA Director General was Gunter Eser and he would not allow the IATA PR people to release any negative publicity about the airline industry unless it was absolutely necessary and everything had to go through his office for approval before public release. The next DG Pierre Jeanniot was more reasonable but his successor Bisignani is a different kettle of finish altogether for reasons I wont go into here but it is noticeable that these results were issued just before the IATA AGM in Berlin this week.
The beauty of IATA financial stats in the days when I compiled them was that the most widely used statistic could not be tied up against anything else that was published – quarterly financial statistics for international scheduled services. ICAO didn’t collect this stuff and airlines did not break down costs and revenues in their annual reports, so who could prove our figures wrong?
“so who could prove your figures wrong?”
Hey there are a lot of fuzzy figures out there….like Airbus Industrie claiming that the A320 is cash postive, yet refusing to divulge the financials of the program. By the way, not my claim, but Pierre Sparaco’s in last weeks Aviation Week.
Ship 741Thats an unusual one to be at Heathrow.
Whats the purpose of its visit?
After considering that the primary mission of the E-4 is to be an emergency airborne command post, I hope you will see that the USAF doesn’t routinely publicize where, when, or why one of the aircraft is wherever it is when it happens to be spotted somewhere. Thus, it seems probable we will never know.
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