Ship 741Am I the only one (as a relative outsider to this thread) who thinks maybe you are getting a little too personal there.
Every countries sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan is as great as any other, be it the 4000 odd American lives that have been lost, or the 300 or so British (or any other nations) dead.
I was speaking specifically about Iraq when I mentioned the 4,000 deaths. He originally said Iraq when he meant Afganistan, an honest, but SIGNIFICANT mistake, since the very Euro-Socialist governments who now want the U.S. to buy their tanker opposed the Iraq war.
I suggest you read through the earlier posts. I’ve been called “moronic,” “retarded,” and many other choice names…however I have never lowered myself to those levels. I even pointed out after the “retarded” affair that I had a child with Trisomy 21, but no apology was forthcoming. I was told that I was a rightwing zealot who only got my news from Foxnews and talk radio, and then those attempting to refute my arguments used Wikipedia as a source! It’s been a rather ironic thread indeed.
Ship 741Yep, I meant Afghanistant. It has been edited/corrected.
Thank you but I understand words. And yes I find it quite enlightening that this is seen as an insult on your side of the Atlantic. Some European governments keep a stake, even if limited, in key industries. I don’t see the problem with this. By the way, the same applies to the US – US authorities do not let key industries/companies fall in the hands of foreigners. Have a look at the ownership of defense companies and how US legislation blocks foreign acquisitions. Even applies to ports apparently.
Afganistan…Iraq….whats the difference? To you, apparently none. Then again 4,000 of your countrymen haven’t been killed in Iraq.
Well that is an interesting analysis. You have claimed in earlier posts that France, Germany, et al, weren’t socialist, yet now admit that the government owns “a stake” in key industries and furthermore, this is equivalent to citizenship requirements for private ownership of key industries. Thats a real leap, but I guess when you have to keep changing facts to fit your arguments…..
The more you talk, the weaker your arguments become. Why don’t you just admit you are an Airbus fan boy/enthusiast, incapable of critical, independent, thought beyond what you are fed, and move on?.
Ship 741I suppose that the Brits that have ended up in Irak and suffered casualties will appreciate. Same for the Spaniards. I suppose that the Brits, Spaniards, Germans and French that have ended up in Irak because the US so asked (and took casualties) will appreciate your comment as well. And if this is your viewpoint, you may want to stop sending envoys to our capitals to request us to send additional troops. I can only hope that one day European politicians come to their senses and figure out how you think. And that they stop sucking up to the US, buying its military wares and only engage troops when it is in their own interest. .
French and German troops in Iraq? Sure you don’t mean Afganistan?
I also find it quite symptomatic that in your view, the term Euro government organisation is a type of an insult. Says a lot. .
Please note the difference between Euro organisation and Euro government organisation. By not seeing the differentiation, you have tacitly admitted that Airbus is a government organisation. Careful, your slip is showing.
Ship 741On top of the other reasons already listed…..I believe the 47 would not have survived long term because of it’s “bad” flying characteristics. It was a first generation jet and was a handful. Extremely long t/o run due to early generation, pure turbojets.
Walter J. Boyne has written some articles about flying the thing, he said the ailerons locked up/lost effictiveness above a certain speed/altitude, apparently you maintained roll control with the rudder in that instance. The J47s absolutely drank fuel at low altitude…thus they often landed with just a few minutes of fuel. Descent was another can of worms. It had a drag chute that was deployed on in the air on descent to assist in slowing down while descending. A few knots fast over the fence and it floated forever and then rolled forever.
Ship 741He questioned why the Pentagon would give extra credit to fuel offload, given that the existing Air Force KC-135 tankers typically offload only about a third of their total fuel. (Seems a fair question..JB)
Touche! Indeed! This is essentially what I have been arguing for some time. The 330 is TOO BIG, and the only advantage they (who wrote the USAF report) could come up with that was unassailable was that the larger airplane could offload more fuel per lb of fuel burned. The fact that the USAF doesn’t need airplanes that big ought to figure into the equation.
IMHO, I think they thought Congress intended to punish Boeing for their initial, flawed lease deal by giving the contract to Airbus. Thus, the wrote the spec to favor Airbus. Items that weren’t important suddenly became important. They misjudged the power the unions have over the politicians.
When the dust clears, the USAF gets 190 KC-767’s and the taxpayers save 6-10 billion dollars over the initial proposal (thank you John McCain). As for Airbus, all that remains is our friendship.
Ship 741No, you’ve been answered fully. The A330 uses more fuel to fly empty, or to carry a given load over a given distance, because it’s bigger & is therefore lugging around more of itself. Nobody has disputed that.
But so what? The important thing is that it uses less fuel in proportion to what it offloads (or carries, when it’s operating as a freighter), in real world flight profiles. The USAF said so in their analysis of the B767 & A330, & the GAO agreed*. Your silence on that is deafening.
*Pages 17 & 18 of the published summary –
“The SSAC also noted a number of “major discriminators” in favor of Northrop Grumman in the aerial refueling area … including the proposal of a better aerial refueling efficiency (more pounds of fuel offload per pound of fuel used) than Boeing’s”
I have agreed several times that the larger airplane burns less fuel per pound of fuel carried.
The USAF said so in their flawed analysis that was overturned. They had to: that is the benefit of the larger airplane. It’s not debateable. However, that efficiency requirement was not an ORIGINAL requirement…..it only appeared after it became necessary to justify the 330 purchase. They had to hang their hat on something.
Ship 741As of end June 2008, according to Wikipedia, which usually gets this sort of thing more or less right –
Boeing 767 (first delivery 1982) 1011 ordered, 965 delivered. 37 deliveries per year. Peak 63, in 1992.
A330 (first delivery 1993) 975 ordered, 550 delivered. 37 deliveries per year. Peak 68 – in 2007 – but there will be a new peak in 2008.
Come back in 10 years and try boasting about the 767s better sales record. 😀
1. I clearly stated deliveries, not orders.
2. Airbus came reluctantly to ETOPS, I notice you ignored that. They WANTED to sell 340s and 380s and only 15 years later are selling the twins in the amounts necessary for a viable commercial program.
3. How will the 330 fare against the 787, particulary if B builds a second or a third production line? How will the 330 fare against the 350? The 330 was LATE to the market, not for technical reasons, but because A didn’t promote it soon enough. I’ll go way out on a limb and say that if I were running Airbus I wouldn’t have built the 340 at all. They should have promoted the twin.
4. The 330 right now has a very comfortable niche in size between the 767 and 777. What convincing argument can you provide that the A330 is replacing 767s? The 330 and 767 really aren’t competitors in the commercial arena because they are different sized airplanes…….for that reason they shouldn’t be competing for the USAF order……but Airbus has no other product that fits the need any better. Thus, they hang their hat on the oft repeated offload efficiency argument, while ignoring the negative aspects of an airplane that is too big: eats ramp space, much more block fuel, fewer number of booms, etc.
Ship 741Quite the contrary, I challenge you on that very point. Go and read the February decision by the USAF. The USAF determined how tankers are and will be used, what its missions are and what type of refuelling it requires. To be more specific, it performed an “Integrated Fleet Air Refueling Assessment”, i.e. it performed an analysis of tanker performance in a realistic conflict scenario”. The result was that the 330 was deemed to better meet the needs of the USAF than the 767. This fact was not based on what you think the USAF needs are or will be – it was based on a thorough evaluation by the USAF itself, which knows this much better than you do or try to figure out (see above).
And this element of the decision was no challenged by the GAO.
Politics. My take on this is that the USAF was seriously ticked over the initial, flawed Boeing offer (the one where people went to jail). Boeing tried to fleece the taxpayers (thanks, McCain). They felt, for political reasons, that they had to choose the competitor. They needed a justifiable cause, they couldn’t publicly say they were choosing the competitor to punish Boeing. They had to come up with an un-challengeable argument….thus the efficiency argument. No one can logically argue that the “fuel delivered per fuel burned” calculation does not favor the larger airplane, thus the GAO could not and did not find fault with that. But that was not an original requirement.
The original USAF communications stated that the A330 took up too much ramp space (for the one thousandth time, the airplane is too freaking big!). They wanted something like 190 airplanes, not 160. A can’t give them 190 for the same price, they can only give 160, thus they HAVE to keep trumpeting the efficiency argument. And their parrots on this board dutifully keep repeating them.
At least thats my take. Go ahead and attack me personnally now. Please continue to ignore the fact that the A330 is too big.
Ship 741Why is it so hard for you all to concede that the smaller airplane has smaller block fuel usage? It’s a matter of physics really. I note that no one mentioned the 84,000lb difference on the empty weight. Surely you all know how truly significant that much of a difference is?
The silence is deafening.
Ship 741I have acknowledged that the larger airplane delivers more lbs of fuel per lb of fuel burned, just like a larger airliner has lower seat mile costs due to having more seats.
Why is it so hard for you all to concede that the smaller airplane has smaller block fuel usage? It’s a matter of physics really. I note that no one mentioned the 84,000lb difference on the empty weight. Surely you all know how truly significant that much of a difference is?
Also, no one challenged my operational claims, ie., that 650 of the 750 B-52’s are gone……thus the need to tank large loads is greatly reduced…..most tanking needs are for the much less needy tactical aircraft. Furthermore, during the last day or two, I asked a friend of mine who spent 25 years as a KC-135 nav how many tankers it took to drag 4 F-15’s to Europe and he said 2. They would take 2 in any event in case they had a technical problem with one of the tankers. Does anyone think the biger A330 would allow USAF to only take 1 tanker? I think not, they would still take two for technical reasons….ie., two of the unnecessarily large airplanes……more waste. What about all the training missions where they just go up and check out nugget fighter jocks on AAR……..can you imagine how much fuel will be wasted by the bigger airplane?
WRT my technology claim, I should have specified that I was referring to the engines. However, I will concede that some might view the FBW on the A330 as more advanced technologically. Perhaps the it would have been 84,500 lbs heavier without it….:D
Schorsch….thanks for the caveat “in recent years”…..I’ve noticed that Boeing has delivered about twice as many 767’s as Airbus has A330’s. Something about Airbus not truly believing in/promoting ETOPS for the last ten years….they actually played the safety card by painting up a wasteful A340 (versus 777) at an air show didn’t they? Now, they want to sell a twin to the USAF……go figure.
Ship 741I contacted some airline industry sources for rough gouges on 767 and A330 fuel burn data. I know there will be differences on the tanker version, but I felt that looking at the commercial airliner version provided a good baseline. These sources said the burn per hour on an average long haul flight for a 767 was about 11,700 lb/hr and for an A330 was about 13,300lb/hr. Here is the data I worked up based upon flying 160 airplanes 1,000 hours a year.
13,300-11,700 = 1,600 lb/hr
1,600 lb/hr x 1,000 hr/yr = 1,600,000 lb/yr
1,600,000 / 6.7 lb/gal = 238,806 gal
238, 806 gal/yr x $4/gal = $955,224
$955,224 x 160 a/c = $152,835,840
Thus, purchasing the smaller, lighter, 767 based platforms generates almost $153 million in fuel savings each year. You get almost one free airplane per year by buying the smaller airplane. This allows an operator to buy more airplanes and cover more missions, which is quite important for the tactical tanking needs of the current and projected USAF (much less demand for high fuel offload, strategic B-52/B-2 tanking in the future than there was during the cold war with 750 B-52’s.)
Granted, the fuel price will fluctuate over time, but here is something that won’t: The EW of the KC767 is shown on wiki as 181,610, and the EW of the KC-45 is shown on wiki as 265,657. Thats 84,000 lbs difference folks. At a time when anyone of us who could identify 5,000 lbs of savings on the 787 could become an instant Vice President at Boeing (same for AI on any of their programs), thats huge.
PS I used wiki because, amazingly enough, that source was used un-impeachably earlier in this thread.
Ship 741According to the USAF. The USAF found that the 330 was more efficient as far as air refueling goes. And yes, that was a key parameter.
The USAF found that the 330 “provides better fuel offload per fuel used compared to the KC-767.” The USAF developed a formula to figure the efficiency at various distances, based on most likely missions for such aircrafts.. It found that the 330 was 5% more efficient for air refueling at 1000 miles and that the advantage of the 330 was increasing the greater the distance of the mission.
Finally, the USAF found that because of its greater efficiency, the 330 enables ” it to execute (missions) with 22 fewer aircraft than Boeing’s.”
I am not disputing that the 330 “provides better offload per fuel used compared to the KC-767.” A bigger airplane with roughly even technology will have that advantage. I am asking where the USAF said that was a goal for their acquisition program. Perhaps I am mistaken but I don’t recall that being a key parameter, at least not until the flawed analysis/decision that was overturned by the GAO.
Ship 741The value that really matters it the pounds of fuel burned for pounds of fuel delivered.
According to whom? I could be wrong but I don’t believe the USAF has stated that this is a key parameter. What I think they have said is that they need more booms in the air.
Better efficiency defined as you have above is somewhat analagous to saying big airliner x has lower seat mile costs than small airliner y. This is generally true because the bigger aircraft has more seats to spread the cost around. The argument you are making, it seems to me, is like the A380 argument all over again….a smaller number of bigger airplanes is more efficient than a bigger number of smaller airplanes. The USAF is saying the tanker market has fragmented (to borrow the commercial airline term).
Ship 741We’re getting off track because you keep dragging us off track with all this ill-informed “socialist” nonsense.
State-run health care? Let’s look at reality, shall we? All European countries have mixed health care systems, with both state & private funding & providers – as does the USA. US govenrment spending per head on health care is more than in any European country except Luxembourg. The proportion of health care provided by state-owned hospitals in the USA is below the European average, but well within the range found in Europe. The biggest difference between the USA & Europe is that the USA (both state & private) provides health care at much greater cost than in Europe, so American personal spending on health care is greater.
Do you deny that the USA has a state welfare programme? State-provided pensions? How does this differ from Europe?
What flag carriers that are arms of government? They’ve almost all been sold, some outright, some with the state keeping a minority stake, most of which are treated as purley financial investments, & sold whenever conditions are propitious or the government needs money. Some have gone bust, others have been bought out, or merged with each other. (Privately-owned) British Airways is currently in talks over a merger with (privately-owned) Iberia, for example. Half of all Lufthansa shareholders aren’t even German, & the state owns nothing.
As for companies receiving direct aid – errr – Airbus doesn’t. Another myth. It used to get government loans for new development, but those loans have made very good profits for the governments concerned, more than they’d have got placing the money on deposit. Recently, its funded development from revenues. And what about Fanny Mae & Freddy Mac?
OK, you’re right, I’m wrong. Let get off the politics and stay on topic.
Ship 741No, it is NOT. The difference is marked. The negligible bit is YOUR claim that the faster climb to Cruise Alt is the key. I argued against you, you typed like I defended your claim.
The post above also points you at Boeings website. It supports my argument, and my argument is based on feedback from ALL the Winglet operators. All those designed by APB that is.
My apologies for mis-stating your argument.
Furthermore, you are right. The wingletted airplane saves a significant amount of fuel even at the same flight level. Not satisfied with links to manufacturer websites, I have run that data on a fairly sophisticated flight planning system in use at a large airline. I was able to plug in a wingletted airplane and a non wingletted airplane. In one scenario I capped their altitudes at FL360, in the other scenario I let them climb to their most economic altitudes. The results are shown in the chart below, fuel burn in pounds for 4 hour 25 minute flight with exact same payload and winds:
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