they are equal oppertunity destroyers

Excellently well-put, pluto.

Basically, the way I see it, Airbus, Air France and The French Aviation administration knew about the defects i nthe A320 series, they issues quiet notices which just were not listened to.
The obvious reason for this is, the poeple who knew were all french, Airbus is a predominantly french company. It only serve them well to cover things up.

A 2 day old A320 piloted by an experienced Captain of a well managed airline should NOT crash!!!!

I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky (sung with an Australian accent)………….. 😀

THIS IS NOT AN AIRBUS V BOEING POST.

Right. And I’m really Kylie Minogue. 😀

Oh, for pity’s sake!!!!!!

You’re talking about a business here – albeit one with a particularly unpleasant CEO – not a football team.

What’s all the nastiness and name-calling meant to prove about anyone or anything apart from the people indulging in it? Do any of you actually work for Ryanair, or hold shares in the company?

Not worth getting worked up about otherwise, is it? 😎

and how many nations have carried out large scale opposed amphibious assaults/ airborne assault under modern combat conditions?

If anything, this emphasises my point.

Even the nations with a history of such operations – the USA, UK and (to a lesser extent), France – have not carried out such operations in the face of resistance from modern weapons systems.

The PLA has [b]never[/b] carried out an opposed airborne or seaborne amphibious assault in it’s entire history – has it, plawolf?

Your point about the distance between the PRC and Taiwan is a bit of a red herring – the distance between the UK and France is even less, yet look at the massive planning and preparation that went into the D-Day landings and how close some of those landings came to disaster despite an overwhelming superiority of force, men and material on the Allied side.

The analogy with Pearl Harbour is not a good one, either. Taiwan has been expecting and preparing for an attack from the PRC for the last fifty years and more and is highly unlikely to be caught napping.

And yet you blithely assume that forces defending their homes, their families and their way of life would step aside to allow the PLA to establish a beach-head without exacting a terrible price or even destroying the invading forces?

Such arrogance!!!

the only question is how long it would take and how many lives it would cost.

An opposed amphibious landing is, perhaps, the riskiest and most difficult military operation there is, with the exception of an opposed airborne assault.

The PLA, to my knowledge, has never carried out a major operation of either kind – barring exercises, of course – and therefore has no body of relevant knowledge or experience to call on, further reducing the chances of a successful outcome.

If this is factually incorrect feel free to correct me, preferably quoting your sources.