1: Depends on the contract. You don’t build up your own maintenance, you sub-contract it. If you have a good repair shop at your homebase that might influence your decision.

I think your right, i noticed that Air Berlin has Lufthansa to carry out maintenance work :), i dont know if other low cost carriers do this

But if building a cruise missile is so easy, then why don’t more countries have them?

If you understand the basics of how a rocket works and understand the principals of solid/liquid turbofan engines then your only half way their,

the difficult part of developing a missile is understanding and developing the major components of a modern cruise missile one being its seeker technology, you wont get active homing radar seekers of the shelf, the other tricky part is understanding the GPS and fusing the mission computer with the warhead and engine.

Of course the future cruise missiles will be enhanced by a better understanding of net-centric capabilities as well as the use of artificial intelligent seekers, if you have the money, time and resources then you can probably develop a good missile :diablo:

I have noticed that many of the start up low-cost airlines prefer A320s, maybe its down to 3 reasons i can see

1. Economics involved, maintenace costs may be lower!!
2. The issue commanality, the same pilots, crew and maintinece guys will be familier with the A318, A319, A320 and A321 series of aircraft
3. Safty records, whats the safty record of A320s compared to 737s without fly-by-wire systems?

Didnt know Chile was intrested in Harpoon Block II missiles, i heard they were really keen on the BrahMos missiles

Kudos to Pakistan, however i have a few observations, its stated in some reports that

1. The CEP of the missile is in centimetres
2. The cruise missile is superieor to the PJ-10 BrahMos
3. The missile will go into serial production in 1 month

I to agree that the Pakistanis have gone into overdrive, why put it into serial production in one month, to soon, is it that China already tested the missile in the 90s

Where is comical Ali, Pakistan???

:dev2: