Aircrafts for dummies

One thing that is very clear is that throughout its’ development the behemoth called the A380 struggled with weight problems.

Airbus engineers and executives admitted that it was this weight problem that consumed months of engineering time and was mainly responsible for pushing costs way above the earlier projected budgets.

“We found there was too much mass,” Jean Claude Schoepf head of the A380 final assembly line admitted to the press during the development stage of this huge aircraft.

The whole project threatened to escalate to a situation where Airbus would come out with a very different airline than what they had promised and committed themselves to clients to produce.

The solution was to head back to the drawing boards and carefully cut down the weights section by section, without compromising on the strength, critical for airlines which spend most of their time in high altitudes.

More carbon composites for example were introduced in the horizontal struts that support the two cabin floors and hold the fuselage in shape.

So desperate was the need for this giant to cut down its’ weight that engineers even used chromate-free paint, which is lighter. According to figures from Airbus, this move helped cut the weight of the outer paint work down to 350 kilograms (770 pounds). This is in comparison to 550 kilogrames (1,210 pounds) for a plane of this size using other paints.

The heavy use of new, weight-saving composites made out of fibreglass-aluminium and carbon fibre and the development of a state-of-the-art wing helped the A380 keep its’ weigh within manageable limits. Actually the long wingspan is the reason airports will need modifications for the A380 to land (more on that later in this article).

Still the end product weights 1 percent heavier that its target of 305 tons, according to Airbus CEO Noel Forgeard. Airbus overspend on the A380 project by $1.9 billion.

Coming to the safety issue, weight is always an important issue when it comes to the safety of aircrafts. Actually it is a critical issue and that is why baggage is always limited and analyzed carefully before any aircraft takes off.

So what does all this mean in terms of the overall safety of this new aircraft? Is it not true that commercial considerations always compromise on the safety of anything? Makes you want to consult Ortho Evra Attorneys, doesn't it?

Actually the truth is that the aviation industry is different in that very high safety standards are taken into account in the manufacture of any aircraft. Safety is always the driving force right from the design stage and even though commercial aspects come into play, safety always over rides them.

A case in point is that an earlier plan by A380 engineers was to keep the wingspan as close to normal as possible despite the extra weight. In the end they were forced to stay with the long wings which are the main reason why airports around the world will be forced to make minor but costly adjustments to accommodate the A380.

What’s more, Airbus projections indicate that this aircraft is going to be very busy (our predictions in this blog concur with this view). So Airbus engineers knew that their handiwork was going to be stretched to the limit when in service, so their was clearly no room for compromises.

Our view is that so far Airbus has been meticulous in its’ safety issues and therefore there should be no reason to doubt this giant project.