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Airbus A380 on track for delivery
By Sebastian Steinke
It is a summer morning at the Airbus plant at Toulouse at the end of April. While an A380 with GP7200 engines taxis to the runway, on the apron technicians from the flight test department remove the protective covers on the air intakes of the four Trent 900 engines of MSN007, with the appropriate “James Bond” registration F-WWJB. This A380, equipped with a full passenger cabin and already familiar all over the world from the route-proving programme, is about to set off fully occupied on a test flight. But today, instead of human passengers, the seats are occupied by black test equipment which consists only of electrical resistances and gives off the heat of a fully occupied passenger cabin. The accompanying engineers plan to use this equipment to fine tune the temperature control of the cabin, which on the first test passenger flights had proved to be still somewhat too coarse in certain situations. MSN007 should shortly be setting off once again on more travel round the world to India, Japan, Australia, Taiwan and the USA, this time with genuine passengers on board.
Meanwhile MSN001, the first flying A380, is being prepared for another test flight close by. The outer sides of its inboard engine pylons have been equipped with a smoke generation device with the aim of measuring more precisely the vortex trails formed behind the biggest passenger aircraft in the world. For this purpose a small amount of oil is introduced into the hot exhaust jet at cruise altitude to make it easier for a second measurement aircraft flying behind, typically an A320 or A318 from the Airbus test aircraft pool, to fly deliberately into the turbulent zone. Films recorded from the cockpit show how the small aircraft jerkily banks about 10 or 15 degrees to the side as soon as it enters the vortex trail. Airbus is hoping to demonstrate to the aviation authorities with the additional vortex trail measurements that the A380, when subsequently deployed in scheduled operations, will not require any increase in the minimum distance between itself and other aircraft, compared with the Boeing 747, Lockheed Galaxy or Antonov An-124. As of the middle of May the five A380's involved in the Toulouse certification programme had notched up a total of 3,464 flying hours and some 2,000 takeoffs.
Meanwhile the final phase prior to delivery of the first A380-841 – MSN003, registration F-WWSA, soon to be known as 9V-SKA – to Singapore Airlines (SIA) has begun in Hamburg. This airline has placed firm orders for 19 Airbus A380's. Freshly painted in the space of 21 days by 100 painters and hand polished in four-shift operation – the “Singapore Airlines” logo alone measures no less than 33 metres – the giant bird had left its paint hangar to be towed to the hangar for internal cabin furnishing, albeit without its Trent engines. This was one reason why Airbus had ruled out the possibility of including this particular aircraft in the pair to be taken to the Paris Air Show. A second reason why it cannot be spared at the moment is that prior to handover to the customer this A380, the first with the upgraded cable harnesses, is to be used for the certification programme and the final production go-ahead.
“The situation is under control,” says Mario Heinen, Executive Vice President A380 Programme at Airbus. “We are proceeding just the way we said we would, and we will deliver it to SIA in October. The cabin is installed, the paintwork was finished at the beginning of May and now we have the certification test. We are sorting out a lot of minor teething problems and we are updating the software to the latest release. First we will test the specific SIA cabin configuration, and then the validation and certification work will take another few weeks.” MSN003 will thus set off from Finkenwerder on a “second maiden flight” in the summer. A transnational team is meanwhile transcribing the digital mock-up, i.e. the central electronic assembly plan for the A380, for fuselage sections 13 and 18 into the now standard new software version. Meanwhile the Hamburg team of engineers has been reorganised.
“First we will deliver the A380-800, and in as mature a condition as possible, and then we will ask the airlines what they want,” is how John Leahy, Airbus Chief Operating Officer Customers, sets out the future sales line. Leahy recently posted four firm follow-up orders from Emirates for the A380. The biggest A380 customer alone will be taking 47 aircraft. The next free A380 delivery slots are not until the end of 2011 / beginning of 2012. Despite the delays due to the cabling problems, none of the customers for the passenger version have pulled out.
“These cable problems were not caused by the cabin equipment, but the problems arose from the use of three-dimensional design software in France and two-dimensional software in Germany,” explains Leahy. “Some of the data had to be transferred manually. Then suddenly we were four centimetres short on the cable and we had to start all over again.” Some of the airlines had apparently even offered to forego cabin options if Airbus would only deliver on time. “But that would have achieved nothing. The options in the cabin were not the problem.”
The A380 was baled out by the engineering team for the freighter version. “We took 1,500 engineers away from it to work on the passenger version,” says Leahy, who is expecting the A380F to make its comeback in 2014/2015. “Development work on the cargo version has been suspended, but it has not been cancelled. If the cargo networks move towards flying longer distances, the A380F will become even more attractive.”
While the passenger version resumes its planned production rate, Airbus has announced a noteworthy change in its “typical number of seats”. Whereas up to now the talk has always been of 555 seats in a three-class configuration, the A380 now calls itself a typical 525-seat aircraft. And this is despite the fact that, following the successful evacuation test, the authorities have certificated it for the carriage of up to 853 passengers (plus 20 crewmembers).
“Business Class seats are simply getting bigger and bigger,” says Richard Carcaillet, Director Product Marketing A380, explaining the phenomenon. “Today typically the airlines use a 60 inch (152 cm) seat pitch, and this will rise to 74 inches (188 cm) in the future.” Whereas, according to John Leahy, SIA can afford a luxurious seating arrangement with only 470 to 480 seats, Carcaillet believes that in the medium term the A380 will also be used by low-cost airlines on long-distance flights, and their aircraft would then have a significantly tighter seat pitch. “This aircraft is an economic weapon,” enthuses the marketing expert.
Back to Hamburg, where, as well as MSN003, MSN005, MSN006 and MSN008, SIA's next three aircraft, are also currently located. MSN005 is currently being fitted with the new cable harnesses and will receive its airline cabin in the summer after system tests. MSN011, the first aircraft earmarked for Emirates, has already been fitted with new cable harnesses in Toulouse. Its system tests began on 17 April. The first Qantas aircraft, MSN014, once equipped with new cable harnesses, is to commence system tests in mid-July, with a view to being transferred to Hamburg for the completion work at the beginning of 2008. The two next A380's earmarked for Qantas, MSN015 und MSN026, have already undergone final assembly in Toulouse. MSN026 is the first A380 to have had the complete, revised cable harnesses right from the beginning without any upgrade.
Training of the SIA pilots and technicians began at the beginning of June. For the pilots this means initially a three-week computer training course in Singapore, followed by a two-week course in a full-flight simulator in Toulouse, which, if all goes according to plan, should have been certificated by the FAA and EASA by then. Finally the first A380 captains will spend one and a half weeks in the summer flying on the real aircraft in test operations from Toulouse. Another 96 maintenance technicians, who completed their theoretical training back in May 2006, will receive further, interactive computer training and practical training on the real aircraft in Toulouse from July. Their colleagues from Emirates and Qantas will arrive at the end of the year. Singapore Airlines had finished training its own A380 flight attendants by March 2006. At the beginning of 2008 Emirates and Qantas will qualify their flight attendants, also in Toulouse, where a separate cabin mock-up with escape chutes is available.
Now that A380 final assembly is resuming and will be in full swing by the end of 2008, the flow of deliveries is also gathering pace. According to programme director Mario Heinen, the bottleneck in A380 production is not the transport logistics but construction of the different customer variants. However, the Airbus Power 8 cost-cutting programme will not apparently slow up A380 production.
Meanwhile the A380 should give the latest Airbus programme, the A350XWB, a helping hand: the A350 will receive a dual electro-hydraulic flight control system similar to the one already certificated for the A380. The 2H-2E architecture is particularly light and more reliable than the previous triple hydraulic systems. In case of problems, it is even possible to steer oneself with a single electrical or a single hydraulic system. According to the latest Airbus studies, even the external cockpit shape of the A350XWB will be similar to that of the A380, so as to allow sufficient space for the necessary electronics.
The Frenchman, Didier Evrard, has been appointed the new programme director for the A350XWB. The former programme director and head of French operations at the French guided weapons and armaments company, MBDA, who presided there over a workforce of more than 10,000, is regarded as a proven carbon fibre expert.
“Reuse of A380 technology is a major boost,” says Evrard, who is hoping that the concept phase for the A350XWB will be completed by the end of 2008. “We are laying the basis there for another good family. Production will commence at the beginning of 2009.” The sequence has also apparently been determined: the first variant to be developed will be the stretched A350-900XWB, then will come the actual basic version, the A350-800XWB, and finally the twice stretched A350-1000XWB. “We must aim for an on-schedule in-service date. That is much more important than an on-time maiden flight,” he says. Evrard expects the biggest sections of the A350XWB to be built in St. Nazaire and Hamburg. It has already been announced that final assembly will be in Toulouse, where the last A300 left the conveyor belt only recently.
From FLUG REVUE 7/2007, page 20
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