Apparently Emirates Airlines is none too happy with their new A380's

[A HERETIC I AM]

This is a couple weeks old, but what the heck.

03/16/2009
STORMY SKIES
Emirates Slams Airbus over A380 Defects

By Dinah Deckstein

Emirates has presented Airbus with a damning list of defects in the new A380 super-jumbo jet. The airline, which has ordered 58 of the aircraft, warns of a possible "loss of confidence" in the giant plane.(snip)

In mid-February, senior executives from Airbus and the airline Emirates, the biggest customer for Airbus's A380, attended a crisis meeting in Toulouse to discuss the super-jumbo. Last summer, after a roughly two-year delay, the Arab airline took delivery on the first of 58 A380s it had ordered. (snip)

The Airbus executives could not have liked what they were told and shown by the Emirates representatives. In a 46-slide presentation, the aviation experts painstakingly listed what they viewed as the giant jet's serious growing pains. To illustrate their points, they included snapshots of singed power cables, partially torn-off sections of paneling and defective parts of thrust nozzles in the engines as evidence of what they described as a shoddy work ethic at Airbus and its suppliers.(snip)

'Loss of Confidence'

On one of the slides, the experts provide a detailed list of the prestigious plane's various breakdowns. They say that the A380 has already been grounded nine times, which represented a loss of close to 500 operating hours. In 23 cases, say the Emirates managers, replacement aircraft had to be obtained at short notice. Minor glitches, the critique continues, happen in Emirates' A380 fleet about once every two days. In the medium term, the Emirates experts write, the airline could face the "threat of a loss of confidence in the aircraft and the brand image of the Emirates A380."

This is my favorite part;

Some of the problems could hardly have been foreseen, such as one involving the plane's shower facilities. So far Emirates is the only A380 customer to provide two showers in first class. A determined female passenger who was unable to operate the showerhead promptly tore out the entire fixture -- and flooded the first class section.

:rofl:

From the German magazine Der Speigel

[tech3149]

1. Just the thing I want to do on an airplane

take a shower. I can remember getting frustrated with my ex for getting pissy at some poor wage slave because the $5k a night room wasn't up to her expectations. How freakin self-absorbed do you have to be to destroy a feature that really wasn't needed and put others life at risk? I think I'm either too old or too used to living within my means to deal with this type of person.

On the aviation end of the story, this is the result of the subcontracting/outsourcing that has been going on for decades. It doesn't matter what the industry is, they all have been doing the same thing. Divide up the development of your product to multiple companies that specialize in some component or system that you need, after all, that's what they do so they can do it better and cheaper right? Sounds good until you deal with the realities. People trained in different specialties don't often speak the same language. So when you try and get them to work together, you have to implement and support the communication channels with the least number of errors. That cost's money you were trying to save. No gain there so why add the complexity?
Even with the communication resources we have available, it still doesn't deal with the root problem. The root problem is direct and immediate accountability. When you put subcontractors and other third parties in the mix, it just gets that much harder to make people understand the end result of job they are paid for. I can be up at 3:00 AM to talk to a software engineer in India to try and make the best use of the chips we have to work with, but he/she gets paid the same whether they get it wrong or right. If they all work for the same company, the accountability for failure is immediate and final. When you start going for specialized companies to do the things that you don't want to learn, or financially support, you've given them the advantage. They can screw up but still get paid.

If you choose to try and minimize the cost, you don't stand much chance of developing a worthwhile or sought after product. If you try and get the best product on the market some self-serving SOB is going to get you tossed out by showing how much money you didn't make for the company. And then they'll take your job.

I'm no fan of the the economic system and those "Masters of the Universe", if you couldn't tell by now. I guess that's why I dropped out in 2001. I might go back to work when MBA and Business management degrees start requiring ethics and philosophy courses to graduate.

[Occam Bandage]

2. Yeah, it's completely unforseeable that someone might apply some force to something in the cabin.

"Well, of course someone yanking on a stuck tray table caused the left wing to fall off! Who could have foreseen a determined passenger doing such a thing; we thought it was fine to make that a load-bearing tray table!"

Screw the A380. It's a marvel of human engineering, sure, but sometimes you have to pull for the home team.

[A HERETIC I AM]

3. My feelings exactly.

I thought of putting a disclaimer of sorts in my OP to the effect "I know all new, complex systems and machines have teething problems and the A380 is surely no different", just to give them the benefit of the doubt.

I still find it amusing however, that the much vaunted double-decker has a pattern of problems such that they are experiencing something more than merely annoying every other day. Also, with a piece of equipment like the 380, 500 hours of unscheduled downtime is nothing to sneeze at considering it is essentially brand spanking new.

You should read the interview with the CEO of EADS in which he talks about the A400M which is designed to compete with the C130. Serious cost overruns have occurred and the CEO apparently regrets signing the contract to build it.

As far as passenger aircraft are concerned, and to the extent that I have any control over the aircraft type,

"If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going".