Four million parts, 30 countries: How an Airbus A380 comes together (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Four million parts, 30 countries: How an Airbus A380 comes together (2018)

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75 pointsTomte70 comments

Not a huge Airbus fan in general real but the A380 was a pleasure to fly.

However Airbus was just wrong on the business side. It was the wrong plane built with old technology at the wrong time.

It’s also not clear why Airbus didn’t focus more on a freight version. The Boeing 747 is rarely used as a passenger plane anymore but Boeing realized these aircraft would have a second life as freighters hence why the nose section is as such (you can chop off the nose and put a giant door there for cargo). The 747 will continue as a freighter for many years to come.

Sadly it’s likely that many of the currently grounded A380s will never take off again.

One point to bear in mind is that converted 747s don't have the option of a nose door and there are some disadvantages to converting vs buying a freighter variant [0].

A380s also have a greater volume than a 747 but not a radically higher carrying capacity. A 747-8I (passenger variant) has a cargo capacity of 76t vs 84t for an A380. Numbers from wikipedia, excluding the freighter variant of the 748 as it's not comparing like with like. This means that there could be some cases where transporting bulky low density items would be much superior on a A380 freighter but there's not a clear cut case for it in the market.

[0] https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/airline-leader/air-ca...

I highly recommend the Airbus factory tour in Toulouse, France: https://www.toulouse-visit.com/let-s-visit-airbus/blagnac/pc...

They definitely don't "reveal all the secrets of the A380" (as if), but it is interesting and the facility is staggeringly large (second largest by volume and sixth by floor area in the world).

Damn I was there last summer. I wish I knew about this! But I did at least go to the museum and got to see a Concord up close. That was cool.

I visited the Saint-Nazaire factory two years ago. It's absolutely amazing how you go by dozens of A320, and just at the end of the tour we went by the massive A380. The difference in size at ground level is stunning.

I did the organised tour many years ago, just before the A380 was in commercial service.

But the best part was walking around and then through the Concorde on display there. That thing is amazing. Beautiful. And the wing area is insane.

I met an Airbus test pilot once.

Among other stories he told me that the A380 is one of best balanced planes out there, and apparently a joy to fly. He said even without engines he could easily land it like a glider.

Now, I can't really verify what he said, but he seemed sincere.

Having travelled in the A380 as passenger, I will sure miss it.

> without engines he could easily land it like a glider.

Most airplanes are designed to glide down and be able to land in the event of loss of all power from all existing engines, subject to the available altitude above ground (the potential height energy from the fall is used as the source of kinetic energy for keeping airspeed+lift) and distance to a suitable for landing piece of land.

True.

He just specifically called out the A380 for being exquisitely balanced.

There were many more interesting stories including some (controlled) crashes and an uncontrolled crash when they tried the planes under extreme conditions.

He actually felt sorry for "normal" pilots, since they do not really get to try out the planes :)

Anyway...

> one of best balanced planes out there

Airliner design is regulated for stability for passenger flight on IFR approaches. So they're all pretty smooth.

(The reason for the 737 MAX MCAS system was to meet those requirements, although they failed in that case.)

All planes can glide if the wings are attached, and any essential electricity is available for control (if necessary.)

A corollary of "all planes glide" is that planes cannot really fall or dive straight (vertically) down from an appreciable height with the wings attached. A good story to tell passengers afraid of flying.

All planes can glide, but not to the same degree. The glide ratio, or the ratio between distance travelled per distance dropped, varies wildly between planes.

A purpose built glider has a glide ratio of about 60:1, so it could travel 60mi while only losing 1mi of altitude, while a Cessna 172 has a glide ratio of 9. Large passenger aircraft have glide ratios inbetween, with a 737 having a ratio of 17.

On the other extreme end you have military fighter planes, which tend to more closely resemble well propelled un-aerodynamic objects once their engines give out. The worst I could find was the F104 Starfighter, which has a glide ratio of 3-5 depending on its exact configuration. Dead stick landings of these aircraft tend to be rare, as the availability of ejection seats (especially before zero-zero seats became a thing) encourages a not-my-problem-any-more attitude among pilots who discover themselves absent a working engine.

> On the other extreme end you have military fighter planes, which tend to more closely resemble well propelled un-aerodynamic objects once their engines give out.

Which made this all the more impressive:

https://theaviationist.com/2014/09/15/f-15-lands-with-one-wi...

Really highlights how important high thrust:weight ratios are for military aircraft. Missing a wing? Apply afterburner

It is worth pointing out that many military aircraft are made to be unstable by design. Unpowered or underpowered Commercial aircraft want to glide, with aerodynamic resisting change of course for safety and ease of use. On the other hand, aerodynamics of military combat aircraft operate in unstable equilibrium to encourage greater maneuverability.

For sure. Modern military aircraft are so unstable that they’re unflyable without computers. And that’s not just because computers directly control the control surfaces, but because humans would really struggle to stabilize the aircraft on reaction speed alone.

> which tend to more closely resemble well propelled un-aerodynamic objects once their engines give out.

With sufficient thrust pigs fly just fine

With well vectored thrust, you don’t even need wings. Heck, that’s literally how rockets work.

Wings and tail, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261

And assuming the wings haven’t lost their lift due to ice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Eagle_Flight_4184

Planes can glide, but there’s still lots of ways to drive one straight into the ground.

The A380(-800) is known to be “over-winged” (larger and generates more lift than would be optimal, at the cost of drag and weight).

Apparently Airbus was planning to make a larger variant as well, and the wing was designed to accommodate that. But the -800 was years delayed and struggled to find customers, the larger variant was never made.

Flown many times in the front of an A380. I usually put headphones on for landing. First ever flight on one I only noticed we had wheels down after the fact, so flawless was the landing.

Also the quietest plane I've ever been on.

Sad place for civilisation to lose this machine.

The captain of Qantas Flight 32, Richard de Crespigny, credits his first flying instructor with schooling him in "not panicking when engines are lost and you have to glide your plane". He writes about it in his account of the explosion of QF32's Rolls Royce engine which degraded 21 of the Airbus’s 22 flight systems. With the aircraft in glide-mode he built up enough functions to be able to land the aircraft. With no reverse thrusters, no wing slats and badly degraded brakes, four tyres blew out when they landed. https://www.amazon.com/QF32-Richard-Crespigny-2012-05-04/dp/...

It’s a pretty common opinion in the industry that airline pilots benefit a lot from having some glider flight hours.

This reminds me of the f-35. I find it absolutely insane that a mix of tax incentives can lead to this inefficient mess involving custom built ships and airplanes.

Wonder how much this supply chain dynamic ends up adding to the cost of the a380 in aggregate

Maybe when it comes to flying you wouldn't want too much corner-cutting in pursuit of the max profit. Max.. why does that sound familiar?

Corner cutting on safety is quite different from supply chain optimizations.

Bespoke parts often leads to worse quality for the same price.

On the other hand, it's such a massive employer (directly or indirectly funded by tax dollars) so everyone says, why shouldn't we have a piece too?

It also buys them into Airbus as customers & supporters, aligns commercial, technological & employment interests across European nations in numerous ways. If Airbus didn't already exist, they'd rationally want to create it rather than just leaving the market to the US and China. I'm sure the four million parts and 30 countries aspect adds a lot of complexity and bureaucracy, however it might be a reasonable price to pay for the benefits they derive natively in Europe from having an Airbus (as opposed to not) and so many nations being part of it.

Government employment is not necessarily beneficial. It's not governed by economics.

You can have completely useless roles exist for hundreds of years.

Skilled or unskilled labor is better in the private sector for everyone's sake.

>It's not governed by economics.

Except economics as you are taught it is bullshit, the rich have always taken state subsidies regardless of "economics".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY

Say, Kentucky gets 1200 high paying jobs they never had due to their Senator's power (I'll veto the bill unless you build a factory there too...) . How is this bad for the state of KY?

Of course it remains to be seen if they can still to that with the UK post brexit.

A380 is EOL so doesn't really matter.

Knowledge loss...maybe for very large wings. UK is mainly responsible for A380 wings. But there are Airbus (smaller) wing operations in Germany too so should be fine overall.

four million parts, and one whistleblower.

Let's not forget https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/a380-whist...

A very complex story from 15 years ago. There haven’t been many depressurisation incidents on the A380 and like they say in the article, why would they cover this up? Maybe the whistleblower really is just a disgruntled employee.

you will never know if the lack of pressurization issues was because their plan was fine or caused by changes thanks to his campaign. hindsight is 20/20.

the fact that they took that route is the problem.

*came together. The A380 program is nearly over. The most incredible passenger plane in the sky. Comfortable for 16+ hours. I hope they can archive the blueprints for it well enough to consider building it again in the future.

I’m sure they’ll hold on to all the Cad Data, the issue is making sure all the suppliers have the Cad data for tooling and parts, it’s unlikely coming back after going away.

Just hope that they keep it in the right version of CATIA: https://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2006/09/a380_delayed... [Kind of annoying that the Bloomberg article is referenced all over the place, but that Bloomberg's site has broken the link]

Edit: More technical link: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=770047

The latest revision of the CAD standard used to exchange designs between different software is going through the final stages. It contains changes to explicitly model the stuff needed for wiring harnesses to avoid the problem seen with the A380.

They're most likely legally required to archive all of that for a few decades.

Is the comfort really any difference in an A380 vs a 777 vs an A350? Cabin configuration is really the only differentiation between modern wide bodies and that’s mostly on the airline.

In terms of seats, it’s roughly the same (and some airlines have awful A380 configurations), but amenities like showers and bars are much easier on the A380 given the space constraints of other widebodies.

Also IME engine noise is reduced given how far you can be from them versus a normal widebody.

"showers" - for real? Surely not, that's beyond absurd.

'Emirates A380 Shower Spa': https://www.emirates.com/english/experience/our-fleet/a380/

First class passengers get 30 minutes, including 5 minutes of running water. You can see videos of it on YouTube.

Don't planes burn enough fossil fuels without carting around a few extra tons of water quite unnecessarily. Market efficiency, yeah right.

First, your napkin math is shit. They aren’t carrying 6000 pounds of water for the 14 first class seats to get 5 minute showers.

Second, the water they use per person weighs less than the weight of the extra passengers that could be fitted in if the arrangement wasn’t first class cabins but was instead economy. First class passengers are where all of the margin is.

Finally, you don’t seem to understand what “market efficiency” means because it has nothing to do with this.

You're right https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/11132/how-much-... it's much less (350 KG). Elsewhere they do say the showers are marble and mirror. So extra weight. I assumed without checking there would be lots of first class passengers, got it wrong.

> you don’t seem to understand what “market efficiency” means

If the fossil fuels were costed appropriately, there'd likely be no flying, certainly nothing like this. So its mispriced, is what I mean.

You listed the 777 which is an older plane. The newer 787 Dreamliner has been in service for almost 10 years. It is more comfortable because it's composite structure allows for higher humidity and higher air pressure. A normal flight has an air pressure equivalent to being at 8,000 feet altitude. The 787 is equivalent to 6,000. The humidity levels are also higher at 15% vs 4% for other planee. Both of these make you feel less tired and more comfortable.

A really informative concise post, shame it can't rise to the top.

That really is the key -- the manufacturers have little to do with actual comfort, which is up to the airline. The larger perceived cabin I suppose is somewhat due to Airbus choices, but that of course is heavily psychological.

Do airplane designers really go back to older designs to make next generation planes? I guess the documentation of design decisions could be useful but the design files by themselves seem pretty difficult to re-use.

It’s useful to look at the former design and see the issues there was with it. Check that you’re integrating the “lessons learnt”.

Also you can straight up reuse parts, which avoids the need to qualify them.

Why rebuild it when you can design a better plan?

High cost and the possibility that you design a worse plane.

Imagine what would happen if Toyota tried to relaunch the 1999 Corolla. New designs are more efficient, there’s no way they would design a worse plane.

If you honestly believe that a corporation can not develop a new product inferior to a past product, then we will have to agree to disagree.

There are any number of reasons this can happen, including fewer developmental resources and different timelinelines.

You also ignored my point about cost. The a380 took 15 years and $25 billion to develop. If the existing design met a new need, they would absolutely consider dusing off the design.

The A380 was a technological marvel that was built more for European pride( see our jumbo jet is bigger than yours) than for real business reasons. Nevertheless, it is a joy to fly in.

(Though I do think it doesn’t look as beautiful as the 747).

Just asking, is there any concrete evidence ? Like some politicians asking for the planes to have more passengers or length then some other airplane? I am wondering that maybe if Boeing is using super old design then maybe that explain why the american airplanes are less efficient.

I don't deny pride exists everywhere, including in me.

One Youtube video has a pretty convincing origin story of the A380.

Apparently Airbus approached Boeing about a joint project, but Boeing's analysis showed point-to-point (787) made more sense, and Airbus got the opposite result.

Pride no doubt had a part in it, as the investment is staggering.

What hurt A380 development badly from a mfg. perspective was the wiring harness initially didn't fit, causing a delay of up to 2 years, so they had to re-design that. (This is common, and happened to one recent Boeing model too.) Also the first examples had a weight problem.

A380 $6.1B in additional costs due to project delays

http://calleam.com/WTPF/?p=4700

But the biggest issues were:

1) point-to-point won over spoke-and-hub

2) renovation of each airport so it would fit

3) no US carriers ordered any

4) operating cost of $29,000/hour, smaller planes are a quarter.

6) The A380 is not a cargo-design like the 747 - the A380 doesn't have a level floor from what I've heard.

5) If there was really a big market for the A380 why wasn't Boeing selling more 747's.

It's a good point.

I suspect there's an argument that a newer design could be more fuel-efficient, but I haven't read anything on that.

(The only things that operators care about are fuel efficiency and operating cost/commonality, and will the lenders finance it. Passenger comfort has no bearing.)

No, the killer was the move away from hub and spoke model to directs between secondary cities. This was exacerbated more by ETOPS allowing narrow body jets to cover ocean flights.

No point in Southwest funneling all passengers to LAX to board an A380 to HNL when they can just have directs on 737s from every west coast city.

That's, however, specific more to USA. Intercontinental flights (and not only) seem to me to always go through hubs, and within Europe also through hubs, if maybe a bit smaller.

Not even in Europe. The growth didn’t happen because so many point to point flights displaced the need. LHR hasn’t become significantly larger since the late 90s, which was what the A380 (and 747 passenger for that matter) depended on to really compete.

Look at an airport like Naples. It has over 100 direct flight destinations.

Just took a look - most of the point-to-point are short-distance low cost flights. Which fly A320 and 737, not 787 nor A380. When you look at connections involving distances where one would use a long-range plane, it's pretty much always with a hub at one end - at least that's what cursory glance shows me.

non-low cost airlines will schedule intra-european flights through hubs as well, the hub you will fly through depends on airline used (so Lufthansa will put your through MUC or FRA, LOT will do everything through Warsaw with few long-range flights from Cracow, BA will do Gatwick and Heathrow depending on the flights, etc.)

The point is that you can get to every major city in Europe from Naples directly. Of course they aren’t going to be serviced by A380s, that’s part of the point I’m making.

The hub model didn’t continue to grow like it was supposed to. The A380 was supposed to service the mega hub to hub routes (e.g. JFK-CDG) as gates became coveted at those airports.

Instead, it turns out that a bunch of that demand was relieved by adding in other smaller (e.g. a 757) directs that previously depended on a bunch of double layovers. (e.g. ATL-JFK-CDG-FCO becomes ATL-FCO).

The A380 was built on a dream that everyone would pack into one of a few major hubs and all of the long flights between hubs would obviously be perfect A380 material. The surge in point to point flights destroyed the economics of that. Gate fees didn’t rise like they were supposed to, passenger counts at the hubs didn’t rise, etc, etc.

> than for real business reasons

Any explanations for that?

Large airliners was a monopoly by Boeing, Airbus obviously wanted to cut a part of that market.

>Any explanations for that?

A380 isn't profitable.

But not because it wasn't technically insufficient, the market has changed priorities.

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