Rainboe talks of the "might" of Airbus design engineers being close to incapable of error and mentions all the wings that have fallen off Boeings with a touch of blind faith in Airbus.
Lu Zuckerman obviously knows and has first hand knowledge of these aircraft and I for one go with him on this discussion.
Airbus need to do more testing before they relaese their aircraft to the operators and Lu Z's experience on this is not unique. I remember the first 340-300s rocking up with the back doors a few feet higher than the front doors because the math used to work out the necessary length of the nose oleo was wrong. Then an AF 340 burned to a cinder at Charles De Gaul when a yellow system hydraulic pump caught fire. That was put down to sabotage till an Air Mauritius one burned and a Malaysian 330 did the same in Singapore.
The fancy fuel system that pumps fuel back and forth to the tail began its days as a little too fancy and I remember well being stuck out over the Indian Ocean with the C of G out of the green band and no ECAM action or QRH to rectify it. When the red clanger thing starts claxoning you and you have no idea what to do about it miles from an airport it rams a lot of adrenalin around.
Those were a few of the design errors that had to be rectified while operations continued and there were others.
Then there were the airfield performance tables provided by AB for our various destinations which were out by 7 degrees C in the unsafe direction. It took 9 months and a few too many pilots unsticking far too close to the end of the runway before ABus was asked for an explanation. New tables arrived, 7 degrees for the better and everything worked rather well after that. 7 degrees represented about 2 tons over the top of the airfield take off limit.
If they can make these kinds of errors with the introduction of the one AB I have had first hand knowledge of, then they are likely to have a few little nasty 'Murphyisms' tucked away in their new beast and I for one will be more than happy to watch braver pilots than myself try and sort them out.
Meantime Mr Rainboe, I say respectfully, AB is a company of men and men make mistakes so suspect them deeply and you will be a safer pilot for it.