?????????????
 

So no one is publicly questioning the fact that wiring is the alleged cause of a now 24 month delay ?

EADS shareholders should demand an inquiry. I would think that the entire town of Toulouse could be re-wired in that amount of time. :ugh:

Wouldn't back to the drawing board be a likely first step before restarting wiring?

No matter how many people are assigned to doing the actual wiring, three wires won't go through a hole only large enough for two.

Pratt journo on BBC Radio (FiveLive) today stated that "the A380 had made one tentative test flight and has since been grounded"

Class!:ugh: :rolleyes: :D

One keeps hearing about the wiring, but what about the wing not meeting the predicted strength in the destruction tests ??

Big White Elephant springs to mind: And Mr Boeing is quitetly building the B74/8 !!!! Interesting times ahead. !!

Note: Not many U/S Airports are having a facelift to accomadate the A380 - could an indiscriminate " Concord" action be underway !!

SFO (PDF), LAX, MIA,DFW, JFK are now or will be ready by the time the wiring is done. These are just a few airports I know about - billions are being spent on airport improvements around the country.

I dont understand those guys that criticize Airbus for delays of such completley new machine. Would be better a belly landing? or a crash? In the same chair position at EADS I would welcome delay then incidents, and those air carrier managers that look into this only on the losses of profit could go to hell in my opinion.
As tornadoken said the 747 changed the history the Concorde the air travel untill her first and only one crash.

Accodring to this Bloomberg article , the problem is largely caused by incompatible CAD software used in German and French offices. This made it nearly impossible to propagate changes made by the German team to the French virtual mock-up and vice versa, and so there were several different design versions in use simultaneously.

Looks to be lack of standardization with software, and connectors/installation tools..inevitable when so many "cooks" are stirring the broth..not as much a design fault..an organization fault..the idea to shift all to toulouse while disappointing, might solve this type of issue...lets see what happens with the 787, this could be interesting as well...:bored:

Vapilot2004.
Interesting observation about the non-computer design of the original 747.

As for old versus newer technology, I told a young gentleman boarding our plane that the machine has no computers to fly it, and he said : "Oh that is encouraging" :uhoh: .
:D

Will Airbus continue to have two executives in each upper management job?
One was raised more on schnitzel or spaetzle, and the other partly on crepes? How can this produce efficiency?

So it was designed by a committee. Now I understand why it looks like a camel rather than a racehorse... :}

Don't you think they would've figured this out before the first billion euros had been spent??!! "Oh, une moment, sil vous plait monsieur Fritz, our ordinateurs don't seem to be able to parle with each other very well, zis picture you've emailed me is upside-sous".

Gauteng Pilot,

Shows why you should listen to Radio 4!! :8

Not that it's definitive, but the documentary I saw on the assembly of the first one had the engineers trying to attacth the tailcone to the main structure of the tail. And it was a good 5mm or so out in diameter and so wouldn't fit without a lot of grunting and pushing and stretching.

That really surprised me, and perhaps now I know why ....

Lucky Taxpayer
 

No doubt ultimately it will be taxpayers who cover this balls up. Even if BAe are out, the stake of the French Government in EADS will no doubt ensure that our euros and pounds continue to support French arrogance. A Maginot line of design-didn't see that one coming from behind!

would explain german VAT rising from 16% to 19%, too

funny thing is, plans to withdraw A380 production from Hamburg to Toulouse stir unrest in Germany as well as the same plans, giving A320 production from Toulouse to Hamburg in compensation, make the French unhappy :hmm:

Yes I recall that one too... in another segment the fin had been built in Germany and the lead engineer on the fin (who looked like he'd get barred from entering a pub in the US... ) tripped to Toulouse to see it get mated to the fuselage. When they went to connect the cable for the fin-tip camera... short by an inch. :{

Will be interesting to see what happens when they get their tide tables for the Garonne a bit awry!

This is a sad mess indeed, but they are just about to build the last A300 after a run of 30 odd years, so in the end 12 months wont seem too bad.
From the little I have heard from someone at EADS, there have been some major issues involving IT at the design stages, that have caused some very expensive, in terms of time & money, problems. Not just cabin wiring.
I hope we will be able to look back at this as a glitch in an otherwise successful program.

Dickie made a good point on range and pax numbers. Be interesting to see if the A380 actually stacks up to what Airbus originally said it would whenever it comes on line.

Bloody right slopwith, bring back to life the COMET, the trade mark of superiority of British design and safety in aviation:D

Being a cynic, does this mean that the delays will mean that the World's airports will be ready in time to take the A380? I recall that Airbus were talking about stretching the A380-has this plan now been scuppered or will it be raised once the wiring problems are resolved?

Quoting myself:
After reading more about the CATIA situation the true scope of the problem becomes very clear. The difference between this issue and the mere physical wiring of the aircraft is exponential.




To have the collective work of engineers and skilled labour (on the flagship no less) dashed by poor oversight is just pitiful.

Project management should be skinned alive for this.