Qantas A380 grounded in Los Angeles after mystery problem with hydraulics
 

Qantas A380 grounded in Los Angeles after mystery problem with hydraulics


This is going to be interesting.

Off shore maintenance Alan? Its not like anyone warned you!

I suppose ripping a jack through the stabiliser in Sydney a few weeks ago was offshore as well?

scavenger, where was the jack calibrated?

An A380 with a funny 6*** flight number arrived into YSSY from the North East the other night at FL420. Must have been empty to be that high!!!

More the fact that the only off shore maintenance over sight is only carried out by Ops managers.
Cost savings apparently

The aircraft in question has had no end of issues since the ferry flight back from Manila.
This is what they wanted, no LAME oversight and a handful of non-licenced Ops Managers to over see the paperwork.

The Texan and the Clogman wanted this, let the Clogman answer to the board why his centre of excellence is such a sh1t fight.

Black Skydrol
 

Classic symptoms of overheated Hydraulic fluid turns to Black Sludge..
A380 what a crap aircraft, overweight, slow and no better on fuel consumption than a B744....A Billion dollar exercise is "Keeping up with the Jones"
Resale value....zero!

Well, what is the answer.:confused:

Thanks hard worker for that I didn't know it. What's the result of the overheating and sludge? Do pumps , actuators and flexible lines have to be replaced? Any info would be appreciated.

I reckon hardworker is commentating from the sidelines with no factual info about the aircraft in question.

Experience
 

Had it happen on an A340 Green system, both 1 and 4 pumps caused the hydraulic fluid to turn to black sludge...ended up changing main delivery lines and flush the system over and over....what caused it? Never did find out but suspected air in the system...airbus are very difficult to bleed all the air from the hydraulic systems...you end up bleeding on the pressure/case/supply lines on the pumps..

Guess what? There are another 8 of these coming. FIRM order made by Dixon and Airbus wont let QF out of the deal

As the man said.....Oils ain't oils sol....

engine oil.....

OMG, stop the world and let us get off. An aeroplane broke down and made the news and it's a slow news day!

Actually it potentially could have been a bit more serious than just a breakdown...

Ok, I'll accept it was a frustrated rant, however it is still ill-informed. Yes the A380 is controversial and yes it could be better, however it is significantly better than the 747 for airline needs in many respects. It is not for all routes but it does ultra long range and slot constrained airports very well with a standard of (especially premium) passenger accommodation that can't be had on anything else.

Overweight? .. perhaps - they did build the wing for another 100 tonnes of TOW, so they could have saved some weight there. Current production machines have an additional 10 tonnes approx disposable load from a combination of reduced empty weight and increased TOW.

Slow? .. same cruise speed as a 747 - does 0.86 mach quite nicely. Fuel consumption does start to climb a bit after that though.

Fuel Consumption? .. yes it does burn about 20% or 25% more, but then for the same passenger configuration standard, it can carry 40% to 50% more pax.

Airfield performance? .. beats the stuffing out of a 747.

Altitude capability? ... It's great being able to climb above the traffic as an initial altitude ... 3,000 to 4,000 ft advantage over others.

Range? .. Dallas - Sydney with 380 pax (with a very high percentage of premium seats). Nothing else can do that. (777 or 787 can't do the premium end like the A380)

I'll certainly never see full fuel tanks.

And don't forget this is the relative start of its development cycle.

It is not the answer to everything and we certainly need a large fleet of aircraft such as the 777, 787 or A350, however it is very good at what it does. The 747 is still a great aircraft and a stunning example of aircraft design. It still does some things better than anything else, but so does the A380.

N

Reliability & Manpower
 

You forgot to mention how unreliable and how much manpower the A380 absorbs...triple the amount compared to a B744....wrong aircraft type...the A350 and New Gen B777 are the hub busters, the A380 takes too long to turnaround....bottom line its too big not the ideal aircraft...

I beg to differ. The worlds most avionic advanced passenger aircraft requires next to no avionic technicians these days (provided you dont mind the occassional 3 + hour delay). Manpower is really being saved there.

As for jacking incidents, who knows what happened there. And comparing overseas MRO's to SAM is like comparing apples to oranges. We don't have a heavy maint facility for this aircraft.

There are quality engineers all around the globe. Many in QF are from different backgrounds of maintenance, and from other countries too. What makes a real difference to maintaining a quality product are the facitlities, procedures and ratios of qualified supervision in place. IMHO Sydney had the best many years ago (but it wasn't "worlds best practice").

What's the reliability like with other big users of the A380?