A fresh A400M woe....or is it a French AF woe?

[KenV]

I'd think they do both: spoilers for aerobraking and flaps for maximum lift.

I'm not following the reasoning. If you want to slow down, you back off the throttle. But go too slow and you stop flying. So to go slower without falling out of the sky, you deploy the flaps which produce more lift at low speeds. Of course this also increases drag so you have to carry more power to go slower. There's no need for spoilers to fly slow.

And yes, modern aircraft use a combination of spoiler and flap as an aerobrake to slow down. But NOT to fly slowly at a constant airspeed.

[Trumpet_trousers]

The C-17 solved it with the right combination of airspeed, deck angle, flap setting, and air deflector angle.

.... Anything else there Ken, independent from the aircraft, by any chance? I think we need to know, don't you?

[riff_raff]

I don't think the new C-130J aircraft were actually purchased from the USAF. Instead the French purchased them through the US Dept of Defense.

[KenV]

... Anything else there Ken, independent from the aircraft, by any chance? I think we need to know, don't you?

Say what?!? This is not a new problem and was previously solved without resort to a sequencer that precludes jumpers going out both doors simultaneously. The data is out there. It's neither classified nor proprietary.

[Lyneham Lad]

Airbus takes fresh €1bn charge against A400M

From an article on Flight Global:-

Airbus’s continued difficulties with producing and delivering the A400M tactical transport have led it to announce a fresh charge of just over €1 billion ($1.1 billion) against the programme.

[chopper2004]

A400M blamed for Airbus drop in profits 63%

https://aviationvoice.com/airbus-ann...-201702231051/

[VX275]

I have no sympathy for Airbus as they created the delays themselves. I was frustrated at the CQ meetings I attended when their excuse why no progress had been made with the design of the cargo hold was that "the management have taken the engineers away to work on the A350 and A380 freighter". At the time Airbus had orders for over 150 A400M and zero for the A350 and A380F. Did they ever get an order for the A380F?

[chopper2004]

Originally Posted by VX275

I have no sympathy for Airbus as they created the delays themselves. I was frustrated at the CQ meetings I attended when their excuse why no progress had been made with the design of the cargo hold was that "the management have taken the engineers away to work on the A350 and A380 freighter". At the time Airbus had orders for over 150 A400M and zero for the A350 and A380F. Did they ever get an order for the A380F?

VX,

Hmmm, also I heard from a former Luftwaffe buddy of mine in his humble opinion - one flaw in the A400M program from the start was Airbus applying their way of airliner design and production methodology to a military program....would you say this is a factor?

cheers

[VX275]

Yes it was run the Civil Cert route (as was the J Herc before it). However this was the choice of the customer nations as it has some perceived advantages. The problem is the Civil authority's dislike of redundant capability (ie Military stuff) within a system. The one that mystifies me was the Oxygen supply, the Specification/Contract for the A400M called for it to be able to depressurise and fly around at altitude with the ramp and cargo door open to allow member of the Regiment to keep their para wings. The Oxygen system that allows crew and pax to do this would not pass Civil Cert, so for initial certification the aircraft was fitted with a civil O2 system. For Military Cert that system had to be removed and replaced with a military system which was capable of doing all that the civvies required as well as the military needs. Why do a job once when you can do it twice and charge more?

[Rhino power]

Originally Posted by VX275

Did they ever get an order for the A380F?

Yes, 27 (up until it all went boobies north), from FedEx, UPS, ILFC and Emirates...

-RP

[tdracer]

Apologies for the slight thread drift, but was there ever an official report on the A400M that crashed due to improper FADEC software?
I know that in the immediate aftermath, Boeing received several operator enquires as to how me make sure something like this doesn't on a Boeing aircraft (and it was even raised as a potential safety council subject).
We basically deflected the questions by saying we don't know how that could happen (any known ways would result in an "ENGINE CONTROL" EICAS message), but that until there was an official report of the exact cause we couldn't fully evaluate if there was a susceptibility.

[Lordflasheart]

TD .................. From wiki -

"On 14 May 2015, the Spanish Defense Ministry confirmed that Spain's military air crash investigation agency, CITAAM, had taken charge of the investigation of the crash. The Spanish government had initially charged a civilian team, made up of experts from the transport and defense ministries, with the task, but the civilian team "took the decision to withdraw because they understood that the plane has specific characteristics due to its military configuration which they were unfamiliar with," according to a Defense Ministry spokesman.[25] "

I can't find anything. It may be that CITAAM do not publish.

[EAP86]

The Spanish (CITAAM?) report for the 2 seater Typhoon which crashed in Spain was only released on a very restricted circulation. I guess publication of the A400 report is pretty unlikely although I'd imagine the PT will have access.

EAP

[tdracer]

If it's true that they don't publish or limit distribution to 'need to know', they may well be responsible for the next crash due to FADEC s/w problem
I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but FADEC s/w isn't exactly exclusive to the military. Having worked (commercial) FADECs for 30 years, it's almost unimaginable to me how what was reported to have happened could have happened. So it's critical for aviation safety that they release some sort of report of how they messed up.
As I noted earlier, several commercial operators - and the FAA - have asked how we make sure this couldn't happen on to us. It's pretty hard to answer that question if the way it happened to them is intentionally covered up...

[Just This Once...]

Does seem odd given the various conventions on this. It is an EASA certified aircraft so it would not be unreasonable to ask them to publish the report.

[EAP86]

I believe that as a State aircraft the ICAO/EASA conventions (ICAO Annex 13?) don't necessarily apply - the Chicago Convention excludes State aircraft. There could however be a moral imperative on the operator's part to address the safety of civil types which may be similarly affected. It could be inferred that the authorities had evidence that the FADEC issue didn't apply to civil types. In any case, I strongly suspect Airbus would have known enough to act as required if necessary and an Airworthiness Directive would have been forthcoming.

As an aside I'd wonder if the A400 is truly an "EASA certified aircraft" in the legal sense. While the aircraft certainly experienced an EASA certification inspection process for the CS25 parts of the design and some form of type certificate was issued, does that mean Federal Express or some other cargo operator could turn up at EASA's door with an 'A400C', say, and demand a Certificate of Airworthiness? Somehow I doubt it.

EAP

[Just This Once...]

The declaration of State is not applicable as the aircraft operator was Airbus with an Airbus test crew. The A400M has an EASA issued type certification and EASA featured heavily in the aircraft's certification process.

[EAP86]

JTO. The real question is was it military or civil registered at the time? If mil registered, then its a State a/c.

I agree that EASA may have figured strongly in the process (according to the PT, taking 20% of the allocated time to do 80% of the certification work) but I believe EASA's charter doesn't allow them to certificate military types. I'd suspect that OCCAR collated the civil and military certification evidence on behalf of the nations (5 full + 2 associate) and passed it to the nations to complete their national military certification and registration.

A mate used to chair the OCCAR cert and qual group on behalf of the UK and while he may have explained the relevant details to me, I can't say that I listened to them as carefully as I should have :-) FWIW I do remember that at the time he said that the OCCAR cert and qual processes were available on their website. Whether they're there now, I've no idea.

EAP

[Lyneham Lad]

Flight Global - Airbus on track to resolve A400M gearbox and contract issues.

After testing a beach landing capability with a Royal Air Force A400M earlier this month, Airbus Defence & Space says it is on track to qualify a redesigned helicopter refuelling system, roll-out a final solution to a power gearbox problem and resolve a dispute over penalties caused by delivery delays.

"Things are going very, very well," Airbus head of military aircraft Fernando Alonso said on 9 June, adding: "In five to 10 years from now, this will be a reference for logistical transport airplanes."

Some might consider that the last sentence redefines optimism...

[Rosevidney1]

Anyone putting out statements like that is a hostage to fortune.