A380's suitable for AEW or Maritime S&R ASW roles?
Not freighters, just taking the seats out and making it a Combi. As said already, it means lengthy hand loading, and is likely only a temporary Covid-19 duration mod. Might have been Lufthansa doing it from memory?
I worked on the analysis of the wing for the A380F - in fact it was my first major job in engineering. It was designed to a different set of loads to the passenger variant to represent a different fatigue spectrum and flight profiles which better suited the freighter business case.
The Freighter specific variant didn't make it because it couldn't operate in to enough freight specific airports as they stood, and those airports seemingly didn't want to expand. The 747 could.
I guess there's potential to retrofit cargo doors on the passenger variants, but maybe only one at each end.
I suspect that these aircraft will become niche lease for max passenger capacity periods only.
The Freighter specific variant didn't make it because it couldn't operate in to enough freight specific airports as they stood, and those airports seemingly didn't want to expand. The 747 could.
I guess there's potential to retrofit cargo doors on the passenger variants, but maybe only one at each end.
I suspect that these aircraft will become niche lease for max passenger capacity periods only.
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A-380 as a water bomber for grass/forest fires.
Three decks of bladders. It will never work as a freighter even hand loading is to labor intense to make any sense. How many beer cans can be made from just a single 380. Maybe InBev can buy them cheap!
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Would make a nice mobile hospital for in theatre.
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Sad to say, there might be a lot of pilots tending bar soon Traffic.
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Sad isn’t it when you think that if the RAF bought 5, they could move the whole of the RAF In one airlift.