Airbus A380 Design

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Does anyone know the design reason why the flight-deck on the A380 is located on the lower deck, and not on the upper desk, like the 747?

From looking at the exterior of the aircraft, a considerable amount of interior space is wasted due to the flight deck position. The 747s design allows passenger configuration to be extended to cover the whole lower deck.

However, for a freighter configuration, would the A380 be the optimum design, since the bulkhead could be extended further forward?

Any ideas?

[stagger]

"Commonality" and "aerodynamics".

From the Airbus website...

The A380 will have the widest cabin in the world and a larger cockpit, but pilots transferring from the new generation Airbus family will easily familiarise themselves with it. The usual time for transfer training from the A330 or A340 is expected to be considerably less than the 25 days needed for transfer from aircraft without this commonality.

Aircraft handling is similar and, because the cockpit is halfway between the two principal passenger decks, pilot’s eye height is virtually the same, so taxiing is easier. This cockpit position also improves the aerodynamics at the nose of the aircraft, reducing cockpit noise levels.

[Notso Fantastic]

The flight deck has to be near the pointy nose (to reduce the window wraparound radius so both pilots can see out to either side). So if the flight deck was on either level, the pointy nose would not be in a proper or aesthetic position, so in the true best spirit of committee meetings and European compromise, the flight deck is in the middle! It has to be somewhere, so whatever deck it will take up a certain small pax seating area, but they'll probably have a large galley there anyway so it doesn't matter. As it already has 2 pax levels plus hold/electronics bay/landing gear levels, it would be a bit excessive on such a stubby design to add a bubble fuselage for the flight deck on top! I'd say they had it bang on right

[Onan the Clumsy]

Notwithstanding the previous excellent responses, I would have thought the UPPER deck would be the perfect place for it in the freighter configuration, or am I getting too nostalgic for the Bristol Beverly.

[JW411]

Onan:

You don't mean the Blackburn Beverley do you?

[Golf Charlie Charlie]

We forget that the A380 will not be the first full double-deck airliner. Where did Breguet put the flightdeck on the Sahara and Provence types ?

[Dan Winterland]

The A380 flight deck is not on the lower deck, it's actually between them. It appears you will have to ascend a small flight of stairs from the lower deck to get to the office.

The B747 was designed with the upper flight deck from conception so that it could be used as a freighter with a lift nose shoulod it not be sucessful as a passenger aircraft. But I think that it was also designed that way because it was envisaged it could compete for a USAF requirement for a very large airlifter whose specification required nose loading. (Lockheed got the order with the C5 Galaxy).

The upper flight deck is very cramped as a result of being squeezed into the top of the airframe. Also, the lift nose on the frieghter is not as useful as you would think. For a start, you can't load the aircraft from the nose only as you will start up with all the weight at the back which means the aircraft will sit on it's tail if not supported, or will take a hammering structurally if supported. Also, the upper deck protrudes into the fuselage which restricts the height of the pallets being loaded which would reduce the volume of freight significantly. For these reasons, the rear door is the door normally used for loading/unloading on freighters. The nose door is only really useful for outsize loads which won't go through the rear door.