Airbus deliveries halted due to manuals

[tcasblue]

Sick and tired of Airbus manuals? Finally, someone might be standing up and saying that changes need to be made. Unfortunately, it is a military operator...

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/polit...cid=spartandhp

The Canadian Armed Forces is refusing to accept the first of its new search-and-rescue planes from European manufacturer Airbus because of concerns with the aircraft's manuals.

[WingSlinger]

Probably because they are not bilingual.

[Airbubba]

Rumor has it that the original A300-600 company manuals were written in French and translated into English by a German.

[Commander Taco]

Without a doubt the Airbus FCOM for the A320 was the worst I ever saw. I seem to remember an Airbus announcement several years ago that henceforth the FCOMs would be written by the Airbus Flight Operations group and not Airbus Engineering. Doesn’t sound like it did any good.

[compressor stall]

Originally Posted by Commander Taco

Without a doubt the Airbus FCOM for the A320 was the worst I ever saw. I seem to remember an Airbus announcement several years ago that henceforth the FCOMs would be written by the Airbus Flight Operations group and not Airbus Engineering. Doesn’t sound like it did any good.

Maybe so, but this is not the A320 we are talking about. It's the C295 which is an Airbus Military product inherited from EADS.

[DaveReidUK]

Originally Posted by compressor stall

It's the C295 which is an Airbus Military product inherited from EADS.

Who inherited it in turn from CASA of Spain, which may be the root of the problem - AFAIK, the C295 hasn't previously been sold to any other French-speaking country (although its predecessor, the CN-235, is in service with the French AF), so the technical manual translators will have been busy, though perhaps not busy enough.

[Mad (Flt) Scientist]

Originally Posted by Commander Taco

.... henceforth the FCOMs would be written by the Airbus Flight Operations group and not Airbus Engineering. Doesn’t sound like it did any good.

So you go from a manual written by people who know how the systems work and are designed, but not how they are used in practice and how the aircraft is flown, to the opposite.
Neither is a recipe for success. You actually need both.

[Rwy in Sight]

The French are nasty with the language and the aircraft. The Hellenic Air Force was asked an obscene amount of money to eliminate the French lettering from the warning signs and replace it with Greek words for the fleet of M-2000.

However I am surprised the issue appear with the perfectly bilingual Canadians.

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by Rwy in Sight

However I am surprised the issue appear with the perfectly bilingual Canadians.

A close relative who was involved in producing the manuals for the Lockheed C-130J sale to the Royal Canadian Air Force says the bilingual documentation was a major headache. Even if everybody speaks English by law everything official has to be in French as well. It's a political correctness thing I suppose.

[Commander Taco]

Originally Posted by Rwy in Sight

However I am surprised the issue appear with the perfectly bilingual Canadians.

Canada has two official languages, English and French. But that doesn’t mean that Canadians are “perfectly bilingual”. There are many French Canadians who hardly speak a word of English and many English Canadians who do not speak a word of French. FWIW, many of the French Canadians I flew with struggled with the Airbus FCOMs as much as their Anglophone colleagues.

[Commander Taco]

Originally Posted by Airbubba

A close relative who was involved in producing the manuals for the Lockheed C-130J sale to the Royal Canadian Air Force says the bilingual documentation was a major headache. Even if everybody speaks English by law everything official has to be in French as well. It's a political correctness thing I suppose.

Hi Bubba, not really a political correctness thing. Back in the 1970’s when the government of the day established both French and English as Canada’s two official languages, it was also decided that this would include the right to be served or to be able to work in the federal arena in either language. Hence, all federal documents are published in both official languages.