The Geram joke about this device called "Gleichrichter", is "gleich riecht er", meaning soon it will start to smell (burned...)
These devices are from the stone age of solid state technology and not known for their superior reliability. Anyway such a failure should not kill all communication busses.
I wonder how much additional electric load all the additional governmental communication devices put on those busses.

They were probably asking LBA for assistance...

When using the RAT you are no longer meeting the noise regulations :=
Not a solution to cross the pond.

TRU
 

Can somebody tell how a single TRU failure can wipe out all comms and fuel dumping? Why couldn't they shed loads and switch between busses? What's wrong with this design?

Assuming you want this aircraft ready to go with the VIP traffic when you want it at fairly short notice, utilisation is going to be low. So is it greener to burn a bit more fuel on the occasional trip in this aircraft, or to use a lot of energy making a new aircraft that sits around doing nothing much of the time? Not to say the difference between cap-ex and op-ex, where if the buyer (in this case the government) has to put up the capital cost of a new aircraft when they buy it, they loose the opportunity to do something else with that money - maybe even something "Green".

They won't "borrow money to buy it", finance or similar, the Germans think borrowing money is wrong. Cost of a new aircraft on lease might well be higher than cost of purchase of an old one and operating costs for the low utilisation.

It's not always greener on the other side.

So what does result in the loss of all comms, plus fuel dumping for good measure? And what else would they have lost on top of this, which wasn't reported?

A340 is more than 25 years ago for me, so I can only guess.

DC BUS failure?

I don't believe military passenger aircraft are required to meet civil ETOPS requirements. Twins like Gulfstreams, 737's and DC-9's have been used across the pond for VIP transport for many years in the U.S. Many countries, e.g. Canada and the UK, use twins to take their heads of state overseas on oceanic routes.

Maybe there is a way to island hop and all like that but they definitely don't normally do it with the VIP twins from what I see.

Here's Teresa May's route home from the G-20 conference in her rented Airbus A330 tanker ZZ336:

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....20e94af414.jpg
https://www.radarbox24.com/data/regi...336#1089433533

The French president departed EZE in a twin as well, F-RARF, another A330.

Just imagine sitting at the front end, levelling off at FL300, and discovering that no one is talking to you. Maybe a couple of warnings ringing at you. How long would you think it would take to find out the satphone is working? And then: who will you call? And after you might have found a number: the guy on the other side will have to find someone who can help you. The one who can help you might not be the one who owns the airspace you´re currently in. There might be other traffic around you in busy airspace. All while travelling eight miles a minute. Might not have been such a bad job by everyone.

Here's a lead for Germany on a late model VIP aircraft for sale, you can see it on the ground in VCV.




https://theaviationist.com/2018/12/0...head-of-state/

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a69778bbcd.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....07db55fff1.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f6a3b0b774.jpg



Photos by Alejandro Cegarra

Isn't the Mexican one of the very early 787s with performance issues, that wouldn't ever see airline service for that reason?

I don't think the german government will buy a non-EU build aircraft for their fleet, except in cases where there is no other choice. Which one could of course argue was the reason for procuring four Global 5000. Not to mention of course, that buying from Lufthansa, let it be refurbished by Lufthansa and maintained by Lufthansa props up their precious "national champion" as well.

Remember here in the USA the president is still flying one of the few 2 generation old 747-200s still in the air with a nearly identical backup. Still for many of the trips a 757 is used because they are to airports that can't handle a 747. This is for a country that gives money to the military industrial complex like it is Monopoly money. Reason given is that the 747s are filled with high tech communication equipment when all presidential communication is done with an open network iPhone on Twitter. I really don't have a problem with having a presidential jet that can be recognized anywhere but one wonders how long a country so adept at military spending (yes, Air Force One is part of the military fleet) can keep growing debt while agitating the prime owners of that debt outside the USA - China.

I doubt that LH needs such a prop, but back in 2010 the A343 was going very cheap. Their heads of state retrofit shop in HAM was filled with Qatari and other gulf orders at the time.

DT squeezed Boeing into giving further discounts for some more B748 to replace the VC20. I'm sure they just charged the discount to another defence order but still...

AFAIK only France bought their Presidential Jet fresh from the Airbus factory. The UK bought the A330 as part of a MRTT deal. The Queen started flying commercial in the early 2000s.

There are obviously some doubts concerning the explanations in this story, new newspaper article claims
Quote (Google translate): Contrary to what government officials have suggested in initial responses, security agencies can not yet conclusively state that it was all about technical failure. There are apparently indications from the friendly foreign countries. Experts had been skeptical as soon as the incident became known that both the radio and at the same time the device for discharging kerosene had failed
(go to tagesspiegel.de-zwischenfall-vor-g20-gipfel)

[[i]QUOTE=oliver2002;
AFAIK only France bought their Presidential Jet fresh from the Airbus factory. .[/QUOTE]

This is not true. The French Presidential jet is the A330-200 MSN 240. It was a Swissair aircraft, leased from ILFC, from 1998 to 2003. It then became operated by Air Caraïbes Atlantique until 2009 when it was bought by the French State. After interior installation, it went into Presidential service in November 2010.

Dear old HB-IQB! Well, now I can say I flew on the French presidential airplane... even though at the time of course nobody knew.

Indeed, LN6 - one of the 'terrible teens'.

Not only does the design have to be ETOPS approved, but so do the maintenance procedures. Of course, many consider it good practice to maintain all aircraft in the ETOPS style (separate work on each engine instead of the same people working on both, and os on) and have a reduced rate of problems and maintenance errors as a result. But it's not just buying an ETOPS-stickered aircraft and doing nothing different from then on.

They couldn't possibly buy a Falcon 7X or 8X?

I have to say, a lot of operators have their maintenance done by Lufthansa Technik so they can't be that price-uncompetitive. It's a reasonable choice, even if it does support their national airline a little.

Yes, there was some minor argument about that. As the predecessor was the Challenger 601, they probably just stuck with the OEM, although, even here, the whole process of procurement, cabin fit etc. was done by Lufthansa, which was the general contractor for the complete fleet renewal with Airbus A340, A319ACJ and the Globals. And one of the points that made the Global 5000s more palatable, was the fact that the engines of those jets were manufactured just outside Berlin by Rolls-Royce. And complete french products without german part? Not really wanted either i guess ;)

Re the Mexican garage sale , my Mexican friends tell me it is just a populist PR stunt. Nobody believes for 1 second that the new President will travel on public transport in the coming years. This is Mexico, not some egalitarian Scandinavian country .

He will need Satcom and all the staff bells and whistles. Don't see him fly airlines for long.
A firesale will not save money now after they converted it. And it's a very early exot frame and possibly not easy to resell.

None of which matters, this is politics.

A bit off topic.

Does anyone have details of Vlad Putin's craft and route to Argentina?

You should change your user name to Captain Hindsight ! :-) but it is not the way the GAF works with VIP flights .

He is traveling commercial, messing up everything because each time he flies they have to inspect the aircraft and luggage twice, and by always traveling in the emergency exit row despite being a 65-year-old geezer with heart disease and high blood pressure that can't lift a door worth a damn. The bloody idiot screws up Aeromexico's scheduling while the 787 sits in VCV to be sold at an eight-figure loss because nobody wants one of the terrible teens for commercial operation (the reason MX could afford it in the first place, a rock-bottom lease).

I expect he is grateful not to be the German Chancellor if you are representative of the German voter. Poor chap just cant get it right, can he? Not too sure about your medical diagnosis either........Personally I would like to see more politicians flying with the proletariat

Some news from German news page DER SPIEGEL: Zwischenfall im Kanzler-Airbus bleibt rätselhaft (google this quote and use google translate for translation).
They still couldn't find the reason for the incident. The problem couldn't be reproduced. Even Lufthansa Technik have no idea how this happened. Plane is still in their workshop and not active.

And apparently, as a result of that incident some parts of the government are discussing getting either a brand new A350 or A330 (NEO probably) for chancellor transportation services. Although all jets of the Flugbereitschaft are used for all of the government and quite often for MPs as well, even those of the opposition in some cases.

I still hope they're going to help out Lufthansa, take one or two of their A380s off their hands, pay them to turn them into VVIP planes and then pay them to keep them maintained. That way, the government can support the national airline (who have a reputation for doing a good job at that). They also might want to get a few crews of Lufthansa security clearances so they are allowed to fly the chancellor - I think the risk of having a crew subverted is less than having crews with too low flight time. Of course, Lufthansa then has to make sure these crews are not too fatigued... :-)

Also, we get a chance to spite Donnie a bit at the next G20 summit... :-P

Edit: corrected formatting

Well, the A340s are maintained by Lufthansa, apparently not such a good job they did there. And the security clearance is not the big issue, it is a military airplane and requires a military license to fly, as lufthansa refuses to take ex luftwaffe pilots (except as FIs in Bremen) that could be an issue.

According to a Spiegel report it was after all a Lufthansa maintenance fault. The start of the failure chain was a faulty soldering joint in one of the TRs, which usually should not be a big issue. However, after reconfiguring the aircraft the remaining system lasted only for about 70 seconds until it failed as well, as several faulty solenoids were installed in that aircraft. Additionally Lufthansa replaced the original AMU with a digital one, without updating the documentation (SB A340-23-4242), which lead to the embarrassing issue that the crew did not have the correct procedures available and therefore was unable to restore communication (apart from SATCOM to their OPS).