221–230 of 251 posts
Flying in an A380 is nice but it has one annoyance, at least in economy. It can take well over an hour between meal service starting and getting your meal tray picked up and being able to put your seat back again.
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don't blame it on the airlines. Boing shouldn't have been able to certify a plane without redundant sensors.
Yes. But it wasn’t just about training the pilots, those systems/sensors should have been present even in the cheaper planes (or the cheaper planes simply shouldn’t have been sold).
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Let's not get too carried away, shall we? At least the 346 people that died in the two 737-MAX crashes would probably question your "unqualified success" statement. But yes, no one can deny that the 737 has been a cash cow for Boeing (for far too long, some would say).
The original 737s by Boeing were all-American masterpieces that had pretty great safety records considering the sheer number of miles flown and delivered airframes. The 737-MAX, courtesy of Post McDonnel Douglas-Boeing merger [0], with code written by offshored 9$/h Indian coders was a complete disaster. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...
What's more all american than "Post McDonnel Douglas-Boeing merger with code written by offshored 9$/h Indian coders"?
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Oh dear. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues And speaking of safety records, A32* is better than B737* by any metric.
I'm not sure it's fair to compare the record of a plane family that's 20 years younger than the 737. The first 737 entered service in 1968 vs 1988 for the A320, and during those 20 years, airplane safety improved significantly. Airbus benefited a lot from Boeing's learnings over that time.
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Ticket prices are high because demand in the front of the plane is low. Economy class tickets have to go up a lot to make up for empty first and business seats.
Ticket prices are high because we’re paying for the revenue loss during the pandemic, still. And that people are willing to pay the prices obviously. (And a bit of “everyone else is raising prices” and greed, naturally)
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Is this how pilots are taught to operate it? Or how the engines automatically operate when the pilot is throttling "smoothly".
The pilot is not flying the plane at cruise, the autopilot is. The autopilot can definitely have an effect on how smooth the flying feels, depending on how autothrottle and altitude hold control loops are implemented.
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The pilot is not flying the plane at cruise, the autopilot is. The autopilot can definitely have an effect on how smooth the flying feels, depending on how autothrottle and altitude hold control loops are implemented.
My understanding is that pilots frequently fly parts of the cruise so that they have adequate "stick time" to stay fresh and familiar with the machine.
I like the a380 because it treats the lowly economy passenger (i.e., me) the best of all the large planes. It has the most headroom (even though it has two stories) so the cabin feels more airy and less cramped. So this is good news.
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There are still a variety of planes parked at the airport in Alice Springs (central Australia). Maybe it's a size thing with using Victorville over Alice?
It was pretty cool flying in mid 2020 and seeing an endless field of tightly packed planes: https://imgur.com/txyXWza (I regret not getting a photo from the air)