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Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

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Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#171

Post by WalterBright »

testrun wrote: post #104
WalterBright wrote: post #60

> striving to meet their emissions-reduction goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. This is part of the reason Qantas has invested heavily in kick-starting Australia’s sustainable aviation fuel industry. This is one of the most destructive frauds otherwise intelligent people are suckered into. It's based on the idiotic notion that a C atom from a biofuel results in "green" CO2 emissions. The CO2 emitted is exactly the sa…

Kerosene produced from oil adds carbon to the atmosphere (carbon positive), biofuels take carbon out of air and after burning put it back (carbon neutral). There is a big difference.

No, there isn't. Read my other replies.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#172

Post by WalterBright »

jamiek88 wrote: post #99
WalterBright wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A "C atom from a biofuel" may in isolation be indistinguishable from one sourced from a fossil fuel, but it is exactly not the same in terms of its impact How does it result in less CO2 in the atmosphere?

Because the fuel is grown and used instead of refined fuel from ancient oil. Carbon neutral. Standard fuel: I dig up one carbon. I burn this carbon. One carbon is now in atmosphere. Biofuel: I grow one carbon. one carbon is now taken from the atmosphere. We are at minus one carbon. I burn this carbon. We are back to net zero carbon taken or added.

Every reply to me makes the same mistake. The fix: Grow a tree. Burn a tree you dug up. Net zero carbon.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#173

Post by throwaway2037 »

btilly wrote: post #148
wahern wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's obviously a matter of diminishing returns and opportunity cost. But the re-engine for the A380 was basically a rote, low-risk, B-team exercise for Rolls Royce. All they had to do was tweak their existing generation stuff. The program was already well underway, and they still dropped it; they all but explicitly said the reason was, "meh, we lost interest". Something seems to have changed. Putting my cynical…

Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.

This is an interesting comment. I am a bit disappointed it was so heavily downvoted. My main concern: "first class ticket" -- that is roughly 5% of the market. Way too expensive for most. If your comment (and reality) were "cattle class ticket", then yes, there is great potential for "half globe" flights. Even 2x to 4x faster would be a game changer.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#174

Post by VBprogrammer »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #116
SgtBastard wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAP, but a lot of the root cause analysis around the 737 max crashes was that they were sufficiently different and so should have required re-certification of pilots before being allowed to fly them. Due to the costs involved, Boeing made the ultimately fatal mistake of minimising these changes to airlines so that pilots didnt know what they were flying (insofar as some of the subsystems).

There were also optional safety systems that lower cost carriers in the undeveloped/developing world didn’t buy, which would have prevented most of the incidents.

Do you have a reference for this? To my knowledge there was an optional AoA disagree indication (which was on a multi-function display so it's hard to argue it was any kind of cost saving). It's unlikely this would have been a factor in preventing either accident. A small warning indication with no actionable steps would have been low on the priority list for a pilot wrestling for control of the aircraft.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#175

Post by benjaminwootton »

akhayam wrote: post #150
benjaminwootton wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emirates never stopped flying A380s, at least between London, Dubai and Thailand which I’ve done regularly since 2020.

You are so lucky! I just searched an aviation site and seems like the SFO DXB is back on A380 as well…. Yaaay! From that page: “ In 2023, the Emirates A380 is at this point scheduled to operate flights to 44 destinations in almost 30 countries. While a handful of the routes are seasonal, the vast majority are year-round. The countries with the most Emirates A380 routes in 2023 include the United States (5 destination…

I wouldn't say I like flying but if I have to fly then they are the best way to do it. Amazing machines!

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#176

Post by throwaway2037 »

wahern wrote: post #134
midoridensha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they need new engines? Would it be that hard to just use some new, existing engine (like whatever they put on the 787) and stick that on the A380? Or is it not feasible because 2 of them aren't enough for such a large plane, and 4 of them are just too much engine and don't yield enough fuel savings because they're being run at part-throttle? These planes might not make much sense for many routes, but for trans…

The plane is too big for 2 engines. But the massive engines for 2-engined planes are too big and inefficient for use in a 4 engine configuration. For example, each engine on 2-engine plane must be powerful enough alone for takeoff, whereas in a 4-engine configuration safety regulations only require a minimum of 2 (or 3?) working engines. The former require a much larger performance envelope, even though that increase…

Hat tip for mentioning "gearing technology". The Pratt & Whitney PW1000G engine is just wild to me. It is a huge leap forward (no pun intended, as CFM's latest is called LEAP). Like all major redesigns, there will be years of bugs and minor failures to work through. Fortunately, they are starting much earlier than all the competition.

EDIT (wiki links)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_PW1000G

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geared_turbofan

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#177

Post by gambiting »

sumedh wrote: post #170
wahern wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the engine manufacturers are interested. That's what killed the A380--Rolls Royce pulled out of a re-engine deal that would've brought A380 engines into the 21st century. "Green" concept showcases notwithstanding, all the engine manufactures seem to have decided to cut back on investment and coast for awhile. Something will need to change to spur competition in the engine space, and then we might see hungrier…

> Something will need to change to spur competition in the engine space, Isn't SpaceX going to use Starship for international travel. That might motivate these engine makers.

That's an insane plan no matter how anyone looks at it.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#179

Post by throwaway2037 »

anaganisk wrote: post #140
908B64B197 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

$9 converted to Indian currency is Rs720 with a conversion rate of 80Rs per dollar which is around 3 lakhs a month, which is a lot in India, equates to a mid six figure salary here based on what you can afford. I'm not sure how you are trying to make a point here. Also it's unfortunate that you retort to blaming the coders and mild racism, instead of accepting Boeing messed up. FAA not once in it's reports nor any av…

This is a great post, but I'm confused about your math in the first sentence. Maybe I misunderstand: 3 lakhs means 300,000 INR. If 720 INR per hour, that means 415 hours per month. If we estimate 4.5 weeks per month, that is 90+ hours per week! Where did I go wrong here? And there is no way Boeing is paying less than 20 USD per hour in India for people writing flight control software!

For other readers, if the monthly salary is 300,000 INR, that would be 3.6M INR per year, or about 45K USD @ 80 INR/USD.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#180

Post by jkepler »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #173
btilly wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.

This is an interesting comment. I am a bit disappointed it was so heavily downvoted. My main concern: "first class ticket" -- that is roughly 5% of the market. Way too expensive for most. If your comment (and reality) were "cattle class ticket", then yes, there is great potential for "half globe" flights. Even 2x to 4x faster would be a game changer.

Generally, technology is reduces prices, so if that were commercialized the prices would come down... provided the growing money supply doesn't negate tech deflation.
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