The first Airbus A330-200F, now fully painted, came out in the sunlight at Toulouse after departing the paint shop. The aircraft, registered F-WWYE (MSN1004), will head to the flight line toward the end of the month and will be handed over to flight test to begin ground testing ahead of its planned November 2009 maiden flight.
So you're probably asking, "What's up with that nose gear blister?"
From an April 8th article on flightglobal.com:
Photo Credit Airbus
So you're probably asking, "What's up with that nose gear blister?"
From an April 8th article on flightglobal.com:
Images released by Airbus of the first A330-200F on the move in Toulouse reveal the modification made to the landing gear and forward fuselage to address the nose-down pitch that is a characteristic of the A330/A340 and provide a level cabin floor during loading.This has been achieved by lowering the nose-gear leg attachment points to raise the nose height, in turn requiring a larger gear bay that is faired by a blister on the underside of the nose.
Photo Credit Airbus
on October 19, 2009 5:09 PM | Reply
Who are the main buyers for this aircraft?
on October 19, 2009 6:07 PM | Reply
Main customers is an interesting question. Right now, it's only real airline customers are MNG and Etihad. The rest are leasing companies, and the zombie airline, Flyington Freighters. The leasing companies have been canceling freighter orders and converting to pax planes. The program is on it's 3rd "launch customer" now.
Flyington is an interesting case of over reaching airline execs. A never been airline, that never will be, it ordered a massive amount of brandy spankin' new (really expensive) freighters they didn't need. Now Airbus has a 20 plane blank order in their backlog.
on October 19, 2009 6:35 PM | Reply
OH GREAT! Now we have another substandard design taking to the air...
ANOTHER "IMPROVED" FLAW BY DESIGN. Brought to you by the Halloween folks at Scarebus!
on October 20, 2009 3:03 AM | Reply
Jon,
What's up with that nose gear blister?
on October 20, 2009 3:21 AM | Reply
Wow, JR has some really great comments ! congratulations JR ! you show how your stupidity is powerfull...
on October 20, 2009 5:38 AM | Reply
Anybody knows why there is this thickness between the cockpit and the landing gear ? Thanks in advance.
on October 20, 2009 7:50 AM | Reply
All A330/A340 types had a slight front down attitude.
This is unwanted for a freight plane.
So the A330-200F got its front leg pulled ;-)
enough to stand on an even keel.
Looks like they moved the complete landing gear bay
down and put a fairing over the protrusion.
I seem to remember some article stating that this
is an orderable feature for the complete family now?
uwe
on October 20, 2009 11:29 AM | Reply
Jean,
Being an engineer with over 30 years in the aerospace business qualifies me to make a comment like that. I have worked on many airframes and the Airbus design standards scares me the most.
Boeing achieves performance through design and inovation. Airbus gains performance by eliminating weight. This weight reduction has been done through the elimination of fasteners, structure and material.
I will have you look at the internal structure of the A330 rudder. and the lack of a fail safe structure. If you look at the Boeing 747 rudder for example,(Upper or Lower) you can see there is an abundance of structure.
So before you say someone is "Stupid", Take a good look in the mirror.
Cheers
JR
on October 20, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply
Sorry, your comment is simply wrong, there are much fail safe structures in any airbus structure. but they are not so obvious like the ones made by Boeing. There is no comparability between the aluminium structure of the B747 rudder and the CFRP one of the A330.
I you are the qualified designer, you are talking about, you should have known this.
If you like the oldfashioned way, Boeing designs its aircrafts, its one thing, but to say the other,maybe new way, is unsafe and wromg, disqualifies your credibility. I'm sorry for being as direct as above, but incrimations as written by you, should be rectified.
Just to give an example: The ripped off Vertical Tail Plane of the American Airlines A300, which crashed in New York, broke at a load factor of 1.72 (1.50 is required as ultimate load), in the following investigation, Boeing stated, that an aluminium vtp, like used in the comparable B767 would have ripped of, at approximatly 1.55-1.60, both are far beyond requirements, but CFRP structures can handle extensive forces better than old fashioned designs.
Airbus tries to get out the maximum weight reduction, Boeing tries this as well (B787). In Old times Boeing was the only big manufacturer, there was no need to go to maximum. Now there is a strong opponent, so they really should go, otherwise the customers run away.
Greetings from EDHI
on October 20, 2009 1:05 PM | Reply
JR, if you are an engineer in the aerospace industry then frankly it's you who scares me silly. All large passenger aircraft have to be designed to pass the same certification standards, so to suggest that there's much difference in the ultimate structural performance of Airbus and Boeing aircraft is laughable. Boeing have set themselves very agressive target weights for the 787, targets they are struggling to meet currently. I imagine they have cut down unecessary structure to a minimum consistent with meeting all the structural requirements for certification. So does that make Boeing design standards scary? I'm sorry, but your argument is neither consistent or credible.
on October 20, 2009 3:42 PM | Reply
Reply to JR
"Airbus gains performance by eliminating weight. This weight reduction has been done through the elimination of fasteners, structure and material."
I can see why you are such a well regarded engineer, who would have thought?
on October 20, 2009 4:28 PM | Reply
Gary,
hate to say this, but you should really be scared of yourself! If you so totally believe that the Airbus Designs are safe, Then let me sell you a bunch of sea bottom.
SDFlight,
You correct about the AA A300 Crash in New York. I digress that that accident could have happened to any aircraft. It just happened to be an Airbus A300. Once you exceed the material allowables, you are bound to have failures.
I'll give it to Airbus; they build great cheap planes that don't last.
on October 20, 2009 5:22 PM | Reply
Gary,
The 787 could be a whole bunch lighter! The airplane had to be over built for damage tolerance requirements. The 787 is the first stepping stone on the path leading to the future of aviation. Time will tell if the design can be altered. Look at the DC-3 wing compared to the 737...
I am curious to see how tha Airbus A350 design works out.
SDFlight,
Yes a little old school engineer but never step heavy on new ice until you test the thickness! Maybe that is a job best outsourced LOL...
In all fairness guys, I Love what I do and truly have been blessed to get paid for something I would do for free (If I could afford it).
I do appreciate your comments. One person doesn’t have all the answers.
on October 20, 2009 5:23 PM | Reply
How much drag does the blister add and what is its effect on fuel consumption? It is not very elegant at all. On the upside, having the blister scrape the runway if the nose wheel collapses rather than the main structure is better, but would this save the engines???
on October 20, 2009 10:38 PM | Reply
I bet it's just a composite shell fastened to the bottom of the fuselage. I don't think its strong enough hold up when the nose-gear fails.
And to JR I would like to say: Boeing has had a fair deal of mechanical failures in flight as well (737 rudders, 747 pressure bulkhead). It's not yet known what caused the tragic loss of the Air France A330. It's not even proven if it was extreme turbulence or design flaws by Airbus. Every accident is one too many and I think both Boeing and Airbus are trying there best to keep accidents from happening.
on October 21, 2009 6:05 AM | Reply
JR, you appear to be completely one-eyed on this subject. Engineers use hard data, so if you have hard data to illustrate your point then I challenge you to produce it. For all your talk about Boeing design standards, the 787 is curently over weight and has failed it's first ultimate load test. Do you still maintain it could be "a whole bunch lighter" whilst the engineers still battle to prove it can meet the standards imposed by the design authorities? What is "a whole bunch lighter" in your eyes anyway? I'm sure the Boeing structural engineers working on weight reduction would love to have your ideas how to remove many hundreds of Kgs of weight from the aircraft, you being such an expert and all.
on October 21, 2009 6:56 AM | Reply
Regarding the nose down attitude of the A330/A340; one should first note that this nose down attitude is problematic for any conversion of A330s and A340s to freighters. Therefore, Airbus began conducting experiments in 2001 using an A300-600 aircraft as a test-bed. This demonstrated a need for some changes to the A330-200. The Main Landing Gear (MLG) of the A330/A340 is taller than the MLGs of the A300/A310. However, the nose landing gear well is identical in size on the A300/A310/A330/A340. This meant that when Airbus designed the A330/A340 family, they knew that these new models would have a nose down attitude, but maximum commonality was (and still is) the Airbus aim when they launched the programme; namely commonality between the A330 and the A340 and commonality with other Airbus products. The A330/A340 therefore shared the same 222-inch diameter fuselage cross-section of the A300 and A310, while the fuselage panels as well as nearly all of the fuselage frame sections, but not the centre section incorporating the wing carry through box, are built on the same jigs, though some have been replaced and/or upgraded since EIS, while the flightdeck, avionics, and digital fly-by-wire flight control system was largely based on those of the A320.
Therefore, the major new hardware which Airbus had to develop on the A330/A340 was really "only" the wing, which in fact, was quite revolutionary in its design. Consequently, since they maximised the use of the then exsiting A300/A310 production infrastructure for the new A330/A340 programme (A345/A346 excluded), Airbus, "only" had to spend around USD 3,5-4 billion on the project, or about one third of what Boeing reportedly spent on the 777 programme (77L/77W excluded).
Now, as I've indicated, Airbus had to develop a revised design for the freighter version of the A332. The "Dropped Nose Landing Gear Bay" is designed in such a way as to preserve the aircraft's original nose gear and its retraction mechanism. However, the attachment points are lowered by 0,37 m. As a result, the nose of the A332F is raised to a level where the pitch-down atitude now only 0.5 degrees during loading operations. As such, this redesign has required the incorporation of a blister fairing on the underside of the nose to accommodate the revised gear layout.
on October 21, 2009 7:11 AM | Reply
"How much drag does the blister add and what is its effect on fuel consumption? It is not very elegant at all"
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/aw030308p2.xml
Quote: "The A330-200F will be the first version of the twinjet to incorporate a revised nose leg position that will be attached lower in the fuselage to give it a deeper hinge point to level off the existing A330’s nose-down body angle. Although the offset nose leg position requires a new fairing which protrudes from the chin, It also opens the way for relatively inexpensive after-market passenger-to-freighter modifications later in its service life, says the manufacturer."
on October 21, 2009 7:23 AM | Reply
It looks like the following part of the quote from Aviation Week (Guy Norris) was left out above. Here it is:
"Airbus aerodynamicists predict a marginal drag penalty of about 0.1% or less. It also opens the way for relatively inexpensive after-market passenger-to-freighter modifications later in its service life, says the manufacturer".
on October 21, 2009 12:07 PM | Reply
Gary,
Thanks for the comments! Boeing engineering is aware of where they can save weight on the 787. Part of the original customer requirement was to have the airframe overbuilt so the airframe could fly with some damage. I have heard that the barrels are almost 20% heavier the calculated required thickness. Only after flight testing, in-service evaluation and the evaluation of the actual in-flight load data will the Boeing be able to determine if any of the excess weight can be trimmed. Hey, until they actually fly this turkey bird, will we really know what the actual performance numbers are!
As for the wing issue, I attribute that to the learning curve. As Jon can attest I told him in 2007 the wings and center section were of concern to me. But to be fair, we have over 70 years of data on metal (Aluminum) structures. We will get to the same confidence level with CFRP and the other composite materials through analysis and in-service use.
I love how people dwell on the failures of aircraft components or structures. The 737 rudder failures are believed to have been caused by dirty hydraulic fluid (operator maintenance) and a design flaw in part of the actuator. Both issues have been resolved through design changes, maintenance procedures and training the pilots to recognize a rudder problem and how to employ proper remedial crew action.
The 747 Pressure bulkhead failure was the result of an improper repair to an aircraft that had a tail strike. Boeing makes sure that all its engineers are aware of what caused that.
I notices you left out the Comet, ATR 42 and a whole slew of others that had failures.
Lets not just pick on Boeing if we are going to talk about failures.
I just brought up Airbus, because the “NEW” fairing on the A330 looks like an OOPS we need to put a band-aid on a flaw that was done in design. To be honest, it makes the plane look a whole bunch better.
on October 22, 2009 1:00 AM | Reply
Not really a design flaw. If you read the story by OV-099, they made a choice to keep commodity, one of Airbus key selling points. Only now this presents a problem which they fixed in a clever way to still retain as much commodity with the other models as possible.
on October 22, 2009 6:27 AM | Reply
[quote]I'll give it to Airbus; they build great cheap planes that don't last.[/quote]
One thing is saying that Boeing's planes last longer and a completely different matter is saying that Airbus' planes are unsafe.
An even there, I'm sure that they last at least as long as they promised when the plane was purchased and after reading http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2008/01/22/220962/airbus-begins-tests-to-extend-service-life-of-a320-family.html looks like that Airbus is trying to triple its promises
Cheers
on October 30, 2009 1:24 PM | Reply
JR,
if you were really an engineer, your comments would be different. You don't seem to know anything (or hardly anything) about Airbus.
Just your comment "Boeing achieves performance through design and innovation." is quite interesting....
We at Lufthansa analyzed the 787 design and innovation years ago and at that time sadly had to come to the conclusion that this design and the innovations were going to have many problems. We told Boeing at that time. Of course they knew better. Now we are in Nov 2009. The 787 has not flown yet. We were right in our analysis, Boeing was wrong.
Enough said about Boeing's designs and innovations....
Regards...