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Aviation History
1992
1992 - 0906.PDF
HEADLINES A340 'will beat range guarantees7 BY JULIAN MOXON IN TOULOUSE Airbus Industrie is claiming that its new four-engined A340 will beat range guarantees by 4% when it enters service in January 1993 (Flight Interna tional, 1-7 April). Initial flight test results re vealed a range guarantee short fall of 1% for the long-range airliner, however, which amounts to an approximate 6% drop in Airbus' own perform ance specification. About one third of this will be recovered by increasing the chord of the in board wing slats by 10%. The rest will come from improve ments to the CFM56-5C2 en gines, and from minor changes A319 launch debated The launch of the A319, a 130-seat A320 derivative, de pends on a crucial meeting of the Airbus Industrie supervi sory board on 1 May. The meeting has been called to resolve objections by Airbus partner Aerospatiale to work- share agreements on the A320 family. Discussions will almost certainly include the question of where final assembly of the A319 will be carried out. Deutsche Aerospace wants to add the new aircraft to its A321 production line, but Aerospatiale wants the line to be in Toulouse where the A3 20 is built. According to Airbus contractual rules, A320 workshare arrange ments come up for review after delivery of the 600th aircraft, which is due in about two years time. Airbus predicts a market for 450 A319s, plus a knock- on market for 250 A320s and A321s. "I am optimistic," says Airbus chief executive officer Herbert Flosidorff, "that on 1 May we will get the go-ahead to go out to the market and find launch customers for the new A319." • to rigging and sealing. Airbus engineering senior vice-president Bernard Ziegler insists that the A340 "...will meet all payload and range com mitments" at service entry. The flight-test programme to date, which now includes the longer- range A340-200 (the aircraft made its maiden flight on 1 April) has shown that perform ance and reliability of the en gines is on target. Systems reliability is also said to be as good as that of a mature aircraft, and wing performance in low- and high-speed flight has been verified. Several changes not connected with range have been identified, however. The most significant is the addition of a large metal fairing inboard of the outer en gine pylons to prevent flow sep aration, which was causing an unexpectedly severe buffet at low lift coefficients. The fairing, which is like a rounded triangle in shape, is about 15cm thick at the pylon, and 1.5m long on each side, tapering to nil where it meets the wing. It will be removable for access to the wing. Airbus is also lengthening the A340's nose landing-gear by 41cm to correct a nose-down runway attitude which leaves the rear cargo and passenger doors 37cm higher than they are on the A300-600. The gear will not be ready for service introduction, so an in terim solution has been devel oped which includes an onboard airstair for the passenger doors and a special cargo-loading sys tem to make the aircraft compat ible with existing cargo-handling equipment. "We've known about it for two years," says Ziegler. "It is not a problem." Various other improvements will improve the handling quali ties, mainly by reducing speed- brake and spoiler buffet. Airbus has also inhibited the outboard ailerons in cruise to prevent excessive wing response. Over all, however, the A340 is said by Ziegler to "...fly like a dream". He adds that its "excellent" relia bility up until now has enabled a quick build-up of test hours, Industrial roll-out of the new Airbus Industrie A330 medium-range twin took place on 31 March. The A340-200 (inset) made its first flight one day later which now exceed 375h in 86 flights. Ziegler adds that the cockpit proved "extremely com fortable" on the 13h longest flight to date, to Singapore in February. Airbus says that the A340 and its twin-engined sister, the A330, have so far won 50% of the 300- to 350-seat market (which includes the Boeing 777 and McDonnell Douglas MD- 11), with a total of 258 firm orders placed so far. Widebody orders remain slack following the dramatic drop in traffic caused by the Gulf War, according to marketing vice- president David Jennings. "The balance of orders will shift heav ily in favour of widebodies in the next few years," he adds, with Airbus gaining around 30% of total orders. . • Zenit launcher fails for a third time The Commonwealth of Inde pendent States (CIS) has suffered the third consecutive failure of the Zenit SL-16 me dium-lift launcher. A second-stage failure ended the launch attempt from Baikonur on 4 February, it has been revealed by Alexander Dunayev, the chairman of GlavKosmos, the former Soviet space agency responsible for commercialisation. A Zenit destroyed one of the two pads at the Baikonur Cos modrome on 4 October, 1990, when it exploded just after launch. The next launch at tempt, on 30 August, 1991, ended with a second-stage fail ure caused by contamination in the engine. Following a sub-orbital test flight in April 1985, 13 orbital missions using a Zenit booster took place. Dunayev has suggested that poor morale and careless quality control at the Ukraine factory which builds the stages, or the Russian factory that manufac tures the RD-171 first stage and RD-120 second stage liquid- oxygen and kerosene engines, could be responsible for the recent failures. An uprated Zenit, with a third stage, is being promoted as the booster for a proposed commercial launch site in Cape York, Queensland, Australia. D NEWS IN BRIEF MSAM BID Swedish Ordnance has emerged as the surprise fourth bidder in the UK Min istry of Defence's competition for a medium-range surface- to-air missile. The company is understood to have offered its BAMSE system. 6 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 8 - 14 April, 1992
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