FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
2003
2003 - 1166.PDF
Evolution The horizontal double- bubble (top left) and Boeing/Airbus VLCT (top right) concepts led totheA3XX, revealed in June 1995 The genealogy of the A380 is a contorted maze of unusual relationships, dead ends and improbable possibilities The roots of Europe's largest ever civil aircraft programme reach back to the late 1980s, when Airbus began stud ies of 600 to 800-seat airliners to serve what it believed would be an increas ingly congested global air transport market in the early decades of the 21st century. The A380 is a direct descendant of the A3XX, which led from the formation of the A3XX Integrated Team in October 1993. This effectively took over earlier Ultra High Capacity Aircraft (UHCA) studies, which were the consortium's first serious evalua tions of an aircraft to replace Boeing's dominant 747. By 1991, Airbus had begun initial talks with several major carriers on potential requirements for a family of UHCAs. Driven largely by the Asia-based airlines, all the concepts were significantly larger than the 747, and consisted of a series of 600, 800 and 1,000-seater designs. Airbus consid ered many options to create these behemoths including joining two A340 fuse lages laterally, as well as a variety of highly unconventional ovoid, horizontal double- bubble, circular and even clover leaf cross-sections. In conjunction with a Russian technical institute it also studied a massive tail-less flying wing concept. Besides its own UHCA studies, Airbus asked the partner companies to look at their own large aircraft concepts. Throughout 1991 and 1992, Aerospatiale worked on the Evolving a giant ASX 500/600, Daimler-Benz Aerospace (DASA) Airbus studied the P502/P602 (also dubbed A2000) and British Aerospace eval uated the AC14. The results of all three concepts were to feed directly into what became the A3XX. Events then took a dramatic and unex pected turn. Asian airlines, as well as some ambitious transpacific carriers such as United Airlines, began encouraging Boeing to look at a larger aircraft than the 747. In January 1993 Boeing took the industry by surprise when it issued statements with the four Airbus consortium members announc ing a year-long study to examine the feasibility of developing a Very Large Commercial Transport (VLCT). The agree ments were exclusively between Boeing, Aerospatiale, BAe, CASA and DASA and not with Airbus itself. The VLCT study was to examine the market potential for a large air craft capable of carrying between 550 and 800 passengers over ranges of 13,000 to 18,500km (7,000 to 10,000nm). Led by Boeing's John Hayhurst and Jurgen Thomas of DASA, the VLCT study was viewed with suspicion by most at Airbus. Hayhurst stated that the group was estab lished because "we currently believe that such a project would be too big for any one manufacturer". However, Airbus saw it as a clever gambit to delay the UHCA and create a wedge between Airbus and its European partners. Ironically, the creation of the VLCT was to have exactly the opposite effect, and led directly to the birth of the A3XX. In response to the Boeing initiative, Airbus redirected its IV 20-26 MAY 2003 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL SUPPLEMENT
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
