Odds and Ends: AF 447 resurfaces; Racing toward 2,000; A400M; beating back anti-droners

Air France 447: More data has surfaces on Air France 447, the Airbus A330 that plunged into the Atlantic on a flight from Brazil to France several years ago. In a cooperative post-investigation that included Airbus and Boeing, efforts to replicate the crash in a simulator failed.

It separately emerged that the pilot of the flight had one hour of sleep and the co-pilots also didn’t have the requisite sleep.

Racing Toward 2,000: At ISTAT, Airbus COO Customers John Leahy said he expected to gain another 200 orders this month for the A320 family, reaching 2,000 orders for the neo in the process. Lufthansa and Turkish have since announced orders.

A400M certified: The troubled Airbus A400M has been certified.

Beating back anti-droners: Boeing and supporters killed legislation in Washington State that would have outlawed drones. Boeing’s subsidiary Insitu is headquartered in Washington and considered leaving to Oregon, across the Columbia River. A coalition is also working to have Moses Lake (WA) selected as a drone testing site under an FAA program.

6 Comments on “Odds and Ends: AF 447 resurfaces; Racing toward 2,000; A400M; beating back anti-droners

  1. I think the particulairy the A321 NEO is becoming an issue for Boeing. In terms of:
    – fuel efficiency of the bigger Leap and PW GTF ‘s
    – capacity, up to 235 seats with emergency exit options
    – payload-range, it carries the 737-9i max payload 2 hrs further
    – runway performance from hot / restricted runways, the 739 has an issue here..
    – wider more comfortable cabin options for flights up to 6 hrs
    – cargo container & pallet capability
    – noise restricted airports, an 81inch fan GTF will be way quieter then a 70 inch fan Leap

    E.G for the US transcon carriers the A321 is increasingly hard to ignore. The 737-800 has a seat count advantage over the A320, so per seat comparisons neutralizes other factors.
    Randy may say the 737-9i is the ideal 767-200, 757, A300/10 replacement, but the performance figures don’t lie. And A321 heavy orders like HA, Turkisk, AA and many others don’t lie either. A segment to big to ignore..

  2. If you don’t mind me jumping in here, at the RAeS lecture cited in the first link, neither Boeing nor Airbus said anything about trying to replicate the AF447 crash. The lecture was about stall testing jet transport aircraft, which is normally conducted for certification. All they said about AF447 – only after being asked by an attending journalist – is that current industry flight simulators are not able to accurately model the aerodynamic conditions encountered outside the normal flight envelope, and that the industry is working to remedy this.

  3. A400M civil cert: the given weight values are “strange” and differ significantly from the preliminary cert.

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