A340 No more...

[WestCoast]

I was also going to say that if you want an A340-600 flight for relativly little outlay Iberia are currently using one on Madrid to Heathrow in the evenings. It doesn't run every day but is used as certain trips have more Cargo then an A320 can handle (Pax loadings are light though)

Yes, it's not badly priced either, it's used because of the cargo and the fact that its linking the two International Airlines Group hubs of BA and Iberia.

Although the cheapest ride on an A340 in Europe tends to be LAN Chile Frankfurt - Madrid as part of a routing which continues to Santiago. £60 return I've seen, although of course you need to reach one of those two points.
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It was actually Airbus who first used that slogan, when they attempted to advertise the A340 as being safer than the 777

I didn't know that, laughable with their now highly successful A330 isn't it?
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Similarly Eurowings (Lufthansa Regional) and Brussels Airlines (amongst others) send their CRJs/E-Jets/BAe146 to Exeter for Maintainance.

I didn't know that Flybe had so many contracts! Eurowings (Lufthansa Regional) are no strangers in the South West, with their seasonal Newquay to Düsseldorf service, although that's been upgraded to a Lufthansa mainline 737-500 during peak summer I believe.

 

[trentside]

Although the cheapest ride on an A340 in Europe tends to be LAN Chile Frankfurt - Madrid as part of a routing which continues to Santiago. £60 return I've seen, although of course you need to reach one of those two points.

I've seen some good one way fares on that routing too - around £34 from Madrid to Frankfurt. Have been meaning to work it into an intinary, but have so far failed!

 

[Schnellzug]

How many acidents have there been to ETOPS twins vis-a-vis multiple engine aircraft, and can any of them be attributed to the number of engines? There've been several A330 losses, AF447 I suppose being the most notable, but would having four engines have made any difference to any of them? How many 777 crashes have there been? Wasn't G-YMMM the only one to be written off so far?

 

[trentside]

How many acidents have there been to ETOPS twins vis-a-vis multiple engine aircraft, and can any of them be attributed to the number of engines? There've been several A330 losses, AF447 I suppose being the most notable, but would having four engines have made any difference to any of them? How many 777 crashes have there been? Wasn't G-YMMM the only one to be written off so far?

G-YMMM is the only 777 hull loss to date.

There have been 6 hull loss accidents for the A330 and 5 for the A340.

You should bare in mind that even on a 4 engined aircraft, a single engine is apparently capable of powering the aircraft in an emergency.

 

[Nym]

Far enough for 180mins flight time from 36,000ft...

 

[rb311]

Etops only applies to twin engine aircraft. It stands for extended twin operations and so the A340 does not have to comply. All aircraft certification is based on the premise of one engine out, or OEI.


Therefore an aircraft with more than two engines has a much better test performance as it has not lost more than 50% of It's thrust..

 

[LE Greys]

Aircraft can fly on no engines at all.

 

[flymo]

Found this photo I took of my ride from SYD - HKG back in 2008 with 'Sweet Dreamer' being towed onto the stand to form VS201.



Certainly a sleek looking aircraft, wonder if the A350 will look as good?

 

[WestCoast]

Certainly a sleek looking aircraft, wonder if the A350 will look as good?

The A340-600 does indeed look great, I think it's the four engines which give it a balanced profile.

Not my photo, but I think it looks great in the Thai Livery

 

[LE Greys]

Found this photo I took of my ride from SYD - HKG back in 2008 with 'Sweet Dreamer' being towed onto the stand to form VS201.

View attachment 9037

Certainly a sleek looking aircraft, wonder if the A350 will look as good?

They are pretty, and remind me very much of what I think is one of the nicest-looking airliners of all.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/Boeing_707_Qantas_%28VH-XBA%29.jpg

 

[Nym]

The Gimli Glider didn't really fly to Gimli though, it was a very very slow crash...

 

[LE Greys]

The Gimli Glider didn't really fly to Gimli though, it was a very very slow crash...

Forced landing, to be fair on the pilot. If you can use the plane afterwards, it's a landing.

 

[Nym]

Oh yeah, pilot did a great job landing it and making sure no-one was injured, the fact everyone walked away with minor cuts, (and a broken leg sustained when falling from the rear evac chute) was nothing short of amazing. He actually flew as a pilot, rather than from the manual, since there wasn't anything in the manual to help.

 

[jopsuk]

When (I'm not listening to anyone shouting "If" here) the 350-1000 finally appears, it'll be just a couple of metres shorter than the 340-600, though a bit wider and slightly taller of fuselage (it isn't a circular cross section)

 

[ChrisCooper]

It's a common misconception really that 4 engines is safer than 2. A twin has to be able to fly on a single engine in the event one fails, and this has happened quite a large number of times without any real issues. A 4 engine plane though does not have to be able to fly on 2 engines as the chances of two engines failing (on either a twin or a quad) is incredibly small, and as others have said, in most cases where 2 engines fail, all engines fail (usually fuel issues or serious FOD). In general the more engines on a plane the more likely it is to have an engine failure. It's usually the same for anything with extra redundancy, there is more to go wrong and usually prevention of failures is less important leading to more change of failure. That's where ETOPS comes in, twins have to have much higher standards of maintenance and reliability so the chances of failure are less.

Of cource it's ironic that aircraft are moving to having fewer but bigger engines which is more efficient, more reliable and improves performance, wheras trains are moving towards having larger numbers of smaller engines which improves performance and reliability but reduces efficiency.

 

[HSTEd]

Aircraft dont have to worry about damaging the sky with massive axle weights.

 

[rb311]

Well, I think you'll find aircraft are slightly more weight critical than trains.

 

[Nym]

Aircraft dont have to worry about damaging the sky with massive axle weights.

They do need to worry about damaging runways and taxiways with massive axle weights though.