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by bad_alloc 893 days ago
How is Airbus doing meanwhile? I didn't hear about any production quality issues in their aircraft.
2 comments

Half the A320neo fleet needs to be grounded for 250-300 days over the next year due to engine manufacturing issues affecting their wear (which tbf is entirely Pratt & Whitney's fault). Airbus settled a $2bn suit last year with Qatar Airways over A350 paint jobs so bad they grounded them and refused to take scheduled deliveries. You'll hear more about Boeing than the rest of the industry put together because this is HN...
So Airbus has fault for a paint job? While they should do better, that sounds a lot safer than airplanes losing pieces or crashing down to me.

> You'll hear more about Boeing than the rest of the industry put together because this is HN...

That's not it.

> That's not it.

I mean, it is. The Pratt & Whitney engine issue which is going to ground half the MAX's rival's aircraft for a year because a manufacturing fault makes the engine turbine blades liable to crack garnered two threads and zero comments (Boeing got more for a fun story about paper planes!). Airbus being found at fault but acquitted of involuntary manslaughter by a Paris court last year for the AF447 crash (a 2009 mid air stall with a few MCAS parallels) passed without comment. HN is not a place for aviation news

> Airbus being found at fault but acquitted of involuntary manslaughter by a Paris court last year for the AF447 crash (a 2009 mid air stall with a few MCAS parallels) passed without comment

“Company isn’t found criminally negligent in case where it pretty clearly wasn’t being criminally negligent” isn’t.. news.

I’d be _really_ curious to hear what you think the MCAS parallels are (besides both cases involving a sensor malfunction) if you think that’s news.

Ah...because HN famously never has any interest in tech litigation and definitely won't have anything to say if a court finds in Boeing's failure in several years time!

The parallels are fairly obvious: AoA sensors malfunctioned, the situation was recoverable but the pilots were confused by conflicting and absent cockpit feedback and lack of relevant training, the OEM initially placed the blame entirely on the pilot but the problem was resolved with a tech remedy. Plus a whole lot of scope for speculation about Airbus regulatory capture of EASA and whether a first incident should have lead to grounding etc. Sure, with AF447 the issue was sensors having a (known) proneness to systematic failure rather than lack of redundancy and the plane plummeted because a stabilisation system disengaged at the worst possible time. They're obviously also not exactly the same, and the Qantas Flight 72 (different software subsystem input conflict automatically pitches nose down) near miss was a closer analogue, but they're all related to critical software handling edge cases and how guidance and UX might have mitigated issues. But as I said, you won't get much of a picture of the aviation industry from HN.

> The A320neo family has had four ground fatalities and one hull loss accident as of November 2022.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320neo_family

A320neo is the direct competitor to the MAX. So yeah, they're doing pretty well.

And that hull loss wasn't on account of a faulty design, assembly or process issues.

Crew and passengers were unharmed after a collision with a firetruck crossing the runway while the aircraft was doing its take-off roll.

Exactly, as I understand all those occurrencies were due to people on the runway for one reason or another.
I am not familiar enough with that incident but I wonder how fast the plane was going and how close it was to actually being airborne, that seems like it must have been quite the impact but given that all crew survived there must be some factor that I'm missing. Blind luck either way.

edit: 235 Kph!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBEE7bzatKk&t=47s

two 10ths of a second later and it would have been an entirely different story. Ugh.

i'm not sure are you being sarcastic, there were no fatalities on the airplane. but once motorcycle and another time a firetruck crashed with the plane and people died.
I am not being sarcastic. Fatalities were unfortunate, but not due to the airplane design or manufacturing.