Should the Airbus Be Grounded?

Consortium News by William John Cox | Jun. 20, 2009 (Special Report)

Not including losses attributable to terrorism, rebellion or military action, Airbuses have been involved in 23 fatal crashes causing the deaths of 2,584 passengers, crew members and people on the ground. In addition, there have been five nonfatal accidents causing 21 serious injuries.

While the overall number of accidents and fatalities are not disproportionate to the crash experience of Boeing aircraft, three of the Airbus crashes involved a ... Full Story »

Posted by Dwight Rousu

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Subjects: Business, Sci/Tech
Topics: Technology, Transportation
Member Tags: Air Safety, Composites
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Posted by: Posted by Dwight Rousu - Jun 20, 2009 - 5:42 PM PDT
Reviewed by: Dwight Rousu (review), Tanya J. Maurer (review)
Content Type: Article
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Edited by: Dwight Rousu - Jun 20, 2009 - 5:42 PM PDT

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Dwight Rousu
3.8
 by Dwight Rousu - Jun. 20, 2009

Cox does not put forward his credentials as an aerospace engineer or structural engineer. His questions and data seem well informed and worthy of evaluation by experts. There are a few slanted aspects such as calling composites plastics, which suggests fragility. He omits consideration of the gutting of FAA technical competence by anti-regulation forces so that design and quality control are regulated to the manufacturers who can fall victim to conflicts of interest.

Control inputs which are expected to exceed structural limits should be inhibited by design. The yaw damper forced oscillation question is not vigorously pursued here, which might be tied to voting systems among redundant control systems. The FAA, to my knowledge, does not require controls analysis of control systems in the presence of redundant voting control systems, which can conceivably get out of synch under stressful data loads and/or partial failures.

Dwight posted this story.
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Tanya J. Maurer
3.7
 by Tanya J. Maurer - Jun. 26, 2009
See Full Review » (11 answers)

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