My apologies Kurt, I am sorry if it appears that i was being pedantic.
All Airbus' have been using wingtip fences until now whereas Boeing have had blended winglets, again different to winglets, available for a long time. Two different designs giving different wing vortex performance.
Personally i prefer boeing products, well McD-D really, as i see the design ethos of airbus as moving to a single crew monitoring role.
Truth be told but i am also not a supporter of ETOPS....

Sorry again [from a recent ex flt crew, still heavily involved in aviation safety personal point of view]

No offence taken. To me they're just big things on the end of the wings in a variety of shapes and what ever you call them is just marketing.

I'm not an aviation prof like you - just an interest of mine - particularly engines.

fascinating aircraft,

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e1a_1404132244 ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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Yes, I like the V-22. It seems a lot safer than before also.

luv it

I heard Alaska Airlines used to fly 727s to lots of northern runways that were in poor shape. When they switched to 737s, they had to experiment with "mud guards" to avoid throwing gravel into the engines as they were so low. (727 has very high engines.) but that was many, many years ago and AA has been flying 737s successfully for a long time.

DavidP wrote:

i see the design ethos of airbus as moving to a single crew monitoring role.

Here's the latest Airbus patent on a windowless cockpit.

Click image to enlarge

Admin note: this post has had its images recovered from a money grabbing photo hosting site and reinstated

i think the safest place for the pilot is on the ground  ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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I want the pilot along for the ride. That way (s)he has a vested interest in getting the plane down in one piece.

But at least if he was on the ground you could ask him where the plane was if it went missing?

 ... - .- -.




Y. O. L. O.
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But Kurt, the pilot's answer would be something like, "The plane just stopped. I pressed Control-Alt-Delete but it just disappeared!"

I think the Airbus A330NEO will be announced today, with Rolls Royce Trent 7000 engines.

RR2008HSE wrote:

I want the pilot along for the ride. That way (s)he has a vested interest in getting the plane down in one piece.

That only works for pilots that aren't suicidal or have gone bonkers. I mean MH370 has all the hallmarks of rogue pilot from what news has been released into the media. Luckily rogue pilots are so rare that it doesn't matter where the pilots are, lets hope the technological developments make flying 100% safe soon, including the meteorite avoidance system

Just imagine how AI type computers monitoring the plane, (note: not controlling the plane), completely independently and "fail safe" (nobody can switch them off) and "hacker safe" (self contained as in no external link to the actual computer operating software) etc. would be able to detect anomalies quite early and let ground crews take over the plane or at least start intervening/taking action.

Whether 100% safe is ever possible, I think it will but it will take a few decades still.

To be honest, it is much much more important to focus on road traffic safety since flying is already very very safe relatively speaking. MY 2010 5.0 SC Galway green and sand interior!!
Have the Faultmate MSV2 Extreme to be tinkering with the settings etc. !!

not brilliant pics but a couple of the red arrows flying over my house during the fairford display,