An assumption too far? The Airbus A300-600 is a very different beast from its original pedigree, the A300B2/B4. When Airbus produced the A310 it deleted the outboard ailerons and transferred this novel feature to the A300-600. In a yanking and banking phase of flight a test pilot recommended reducing the pedal travel as he needed 30% more wheel throw to replicate the roll performance of the original. Obviously, its crosswind performance is also inferior. Outboard ailerons went back in vogue with the A330/A340. If the American Airlines flight AA587 (Flight International, 11-17 January) had been operated by a Boeing 767 and the same first officer performed the same actions, disaster would certainly not have happened, although his actions would have still been inappropriate. The 767's rudder pedal feel and travel is the same at all speeds, although the rudder's travel itself reduces at higher speeds. Squeezing the A300-600's rudder pedal would produce little or no movement, making it effectively a "placebo rudder". Why use rudder for a slight roll at 250kt (460km/h), hardly instability, when the ailerons have so much bite? The fact that simulator details were conducted with ailerons and elevators disabled until at 90¡ of roll was a significant contribution to this pilot's heavy foot. Airbus's assumption that rudder would never be used inappropriately illustrates that assumption is disaster's mother. David Connolly Brussels, Belgium
Confused figures? Your report "2004 was the safest year to fly" (Flight International, 11-17 January) seems a bit confused when it says: "The number of fatal accidents per million flights was almost three times what it is now because there were far fewer flights in 1984." Surely the point of using a rate is to obviate differences in the number of flights? In any case, the number of hull losses is a better way to measure accident rates and hence safety. For example, a mid-air collision will have a different number of fatalities for a single accident, depending on the size of the aircraft involved. The causes of the collision will almost certainly have nothing to do with the number of people on board. A/Associate Professor John Faulkner University of New South Wales, Australia
Safety landmark You might not be aware that the October 2004 crash of a Corporate Airlines British Aerospace Jetstream 31 in Kirksville, Missouri was Kirksville's second fatal airline accident; the first happened 70 years ago this May. The first one is considered to be one of the more influential in US aviation history. In May 1935 a TWA Douglas DC-2 en route from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Kansas City, Missouri, crashed near Kirksville, killing both pilots and three passengers; one of the passengers killed in the crash was a US senator from the state of New Mexico. Several serious safety lapses were uncovered in the crash's investigation - the DC-2 had left Albuquerque with an inoperative two-way radio, and TWA ground staff allowed the aircraft to attempt a below-minimums landing in Kansas City instead of telling the DC-2's pilots to divert to an airport with better weather. In addition, numerous new safety regulations were enacted in the crash's aftermath, among them the requirement that airlines employ dispatchers who would be jointly responsible for a flight's safe operation along with the pilots. The Civil Aeronautics Authority, the USA's primary safety regulatory body until the 1960s, was also established in response to the Kirksville crash. Joe Wolf Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Wasted words What a waste of a golden opportunity. Reading your article on the A380, "A Giant Awakes", (Flight International, 18-24 January) I found myself submerged in endless, boring, details of the test programme instead of what I had expected from the coverline - an informative piece about the debut of the world's biggest passenger aircraft. Here we are on the cusp of a rare and fascinating new aviation achievement and I'm being fed with the editorial equivalent of extremely powerful sleeping pills. Is anyone really interested in the endless A380 test details? The article has little to please the average reader. One might have hoped for impressions from senior airline and industry people - to give us, the poor reader, a feel for this momentous event. But no. We are treated instead to a rerun of turgid programme detail which has been cranked out in numerous previous articles in Flight International. I was really looking forward to being given an impression of what the A380 looks like in the "flesh". And what do we get? Just one picture of the whole aircraft. To this is added a standard Airbus press picture of the cockpit, a chart, a wingtip shot that makes it look like an A340, a tail shot with no indication of what the new logo looks like and - this is too exciting for words - an undercarriage shot which tells us nothing except that the A380 has a lot of wheels. I can only hope that you make something more of the first flight. Charles Penn Guernsey, Channel Islands, UK Editor: The "reveal" was on 18 January - after we went to press.
Source: Flight International
