The headlines that Airbus did not want to see have appeared: “A380 wake vortices significantly stronger than 747’s”. If the full trials programme validates this early International Civil Aviation Organisation guidance on spacing between the A380 and following aircraft, it matters for the whole air transport system, not just for this manufacturer.
At the world’s major hubs, in their teeming terminal airspace, and on the planet’s major trunk routes, an eventually confirmed requirement for greater separation than the Boeing 747-400 now demands would reduce the people-shifting efficiencies of Airbus’s new large aircraft. Especially given that the early A380 marques are going to be small compared with its planned stretched version that may, in time, become the most common A380 flying. More weight normally equates to more wake turbulence – unless, in the meantime, Airbus comes up with mitigating aerodynamic “fixes” and operational techniques.
Boeing will soon face this issue now it has decided to go ahead with its stretched 747-8 freighter, and with a passenger carrying equivalent. Boeing has now tacitly admitted the world might be able to live without a 747-400 replacement today, but in 10 years it will be needed.
There is no need for Flight International to call for the application of human ingenuity to the issue of making every movement count at the air transport system’s ultimate logjam points – its major global hub airports. That ingenuity will be – in fact is being – brought to bear whether we call for it or not.
The real point is this: the source of ICAO’s guidance to air traffic controllers who will be handling the A380’s route-proving flights next year has been nearly three years of computer modelling of the A380’s projected wake vortices, followed by ongoing validation trials that began soon after its 27 April maiden flight. Masterminded by experts from the US Federal Aviation Administration, Eurocontrol and the European Joint Aviation Authorities and overseen by ICAO, this analysis – not actually a certification requirement – has been a unique process.
From now on every other new-build aircraft, higher-gross-weight versions of existing types, and eventually all in-production aircraft should submit to similar analysis based on the experience gained with the A380.
The reason is that the knowledge and the technology to determine precisely the strength, effect, and behaviour of aircraft wakes has only recently begun to mature. But now it exists it should be used. There is no question but that the growth in demand for air transport is going to mean squeezing the maximum capacity out of airports and airspace.
This, in turn, will generate the need to operate aircraft as closely together as can safely be achieved – the introduction of reduced vertical separation minima is the best example so far. To do this safely, we need better knowledge of the wake vortices behind all the large aircraft plying the skies.
Source: Flight International
