Sir - How good it was to see the letters from Noel Falconer and David Connolly (Letters, Flight International, 23-29 April, P64) about the Airbus Industrie new "super jumbo".
It seems that, thanks to the accountants, we are to get not a state-of-the-art large aircraft, with refined aerodynamics, but a boring and conventional (and more expensive to operate) bloated A340.
Never mind that the McDonnell Douglas blended-wing-body design is cheaper to buy and about 20% cheaper to operate (and causes 20% less pollution). The money men (who have the technical vision of a beached mollusc) have spoken.
That being the case, why bother to build a new design at all? If you want a conventional large aircraft (and rather a good one), then Antonov of Ukraine will happily oblige. The An-225 Mriya, fitted with Western engines, avionics, etc, would Ìt into a Rolls-Royce Trent-engined (sic) Boeing 747 fleet painlessly. With three decks and 1,000 passengers, this would be a true airliner, with more room than the giant airships - and would take only about two years and $500 million before it entered airline service.
Are you listening, Richard Branson?
Graham Ennis
Condor Aviation
Brighton, Sussex, UK
Source: Flight International
