The truth behind the A380 and the fall of Indian Journalism

Journalism used to be about research and finding the facts. Today's Indian journalism seems to be nothing but a race to churn out stories and a thirst to cover maximum stuff. This has resulted in a great lack of quality, comparable to that from the Indian soap-opera industry! Not everything is covered, and complete justice is not given to an article.

Take this article for example: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/A_hot-air_plane/articleshow/2039417.cms

The author makes the point that the recent A380 is as "revolutionary as a new Nike shoe"

This type of statement will make the blood of every true to his core aerospace engineer's blood boil. If I were working for Airbus, I would sue this guy. Judging by mere appearances is not the way to look at complex integrated systems such as aircraft. And the aircraft are there to serve a purpose not to satisfy the whim for something new.

The modern airliners have not changed their basic specific shape because it is a result of sequential optimization. The current shape has evolved over a series of radical shapes since it is the most efficient, manageable, and optimal shape. I do not see the point in pointing at Airbus for not coming up with a radical new design, I mean the designs for buses have not radically changed in the past either. We still have buses with four wheels and a monoque chases.

The term of trade in aerosoapce, especially in European aerospace is innovation, the art of taking calculated risks for increasing efficiency. The real innovation in the A380 starts at the cockpit and ends below the engine cowling.

The A380 has the most modern avionics suite with innovative new design concepts such as achieving the redundancy of 3 independent data buses using only two independent data buses with cross talking capability instead of the traditional three buses. This results in enormous weight saving considering that an average airliner has 171 miles of wiring! Add to that constant engine monitoring from ground stations, centralized processing, etc etc and you get the picture.

Hence before passing the judgment on the innovation that A380 brings to the Aerospace industry, we need to go below mere appearances and look at the airliner as a n integrated system!