"it is not the same problem and not the same aircraft."

So it isn't just one "Friday" plane, it's a symptom of systematic manufacturing problems? I'm not getting in *any* Airbus 380...

as the plane plumets towards the runway at Heathrow you can be comfortable with the knowledge that the fuel pump has failed for a completely different reason.....

On a more serious note, how many fuel pumps are there? One would expect this to be a system that has redundancies? Any aircraft engineers out there?

Didn't Virgin only order Dreamliner because Airbus delayed their A380 orders?

>> I'm not getting in *any* Airbus 380...

You could phone the airline in advance and find out I s'pose...if you can get through to someone who knows these sorts of things...

But I'm guessing that you won't have a choice.....not many airlines I know announce which planes they will use on specific flights.....OK - so this is a broad generalisation....and of course, for the newer planes, there is some advance publicity of specific routes - but even in the case of Singapore Airlines, they run multiple flights and have only 3 A380's...

I've never known or been told in advance which type of plane I'd be flying on....!

Mines leather and has a sheepskin collar.

So just like the patent trolls, is there a new opportunity in ordering brand new aircraft and then claiming compensation when they don't fly on schedule?

I don't think you're paying attention then. E.g. the BA web site indicates that flight BA0238 from Boston to Heathrow on 29 March is a Boeing 777, and the return flight BA0213 on 1 April is a Boeing 747. Do try a bit harder next time.

Will this mean even more years of neglected LGW route planes? or will it force them to do a decent refit on them?

The levels of redundancy required to achieve certification on a modern passenger jet are substantial. There are multiple fuel pumps on board, monitored by multiple completely redundant avionics systems. The plane can continue to fly under multiple concurrent failures. The reason they are grounded when there is any failure is that in a safety critical environment you would have to be a complete Tony Blair to start a new mission with an existing failure reducing your level of resilience.

These things are not like the shoddy rubbish we knock up in IT, they are actually designed, tested and certified, in the configuration they will fly by experts who can do the reliability maths. These people do not fall for dumb ideas like hardware replicating disks or operating system clusters to ensure that any data fault propagates across all instances of the system and takes out everything.

On the flipside they don't seem to know much about IT and I would not fancy getting on a BOING and waiting for the Linux geek in the next row to hack through to the avionics from his seat and try to help everybody by recompiling the avionics kernel mid flight because it's SATA driver was out of date.

We should also ask why beardy Branston is buying US airliners when he could be spending the money in Europe, could it be anything to do with illegal protectionism in the US and the deal for his new Virgin airline there including buying BOING planes to help slow down the collapse of the US economy?

"it was grounded, and they had to use another plane, so there was a risk of lives being put at risk."

What planet are you from? Or are you a Boeing employee? It was grounded to REDUCE the risk not to increase it?

"whether its the pump, relay, part of a relay...who cares, it ALL should work perfectly on a brand new plane." Again I ask, what planet are you from? What is special about the plane being "NEW"? You think old planes should have more failures then new ones?

And what do you mean "should work perfectly"? Nothing is perfect. And the more complex it is, the less perfect it must be.

Instead of jumping up and down and panicing hysterically, increasing your risk of heart attack and/or being thought of as a fool, why not use your brain and think intellegently about risk.

What is the risk of failure, what is the cost of such a failure, what is the cost of reducing that risk. What is the 'acceptable' level?

I'm not flying on any new plane until Service Pack 1 is released for it...

"We should also ask why beardy Branston is buying US airliners when he could be spending the money in Europe, could it be anything to do with illegal protectionism in the US and the deal for his new Virgin airline there including buying BOING planes to help slow down the collapse of the US economy?" .... By The Cube Posted Wednesday 26th March 2008 12:14 GMT

Crikey, The Cube, that would be callous, prolonging the agony. I never took Sir Richard for such a fool/really useless/virtually useful tool. Que sera, sera.

In the light of no new initiative to halt the collapse, other than the ongoing cosy rearranging of balance sheets after the "shoot-yourself-in-both feet" decimation of Capitalist Lead Credibility through All Sector Sub-Prime Performance .... a Parasitic Tangent explored against the most Vulnerable and most easily Led/Overcome, which has led to where we now are , in collapse ..... why bother unless you're being well paid and are expecting things to change.

If Sir Richard, the Bearded One, isn't changing them himself, I wouldn't like to betting on a donkey of a white elephant ...... especially whenever there are Arabian thoroughbred races and rides whenever and wherever you would wish.

Bloody hell I think I understood most of that, time for a lay down....

;)

"I've never known or been told in advance which type of plane I'd be flying on....!"

I have :) But it did cost a little more to specify Concorde.

Yea, how can there be problems on one of the most complex pieces of engineeing known to man? If Honda(1) and Renault(2) can make simple simple machines (cars) without issues why can Airbus do it with an aircraft?

(1) Other than the handbrakes of course that can release after a minor nudge.

(2) Other than the Cleo bonnets that they can't stop popping open when you're driving along.

Posted By Steven Wednesday 26th March 2008 15:05 GMT....

"Bloody hell I think I understood most of that, time for a lay down....

;)"

And think how much you would understand if you had read, say, 1000 or more of his posts. He is a prolific poster 4 Sure.