Qatar Airways will defer delivery of its A380 superjumbos until it gets more details about wing cracks on the Airbus aircraft, its chief executive said on Monday. (www.arabianbusiness.com) More...
Just why airlines employ Chief Engineers I will never know. Some of them are a real bunch of gut less half bakes if they accept airplanes who are newbuilds with faults. If a Chief Engineer does accept a machine with faults you would not see me for dust if I was working there. Reason; God know hwat other compropmises he is making. Back in the day the mark of a GOOD engineer was the amount of rejections he made. Ya just do not want YES men who are easily led. Very annoying
In the case of the A380, the plane was designed by committee. They have wings made in UK, fuselage sections made in Spain and Germany not to mention a number of other components. I worked on a large project where multiple contractors and other countries. It is very difficult to keep something like that on a straight line. I was one of several chief engineers on the program and there little we could do as management would make decisions without telling us or having them evaluated.
There is an old saying the God gave in some angels and let them design a few creatures. The result of this committee design approach is the Camel and duck-bill-platypus!
That is the definitive. That is the classic route to failure. In my view the idea that the boss never talks to the workers is very common in Europe. David when you have the odd 15 mins check out the board of directors on Rolls Royce in the UK, see where they came from and the experience they have.
