Airbus A380 in Ireland?

MonkeyDoo

Was just wondering if the A380 operates out of anywhere in Ireland, or is there a good way to see it flying over the country even?

David086

Don't think the A380 was ever on Irish soil. . But I couldn't be sure of this, possibly Shannon but I'm not sure.

joegriffinjnr

During testing the Airbus A380 has used Shannon airport.

Funny this has come up.

I'm fully sure one flew over Tipp today around lunch time, heading west north-west, flying 3-5000, engines sounded really sweet.

I was in college at time, and my laptop was locked in the lab, so couldn't check radarvirtual or flightradar24.

As far as I know, the 380 has done some touch and go's in Shannon when they were testing it.

Plowman

This post has been deleted.

MonkeyDoo

NoDrama wrote: »

Funny this has come up.

I'm fully sure one flew over Tipp today around lunch time, heading west north-west, flying 3-5000, engines sounded really sweet.

I was in college at time, and my laptop was locked in the lab, so couldn't check radarvirtual or flightradar24.

As far as I know, the 380 has done some touch and go's in Shannon when they were testing it.

Well I kinda asked the question , because I was in Kerry over Xmas and saw a 4 engined large plane about FL35 am guessing.

It had a distinctive engine noise. I thought it was either military or A380. Was about 5am and seemed to be on a different flight path heading west than most other airlines I've seen.

Andrew42

Plowman wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

I regularly photo planes at FL35+ using a 300mm lens, you certainly won't read the reg but you'll definitely be able to ID the type and in most cases the operator.

mle1324

****ty quality but here yea go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTdXbaaSzuQ

Think the plane was obliged to do some landing and take off tests at Shannon as it is the main airport thats closest to the Atlantic Ocean for planes flying to parts of the UK and further to the east of Europe.

Even though its able to land at both Shannon and Dublin ( although too big for the aprons and taxi ways I once read here) I don't think its feasible to use such a large aircraft on any flight out of Ireland as I assume the demand wouldn't be as high, imo.

Webmonkey

mle1324 wrote: »

****ty quality but here yea go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTdXbaaSzuQ

Think the plane was obliged to do some landing and take off tests at Shannon as it is the main airport thats closest to the Atlantic Ocean for planes flying to parts of the UK and further to the east of Europe.

Even though its able to land at both Shannon and Dublin ( although too big for the aprons and taxi ways I once read here) I don't think its feasible to use such a large aircraft on any flight out of Ireland as I assume the demand wouldn't be as high, imo.

I flew in one of these. Incredibly big. Is it just me or was that a dodgy landing in that video?

mle1324

Webmonkey wrote: »

I flew in one of these. Incredibly big. Is it just me or was that a dodgy landing in that video?

Judging by the sound it does seem windy out

Also don't really know why but If i had the choice of flying on a 747 or A380 I'd go with the 747

MonkeyDoo

Webmonkey wrote: »

I flew in one of these. Incredibly big. Is it just me or was that a dodgy landing in that video?

Wow! Massive yoke! It looked like a cross wind landing....but their didn't seem to be any cross wind....still better than the poor A320 test flight that continued on and flew right into a forest. Think it was a software error.

Agree would feel abit safer in the 747 for the next few years until they have this plane with a more mature service record.

Steyr

David086 wrote: »

Don't think the A380 was ever on Irish soil. . But I couldn't be sure of this, possibly Shannon but I'm not sure.

It has, they used Shannon for Crosswind training.


OP, I have normally seen A380's heading Stateside usually around 14:30-15:00PM on a sunday. And welcome to Aviation and Aircraft.

mle1324

MonkeyDoo wrote: »

Wow! Massive yoke! It looked like a cross wind landing....but their didn't seem to be any cross wind....still better than the poor A320 test flight that continued on and flew right into a forest. Think it was a software error.

Yeah it didnt couldn't put up because the angle of the plane made the computer think that it was landing or something like that and it was also far too low off the ground.

MonkeyDoo wrote: »

Agree would feel abit safer in the 747 for the next few years until they have this plane with a more mature service record.

It's not even anything to do with safety/early stages ect I just think the 747 look cooler :cool:

Steyr

Take off from Shannon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyHEp4hh5FI

Run_to_da_hills

With the cost of Terminal 2 at €600M one would have thought that the DAA would have gone the full hog and made the place compatible for the A380.

Steyr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y20fCjzVdF4

Slightly better.

mickdw

I dont see any A380 going over the area mentioned today. A couple of BA 747s & a couple of A340 600 went over after 12.

exaisle

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

With the cost of Terminal 2 at €600M one would have thought that the DAA would have gone the full hog and made the place compatible for the A380.

It assumes that some carrier that uses them would have sufficient demand to use an A380 out of DUB....and given the fall in passenger numbers I'd have thought that was unlikely.

mle1324

Question here.

Will Dublin be able to handle the 747-8 , being slight longer then the A340-600 and wider then the original 747 ?

MonkeyDoo

mle1324 wrote: »

Question here.

Will Dublin be able to handle the 747-8 , being slight longer then the A340-600 and wider then the original 747 ?

Not sure but with a few different sized planes coming along there might be a few jobs to paint few lines on the airport tarmac aprons to help these big planes park. Or is that all done by lasers and stuff these days ;-)

mayotom

Emirates A380 regularly transits Irish airspace on the DXB-JFK route, have seen it several times recently between 12:30 and 13:30,

EK201 Departs Dubai 08:30 local time(4:30 Irish time) putting it over Ireland about seven and a half hours later so about noon today, clear skies forcast all over the country, just haven't a clue what the route would be, although I have seen it heading for DOGAL, so from ground based routes, reaching the irish coast between Dublin and Dundalk and exiting at Belmullet, but then again it also sometimes comes in at wexford and exits Belmullet, but can take any one of the other routes on any given day, so good luck


oh and back over Ireland Dubai bound between 10am and 11

Andrew42

MonkeyDoo wrote: »

still better than the poor A320 test flight that continued on and flew right into a forest. Think it was a software error.

It was not a software error, it was a stupid pilot trying to force the plane to the point of a stall and then using engine power to get him out of trouble, he had pulled this stunt at high altitude so figured he'd be able to do it during a low level pass at a small airshow, however, he failed to take the forest at the end of the runway into account plus the fact it takes the engines 5-8 seconds to spool up to full power from practically idle speed.

mickdw

Andrew42 wrote: »

It was not a software error, it was a stupid pilot trying to force the plane to the point of a stall and then using engine power to get him out of trouble, he had pulled this stunt at high altitude so figured he'd be able to do it during a low level pass at a small airshow, however, he failed to take the forest at the end of the runway into account plus the fact it takes the engines 5-8 seconds to spool up to full power from practically idle speed.

Isnt there still alot of doubt over the official version of events in this case. I believe, a 4 second discrepancy between the cockpit voice recording as presented from fight data recorder compared with the same cockpit conversation as recorded in the control tower. The theory at the time was that the black box had been tampered with to show that there was insufficient time for the engines to spool up while at the same time, the control tower timings etc showed there was time to spool up & clear the trees.

Andrew42

mickdw wrote: »

Isnt there still alot of doubt over the official version of events in this case. I believe, a 4 second discrepancy between the cockpit voice recording as presented from fight data recorder compared with the same cockpit conversation as recorded in the control tower. The theory at the time was that the black box had been tampered with to show that there was insufficient time for the engines to spool up while at the same time, the control tower timings etc showed there was time to spool up & clear the trees.

Yeah, and the pilot also claimed the French government engaged in a cover up to protect Airbus. Come on, you're getting into conspiracy theories now!
All the data pointed to his behaviour causing the crash.

jimmynokia

MonkeyDoo wrote: »

Not sure but with a few different sized planes coming along there might be a few jobs to paint few lines on the airport tarmac aprons to help these big planes park. Or is that all done by lasers and stuff these days ;-)

dublin airport cant handle the big bus its a pity the thing is gigantic
it may be able to land alright but no apron to pull up to like normal plains
some sound of this bus too
watched that programme on discovery
so who wants one?
just found this article here
http://www.thrifty.ie/aboutdublinairportupgrade.php

mickdw

Andrew42 wrote: »

Yeah, and the pilot also claimed the French government engaged in a cover up to protect Airbus. Come on, you're getting into conspiracy theories now!
All the data pointed to his behaviour causing the crash.

I agree that he attempted a stupid move made all the more stupid by not being familiar with the airfield.
Still, given the situation, Im not overly convinced on the integrity of the investigation. Did that 4 second mismatch actually exist or not?

EchoIndia

mayotom wrote: »

Emirates A380 regularly transits Irish airspace on the DXB-JFK route, have seen it several times recently between 12:30 and 13:30,

EK201 Departs Dubai 08:30 local time(4:30 Irish time) putting it over Ireland about seven and a half hours later so about noon today, clear skies forcast all over the country, just haven't a clue what the route would be, although I have seen it heading for DOGAL, so from ground based routes, reaching the irish coast between Dublin and Dundalk and exiting at Belmullet, but then again it also sometimes comes in at wexford and exits Belmullet, but can take any one of the other routes on any given day, so good luck

Passed just north of Dublin at 1310 today, clearly identifiable with binoculars.

baz30

Steyr wrote: »

Take off from Shannon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyHEp4hh5FI

Wow it looks so slow(although i know its not) definitely feel a little scared on one of these!!

MonkeyDoo

Andrew42 wrote: »

Yeah, and the pilot also claimed the French government engaged in a cover up to protect Airbus. Come on, you're getting into conspiracy theories now!
All the data pointed to his behaviour causing the crash.

The data has alot of question marks about it..nasty situation for a pilot to be in. Teams of sharp lawyers could make most pilots appear incompetent in a courtroom situation.

http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml#blbox

Andrew42

MonkeyDoo wrote: »

The data has alot of question marks about it..nasty situation for a pilot to be in. Teams of sharp lawyers could make most pilots appear incompetent in a courtroom situation.

http://www.airdisaster.com/investigations/af296/af296.shtml#blbox

I personally believe the official verdict, crash investigators are generally unbiased and if the plane was at fault they are pretty quick to point the finger at the manufacturer. I don't believe for one second that there was a cover up in this case or that black box data was tampered with. As to the 4 second descrepancy, that just sounds like the "team of sharp defence lawyers" clutching at straws. At the time of the crash, the whole "fly by wire" computer aided commercial plane was brand new and it was easy for media etc to whip up hysteria against Airbus but time has proved Airbus technology to be pretty damned reliable. The odds of a catastrophic computer/software failure on an Airbus are in the region of 3 billion to 1.

Bessarion

Would love to see that at Dublin sometime

mickdw

Andrew42 wrote: »

I personally believe the official verdict, crash investigators are generally unbiased and if the plane was at fault they are pretty quick to point the finger at the manufacturer. I don't believe for one second that there was a cover up in this case or that black box data was tampered with. As to the 4 second descrepancy, that just sounds like the "team of sharp defence lawyers" clutching at straws. At the time of the crash, the whole "fly by wire" computer aided commercial plane was brand new and it was easy for media etc to whip up hysteria against Airbus but time has proved Airbus technology to be pretty damned reliable. The odds of a catastrophic computer/software failure on an Airbus are in the region of 3 billion to 1.

I think its dodgy as hell. If the time certified control tower recording puts the plane 4 seconds further back the runway when selecting full power than the 'official recording' for the boxes, then that is hardly clutching at straws and surely calls the whole investigate into question. I wouldnt under estimate the political power of Airbus either. The company was depending on the success of this airplane & so Im far from convinced personally.

Tenger

Heres a few pics of it overhead Ireland:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24101413@N03/4571192316/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eigjb/3567413992/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eigjb/3566602157/

You can get a planefinder app for the iphone that lets you see ATC info to spot overhead aircraft.

Or look at www.casper.frontier.nl/eidw for ATC with a 15 minutes delay. (works better with Google Chrome than IE)You can use it to guess the ID of overhead aircraft.

I think Dublin can handle the A380, its weight stress on the runway/ramp area is actually lower that the B747 due to more tyres. The problem lies in the ramp area where the stands are not laid out for an aircraft of this size. T2 has a number of bridges with 2 jetways. I wonder could these be used to service both decks of an A380?



In terms of the Airbus A320 Habsheim airshow crash at Have a read of the wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296
There are problems with the closure of the case.

I saw on 'Air Crash ..' that in a later French crash the police wouldn't allow a NTSB investigator access to the wreck to retrieve the FDR due to the suspicions caused by the French civil aviation handling of the incident. (I think it was this one, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Inter_Flight_148)

Marcusm

Plowman wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

The use of the A380 on London-Paris routes was to gain publicity but also to qualify more pilots for take off and landings on a commercial basis rather than simply touch and gos. It's all finished now AFAIK.

mayotom

Marcusm wrote: »

The use of the A380 on London-Paris routes was to gain publicity but also to qualify more pilots for take off and landings on a commercial basis rather than simply touch and gos. It's all finished now AFAIK.

Emirates use it on the short hop from Dubai to Jeddah and apparently they are full every time

Jimdwyer

mle1324 wrote: »

Question here.

Will Dublin be able to handle the 747-8 , being slight longer then the A340-600 and wider then the original 747 ?

During the snow there were heavies diverted to DUB.. 3 ba 747's a virgin atlantic a340-600 and a couple other heavies using the new ramps in terminal 2..

MonkeyDoo

mayotom wrote: »

Emirates A380 regularly transits Irish airspace on the DXB-JFK route, have seen it several times recently between 12:30 and 13:30,

EK201 Departs Dubai 08:30 local time(4:30 Irish time) putting it over Ireland about seven and a half hours later so about noon today, clear skies forcast all over the country, just haven't a clue what the route would be, although I have seen it heading for DOGAL, so from ground based routes, reaching the irish coast between Dublin and Dundalk and exiting at Belmullet, but then again it also sometimes comes in at wexford and exits Belmullet, but can take any one of the other routes on any given day, so good luck


oh and back over Ireland Dubai bound between 10am and 11

Nice one Mayotom I'll keep an eye out for it ;-)

Marcusm

mayotom wrote: »

Emirates use it on the short hop from Dubai to Jeddah and apparently they are full every time

That doesn't surprise me as I think flying is the only way to cross the peninsula. When it was being designed, there was a lot of talk about Japan being a big market and the A380 is capable of carrying 888 passengers (a culturally significant number) in all economy format for domestic Japanese flights - imagine how many ryanair could carry if they were the standing "seats" that O'Leary floated some time ago.

mle1324

Jimdwyer wrote: »

During the snow there were heavies diverted to DUB.. 3 ba 747's a virgin atlantic a340-600 and a couple other heavies using the new ramps in terminal 2..

Yes I know but the 747-8 is bigger then the older 747 and A340-600.

N7777G

Emirates A380s are now daily visitors to Manchester -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eigjb/tags/ek017/

it's an ugly beast imho!

lord lucan

N7777G wrote: »

Emirates A380s are now daily visitors to Manchester -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eigjb/tags/ek017/

it's an ugly beast imho!

Not a fan of it myself(more a Boeing man tbh) but it does look well in the Emirates livery.

mayotom

Marcusm wrote: »

That doesn't surprise me as I think flying is the only way to cross the peninsula.

There's a Motorway all the way, but its rarely used, I did drive Dubai to Dammam once and on to Bahrain, that took all day on the most boring route possible, just couldn't imagine going all the way by road

mayotom

Also spotted the A380 again today on the Dubai -Toronto route at about 14:00 over Mayo Flight UAE241

Ilyushin76

Aer France 6 flies over Ireland most days too.

dowlingm

VS and BA have a bunch on order each so I daresay DUB will see a divert or two over time.

mayotom

dowlingm wrote: »

VS and BA have a bunch on order each so I daresay DUB will see a divert or two over time.

Unlikely really, DUB doesn't have the facilities for them unfortunately

Penfailed

MonkeyDoo wrote: »

Was just wondering if the A380 operates out of anywhere in Ireland, or is there a good way to see it flying over the country even?

I saw it do a fly-by at the City of Derry airport a couple of years ago. It was en-route to the annual Portrush airshow. Massive thing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-E8rgmtdCM

Tenger

mayotom wrote: »

Unlikely really, DUB doesn't have the facilities for them unfortunately

In a diversionary event DUB would be able to handle an A380.
DUB has taxiiways, ramp space, mobile steps and buses. I would guess that any diversion could be parked near the tower and pax bussed (lots of buses!!) into the terminal. Many diversions (medical) into DUB don't even offload pax before leaving again.

While the runway in Dublin can't handle a fully laden B747/B777/A380 I assume DUB-East coast USA/Europe wouldn't be fully laden?

Now being able to handle a A380 on a regular scheduled basis would be a different story. I'm sure an A380 parked at T2 would disrupt aircraft placement each side, it may even disrupt nearby aircraft taxiing. While the T2 jetbridges can go to 2 door of a widebody I'm not sure can they handle multi level aircraft (B747/A380)

mle1324

Did EI's 747 ever fly direct from DUB to US ? Or was the Shannon stopover necessary ?

Tenger

mle1324 wrote: »

Did EI's 747 ever fly direct from DUB to US ? Or was the Shannon stopover necessary ?

I think that some flights were direct DUB-USA as long as there was a reciprocal flight from SNN. The stopover ruling meant that there ahd to be the same number of departures from both airports.

The stopover wasn't necessary, it was a political restriction placed on airlines. In a way it protected EI as some US carriers couldn't be bothered to operate under such restrictions.