Stupid Aircraft Design

Bravo for the experienced pilot who just landed his Airbus A320 with a broken front landing gear. The passengers all cheered him when they safely landed.

The Airbus is built by a Euopean consortium, and is a direct competitor to the American Boeing Aircraft Company, who builds a variety of aircraft for the world’s airlines, from the venerable 747 to the new Dreamliner, to the futuristic Sonic Cruiser. If you think about it, Boeing is in the company of a few great, world-class American corporations with really advanced products, like Apple Computers, and, uhh . . . well, maybe there are just two.

The question in my mind, as I watched this drama unfold this afternoon, was whose stupid design is this, which allows the front landing gear to turn sideways when retracting or deploying in a major aircraft built to haul passengers? If I worked for Airbus, I would be forever embarrassed to see my product on the news, in such a compromised, broken situation, knowing it was a basic design flaw.

All other planes manufactured today have front landing gear that only points straight ahead when being retracted or deployed. It is impossible for the nose wheel to be perpendicular to other planes, the way that the gear in the Airbus did. This particular emergency could never have happen on a Boeing aircraft. (Another source has since told me that the Airbus front gear does not retract sideways, but that the gear can go sideways due to an o-ring hydraulic failure.)

On a Boeing, the front landing gear goes straight up into the body of the craft when it is retracted, and there are interlocks that prevent the wheel being steered into any other position.

Apparently the Airbus rotates its front gear sideways when it retracts, and it is possible for the gear and get stuck in the sideways position. Of course, placing the landing gear in this sideways position in the fuselage allows the plane to carry more cargo, which is probably why they designed it that way.

Stupid Airbus design.

And don’t even get me started on their fly-by-wire design, that uses neither mechanical or hydraulic physical backups.

Regards,
Roger Born
(a former Boeing employee)