Questions re: A380 damage at Paris air show

A few days ago at the Paris air show, an A380 taxied its wingtip into a building. Story and photos here. No injuries, but the winglet was sheared off and remained embedded in the building after the plane was pulled away.

Q1:
I’ve heard that the pilot can’t see the A380’s wingtips from the cockpit. If this is true, who gets blamed for this incident? The pilot, or the ATC offical whose directions he was following?

Q2:
The wing is a complicated assembly with numerous structural elements, some of which are difficult to access after initial assembly. How will Airbus go about repairing the damage? More to the point, how far do they have to dismantle the wing to verify that structural members within are undamaged? Are computer simulations of the impact likely to be involved, so that they can determine how severely the wing was loaded just before the winglet sheared off?

I’m unsure, but will be quite surprised if the pilot can get anywhere with a defense along the lines of “I can’t see my wingtips, so you are responsible.” The notion that the Pilot in Command bears the final responsibility is a bedrock principle in aviation.

Maybe they can grab an undamaged right wing from this A-380 (which clipped a CRJ at JFK with its left wing).

Would this be true if the pilot was being directed by the ground crew guy with the colored wands? (Sorry, I don’t know his official title.)

The pilot is always in charge.

The term you are looking for is “aircraft marshaller.” Our term of endearment for him is “ramp rat.” It doesn’t matter what he’s telling the pilot to do.

It’s literally the first rule in the book.

Doesn’t the flight crew of an A380 have the ability to pull up a camera view on one of the MFDs that shows the wingtips, nosewheel, etc?

In my experience, it’s unlikely that computer simulations will be used to model the incident. There are inspection panels all over the wings that maintenance personnel can use to gain access to the interior structure. They will likely use boroscopes, x-rays, and good old flashlights and mirrors to assess the damage before making a determination on how much of the structure needs to be repaired or replaced.

Airbus will have in-field service engineers examine the aircraft, determine the extent of damage, draw up a method of repair, have it approved and review the work once it’s done. The French civil aviation authority will be kept appraised of the work and the ultimate airworthiness approval comes from them.

There are various ways to inspect a wing; using dyes and scopes, visual inspection, x-rays, etc. The forces sustained by the wing are likely rather easy to determine, given as ground speed is known and all other elements of the aircraft design are known. Finite-element analysis will possibly be conducted to see whether any component was likely to have sustained any stresses/strains that exceed their design/safety loads. Airbus already has the aircraft modelled - it’s kind of how they designed the plane in the first place - so it’s relatively trivial to do.

If the structural components (ribs and spars) of the wing itself were not damaged, then the winglet can likely simply be replaced and the aircraft put back into service. One of those photos makes it look like it really is just the winglet structure and adjacent skin panels that became damaged, and it likely is easily removed. Skin panels are generally easily replaced. If there is damage to the main spars or other primary structural components, though, then the wing may be scrapped entirely (and in an incredibly unlikely event in this case, but may happen in other cases where the plane looks like it could be fixed, the entire aircraft might be written off). Depending on how the wingbox is made, if there is structural damage that might involve removing both wings, if the spars run straight through. That is a huge and complicated process, but doable.

Missed the edit window: if there is no structural damage, the aircraft could be flown as a ferry flight (no passengers) to a maintenance and repair operation or to the manufacturer for the repairs. There isn’t necessarily a need to do all the work at the site of the incident.

Sounds like you’ve signed off a 337 or two :smiley:

Nope - just interest. I’ve had a couple of student jobs that allowed me to observe and learn a lot of how these things work, and I’m interested in a career in aviation safety. I don’t actually work in the field, though I hope to!

Usually A/C are marshalled in by ground crew. If a pilot cannot see the wings then wing walkers would normally be used on the ramp to provide feedback.

I’d like to hear from a US air lawyer but I doubt this is a complete answer. No doubt that as far as a regulator is concerned, and the pilot’s employer is concerned, the pilot cops responsibility.

However, from a liability perspective I very much doubt that third parties can get off blame and liability free merely because the pilot should have caught their error.

Assuming that the pilot cannot see the wing tip then that person would, by default, have to rely on people on the ground to direct the plane in. When landing and turning it’s assumed there are no ground obstructions to hit while using the designated runway and taxiways. Those are painted with a center line to follow. But once on the ramp, that’s a different story.

Big jet driver …

You can’t see your wingtips in almost every big airplane. So we rely on pre-painted stripes on the ground which have been surveyed to give enough clearance. Stay centered on the strip and you’ll miss all fixed obstacles. Keeping the middle of the airplane 150 feet behind you centered on the stripe while S-turning through tight 90 degree corners is not trivial. But, just like backing an 18-wheeler truck into a loading dock, it’s just one more masterable skill.

When parking we rely on either docking guidance systems or human marshallers. There are also guidelines which separate the area we’ll park in from where all the fuel trucks, baggage carts, pickup trucks, etc. need to be. Ensuring that nothing is parked on our side of the lines and that nothing pulls into our space while we’re docking is all part of the process.

In situations like at an airshow with hastily laid out and high density parking arrangements, lots of planes, and mashallers who’re also just learning the layout, the opportunities for errors skyrocket.

As folks have said, ultimately the pilot is responsible no matter what. But that doesn’t mean that others are un-responsible. I haven’t seen all the details on this particular incident, but if the Captain was following a stripe or a marshaller & still hit something, those folks & their employers would be on the hook too. The fact they just grazed the building indicates an error of tolerances, not of gross mis-planning.

Airplanes have gotten bigger & bigger while most existing airports were designed for 707-sized airplanes. Shoe-horning a 767, 777, or 747 into that space requires careful measurement and exacting performance by the crew. The safety margins for ground maneuvering are not what they were in the 1960s with less traffic & smaller jets. But the industry has enough practice at it now that almost all days almost all taxiing is successful.

The A380 is just a few percent bigger than a 747 in the dimensions which matter. But that has taken a big percentage chunk out of the already-slim maneuvering room margins. Airbus made some aerodynamic design compromises to try to fit it into existing airports. Meanwhile, the airport standards folks cut some corners in certifying just how small a space it could be allowed to squeeze through.

It will be interesting to see if this represents a “straw which broke the camel’s back” situation, wherein A380s + most existing airports are not *quite *compatible enough for day-to-day use & taxi mishaps become too frequent for comfort.

Thanks for the replies. I wasn’t trying to be snarky, I honestly assumed that the pilot would be cleared of culpability if he was following an aircraft marshaller. I assumed the pilot is trained to keep his eyes on the Marshall, and follow his instructions.

The story in the OP does not indicate if a aircraft marshaller was involved.

I totally agree. The pilot is the final authority and the safe operation of the aircraft rests on his shoulders. He should have allowed more clearance than he thought necessary.