Every French airplane I ever flew had one thing in common. They would
sell or lease the airframes to you for a bargain only to later gouge
you on the parts. The Falcon 20 standby hydo pump we discovered, was
made of gold and cost as much as some second hand loaner engines we
had used. We had to resort to a very iffy shade-tree overhaul just to
stay in business. The Airbus A310 reverser AD was so expensive
(millions of dollars) that instead, my outfit sought and recieved
relief to operate for over a year with *both* reversers inop! This
contributed to a over-run accident in the tropics ten months later.
After being refused permission to fly over French airspace durring
Desert Storm, I say I can't imagine having to depend on the French for
any kind of support at all!

IMHO, best to retire that fine old girl before she starts falling out
of the sky like the Commet.

Cheers,

pacplyer



B S D Chapman mail-at-benchapman-dot-co-dot-uk wrote in message ...
On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 15:59:20 +0000, Peter
wrote:


B S D Chapman mail-at-benchapman-dot-co-dot-uk wrote:

Airbus wanted to withdraw the Type Certificate (in other words, their
support for the aircraft), without which the PTCoA could not be
maintained.

Ok, but that leads to the question as to WHY they wanted to withdraw
it.

I've got a customer who wants to buy an old obsolete product which I
discontinued years ago and which is a pig to make, so I quoted him a
high price. I didn't tell him to go away. So there is more to this
story.

That's exactly what Airbus did.
They said that they would tripple their costs from October 2003. If that
wasn't acceptable to the airlines, then they would drop their support for
the Type Certificate.

Airbus didn't want concorde on their conscience anymore. It was simply
bad press. Since the Paris accident, every engine surge and maintenance
related delay has been headline news, as if another concorde was about to
drop out of the sky. Add to that the real problem of rudder failures, and
you have Bad Press every month.

What if?

Airbus wanted to drop concorde because it was too hot to handle for them.
Sad thing is of course, that in the public eye, airbus had f**k all to do
with the project!!!

So they priced themselves out of the market.