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Germany Cans Its A340 ‘Air Force One’ Jets After Two Failures in 24 Hours

• ggm 3y ago
  Insufficient capacity in the specific model? Two was wise but at end of life it's a mirror pair not a fault redundantly RAID set. The 340s are old, and have had many cycles. They have 350s, 319 and 321s according to aircraft websites. And, the craft gave Merkel headaches in the past, causing German government officials to fall back on commercial aircraft. They're both over 23 years old. They have had a lot of service life and were used by lufthansa commercially before entering government service. https://simpleflying.com/germany-ditches-airbus-a340s-immediate-effect/ https://simpleflying.com/germany-ditches-airbus-a340s-immedi... They're 4 engine aircraft and so in some senses "safer" for longer range operations but that predates the current ETOPS capabilities of more modern 2 engine aircraft. Americans will never operate Airbus craft for this class of service because of national chauvinism issues. It nothing to do with suitability. Proposals to make airforce one on an Airbus frame were very quickly shitcanned. I believe Boeing had some struggles to find frames to use for the modified 747 POTUS uses and in fact won't have some things the current jumbos have -in-flight refuelling might be dropped? The frames they sourced can't be modified easily/cheaply. https://simpleflying.com/air-force-one-a380/ https://simpleflying.com/air-force-one-a380/