Conical shaped structures on an Airbus A320 wing?

I'm going to exclude the Air France incident for now, since the investigation is ongoing and to speculate would be unjustly premature. 3 Boeings in history have attempted landing in the water. All 3 suffered loss of lives, in 2 of the cases the aircraft broke up and sank like a brick.

Only 1 Airbus has ever landed in water (Miracle on the Hudson) and it not only held together, but also floated long enough to get everyone off safely. It was an A320. Boeing has a nasty reputation of building planes with design flaws.

For example, 2 Boeing 737s suffered rudder jams and nose dived into the ground (total casualties). It took a third, which the pilots somehow saved, until Boeing finally did anything about the problem. It was a Boeing 747 cargo door design that caused a chunk of airplane to be ripped sucking a passenger out of the plane.

It was a Boeing 737 whose roof was ripped off due to a small crack and sucked a flight attendant out. A Boeing 747 blew up mid-air when a tiny spark caused the fuel tank to explode. Consider this; a Boeing 767 ran out of gas (pilot error) and landed on a runway, hard and fast.

The nose-wheel collapsed causing the nose of the plane to scrape the ground, causing smoke and fire. An Airbus 330 ran out of gas (also pilot error) landed hard and fast in the Azores but its nose-wheel did not collapse, and therefore had no smoke nor fire. Another Airbus had it's nose gear stuck a complete 90 degrees to the direction it was supposed to be.

Despite this, the pilots still landed the plane and kept it on the runway dead center, and the front gear still did not collapse. Now that is quality construction. Although not a Boeing, an American made DC-10 suffered a total hydraulics failure (hydraulics control the rudder, elevators, and ailerons... basically the pilots lose steering of the aircraft and have to try to control the plane with engine thrust alone) after a mechanical malfunction.

Despite heroic efforts by the pilots, the plane hit the runway hard, split in two, killing many passengers. A Boeing 747 suffered a similar problem (due to faulty maintenance) and lost all hydraulics; it crashed inverted into a mountain killing nearly all aboard. An Airbus A300 was hit by a terrorist missile (not bad maintenance or design, this Airbus was actually attacked!), and lost all it's hydraulics, a chunk of the wing, and the wing was on fire.

Despite this seriously dangerous situation, this Airbus made it back to the airport, landed hard, but intact and everyone walked away alive. Again, quality construction above and beyond what anyone would ever think the plane would encounter. I can keep going... But it would be counterproductive.

These incidents are very rare, few and far between. Thousands of flights take place without incident every day, and millions of passengers arrive safely. You will be fine.

If anything, I would say being on an Airbus 320, you are even more so safe. No sugar coating? Okay; here's the cold hard truth whether people here like it or not.

"Scarebus" and "If it's not Boeing I'm not going" are nothing more than pro-American propaganda. It is trying to get passengers on Boeing's side to increase Boeing's bottom line. There is no statistic nor historic data that concludes Boeing as more safe than Airbus.

Enjoy your flight.

Harley Drive is SO wrong on every count. Where do I begin. First let me say that the A320 has proven itself over the years.

It's been flying safely and efficiently since 22 February 1987...over 20 years. It is made out of PROVEN material and it is engineered to work in the envornemnt that it flys in...again, for over 23 years and still going strong. And they are not poorly maintained.

You can look that up yourself and see the safety record of the individual airline you are flying on.. I would advize you do that because they aren't all equally safe. Some are better than others. In this day and age of the Internet, you can check and see how safe your chosen airline is.

Do it. We don't know why the Airbus went down over the Atlantic. Nobody knows why yet so don't listen to Harley on that one.

The Airbus that went down in New York because the tail snapped off had a improper repair done on it and that is why it failed. The tail broke off right along the fasteners which should not have been there in my opinion The repairwas donehe factory. Either way it was an improper place to do such a repair in my opinion...and has nothing to do with the design.

The design is good. It has already flown millions of miles over the last 23 years. The Airbus that crashed at the French airshow was pilot error.

Unfortunately the pilot didn't understand the operating modes of his aircraft and because he was below 100 feet above the ground level, the airplane did indeed thinkhe was trying to land. In essence, the pilot had lied to the airplane and the airplane was trying to do what the pilot had set it up to do. Bottom line, the pilot lost awareness of the handling characteristics of his aircraft and it responded to him too late before hitting trees.

It is TOTALLY the pilots lack of awareness that caused that accident.....again, not a design fault. The one that glided to a landing after running out of fuel was a combination of maintenance error and pilot error. Aircraft flying over long overwater flights must do periodic fuel reports.

If the pilot had been watching his fuel useage he would have known that he had a fuel leak-down and he would have returned before it was too late. He was hailed a s hero for making an engines out landing.....which is true....but in realty he missed the opportunity to avoid that whole scenario in the first place, by simply watching his fuel gauges. And again, a fuel leak has happened to every aircraft type and is NOT a design flaw of the Airbus.

Harely said no other aluminum tails have fallen off...but that's not true. Alaska airlines had an MD-80 ALUMINUM tail fall off and everybody died. The worst accident in aviation history was when the tail was blown off of a Boeing 747 over Japan.

Japan airlines flight #123. It's never going to happen again.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.