boeing247 wrote on Apr 13^th, 2011 at 4:20am:

Oh, my God! It knocked the CRJ aside like a toy!

Well, compared to the A380, most planes are toys.  ;D As long as you don't come in with a mighty Antonov 225 or something.

Guys, you were looking at some ground based incident which could arise from many things including the AF pilots not looking at their screens (cameras), taxing too fast and "confident" and the small plane not parking at the right spot, just to name a few. Are we at the stage of knowing the actuall cause yet? Really?
The A380, just like the new 747-8, fills the 80m-Box in full, so we're talking about a "known big thing" there since this box is the planning value for all major airports since the big planes were announced. Since this thing happened at KJFK, we are not talking about a small or unprepared (for the A380) field, if anybody is in doubt.

While maybe DC-10 eat up baggage carts or 747s lose their cargo doors in flight, the A380 is big. Did anybody doubt that?
Now, if you taxi big things, you have to watch closely. Is that new to anyone around?


Quote:

The A380 could become a hazard. Imagine if one plowed forward into something like a little commuter Embraer prop plane or something!

You are right, all other planes are no hazard to smaller ones, not at all.  ::) C'mon.
Ever looked at an SUV going into some Prius? That's what I call a actual hazard, happening far more often than the impact of one big size plane into another. Just saying.
And, as said, a B1900 for example won't be too happy with a "small" 767 too, if this ever happens.
You may want to look up the incident databases for the current numbers of such things. Is there any number at all?
Since planes are too big for any impact-countermeasures nowadays, the focus is on avoiding the impact itself.
There was a guy some time ago, demanding planes to be able to take inflight! impacts from by another plane and still being able to fly. I think that the whole leading engineers (so US, European, Brazilian and so on) were listening and later asking, what this guy thinks how those tanks would look and fly like, while not actually getting hit by other planes (should be 99.99999999+% of operation time).
He remained silent since then.  ;D


I really doubt that the regional Jet there would have been "kissed away" if e. g. "just" a B747 had taken over his T-Tail while not being taxied the right way. So the actual hazard arises from the wrong operation of things, not from their size, which is a known fact (unlike the numerous things which might distract pilots in the cockpit, leading to strange ways of taxiing and/or parking).
The first impression outcome for me is that the addition of wrong parking and not right taxiing leads to an impact like this.
I don't think that they will start building folding wings A380 now, but you never know.  :D
Maybe the advertisement jumps on this, stating "you want to be in an Airbus when this happens!"  ;D

Boeing had a folding wing option on the first 777, but it was never ordered so they left it out.