While Airbus struggles with the financial and technological consequences of its A380 superjumbo program, the company also faces potentially serious trouble with its next-largest airliner, the four-engine wide body A340-600. As American Thinker has previously noted, the entire A340 family of aircraft has been troubled by fuel efficiency questions, and is selling badly. Fortunately for Airbus, a sister airplane, the two engine A330 is more efficient, and continues to sell at a satisfactory pace. The A 330 has models which can handle shorter trans-Pacific routes, such as San Francisco to Tokyo, but for truly long range flights, the four engine variant is required.The A340-600 is a beautiful airplane because its fuselage has been lengthened with the addition of "plugs" of fuselage, much as the old DC-8 family of jetliners was, producing the DC-8-61 and other stretch variants. The A340-600 has a longer fuselage than even the A380.But evidently there are problems with the way...(Read Full Post)