I think Boeing's decision to produce 777-200LR (16000km range, 305 seats) & 777-300ER (13000km range, 368 seats) instead of smaller quads like A340 is the largest joke in aircraft industry.

The 2nd largest is Lockheed's decision to produce L-1011 trijet of just 4500km range & hence very poor economy instead of longer range like DC-10 and short range twinjet like A300.

Please continue to discuss large jokes of aircraft industry.

Dude:

Don't take this the wrong way, you maybe a nice person, but you are the biggest joke to this forum.
I would looking forward to the day you drop topic like: quads(A340) is safer than twins(B777).

And if stats means anything B777 is killing A340 on the sales book.
Really weird nobody wants the "safer Quads"for their passengers... MMMMMM

What? Nobody wants the 'safer Quads'??

Many airlines, like Air Canada, Virgin Atlantic, LanChile, South African Airways, Cathay Pacific, Philippine Airlines, China Airlines, China Eastern, SriLankan, Lufthansa, SAS, etc, prefer A340 instead of B777 for long haul routes because A340 is of quad-engined design, so they are ETOPS-free, and hence can fly the most direct routing to save passengers' time. Not only this, A340 has much longer allowable diversion time (4.5 hours for non-LROPS compliant ones and up to 8 hours for LROPS compliant ones), so pilots can choose the safest airport with best facilities like medical, accomodation, food, clothing for sub-zero temperatures, for passengers in case of emergency, and no need to land at polar airports with poor facilities.

You said B777 is killing A340 on the sales book. The B777 sales book includes the shorter range models like B777-200 and B777-300. These 2 variants should not be compared with A340, and should be compared with A330 instead.

The total sales of A330 + A340 is BETTER than B777.

Lucasiu,

Here are the stats for A330, A340 and B777, all the info I listed below are from www.airliners.net

Total A330-200 built stood at 108 at June 2002;
Total A330- 300 orders stood at 177 at late 1998;
A total of 321 A340 (including all series) had been ordered by May 2002, of which 217 had been delivered.
Total 777-200 orders received as of March 2002 496,
Total 777-300 orders as of July 2002 stood at 107

A330+A340 = 606
B777 = 603

It shows that Airbus is winning the sales book by just 3!

But if you look closly, you will see that Airbus has put on a pity performance, A340 has how many years of head start, before B777 enter the service?
B777 enter the service in 1994(200), 1998(300)
A340 enter the service back in 1991, Airbus has 3 years head start and TAKE LOOK AT THE STATS:
A340 = 321
B777 = 603

And by the way:
A330-200/300 is a competitor to the 767-300ER, not B777.

Get your facts right!

You should correct the data as the data for A330-300 is in late 1998, and is certainly lower than current (Oct 2002) number.

The order / delivery number for Oct 2002

A330 420 / 239
A340 321 / 219
Combined 741 / 458

B777 607 / 421