kaitak From Ireland, joined Aug 1999, 11955 posts, RR: 37 Reply 1, posted (2 years 1 month 2 weeks 2 days 10 hours ago) and read 1861 times:
Well, if it says it there, I wouldn't have any reason to doubt it. Someone's going to get it and why shouldn't it be MEA. It's just a question of whose aircraft happens to be in the production queue.
It's certainly worthy of a big celebration. Out of all commercial airliners, only the 737 has passed that milestone; nothing else has come even half way there. The 727 reached around 1,830 and the DC9 exceeded the 2,000 mark, if you include all of its different variants (including the 717).
Hopefully they'll have a big celebration to mark this when the time comes.
AustrianZRH From Austria, joined Aug 2007, 1264 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (2 years 1 month 2 weeks 2 days 8 hours ago) and read 1773 times:
Quoting BA (Thread starter): I came across on this page that MEA's 7th and final A320 is planned to be l/n 5000, meaning that it will be the 5000th A320 family aircraft built.
Sorry to nitpick but will MSN5000 be the 5000th A320 built? Or were there some MSNs skipped or a change in building order?
WARNING! The post above should be taken with a grain of salt! Furthermore, it may be slightly biased towards A.
Indeed they cheat a bit and skipped some cn's, I can now find 1813, 1822, 1830, 1919, 1930, 1985, 2025, 2111, 2722 but there might be more. They can solve that issue by completing for instance 5001 to 5008 first before presenting cn 5000 to MEA as the official 5000th Airbus narrowbody.
nobody has ever died from hard work, but why take the risk?
breiz From France, joined Mar 2005, 1808 posts, RR: 2 Reply 4, posted (2 years 1 month 2 weeks 1 day 17 hours ago) and read 1429 times:
Quoting AustrianZRH (Reply 2): Sorry to nitpick but will MSN5000 be the 5000th A320 built? Or were there some MSNs skipped or a change in building order?
Predicting which ac of the A320 family will be the 5,000 th one is kind of complicated.
At the end of March 2011, MSN 4654 was already delivered although only 4619 ac were delivered in total.
This does not mean that 35 frames have been left out.
The A320 family is now produced out of 3 assembly lines (Toulouse, Hamburg/Finkenwerder and Tianjin), all of them following the same numbering system but not necessarily in sequence.
In particular, the ac assembled in Tianjin are way beyond their European counterparts: the latest ac delivered in March is MSN 4525.
In the end, Airbus will decide which ac is the "5,000 th" one and will afix a sticker on it to please customer and media.
OD-BWH From Lebanon, joined Jan 2002, 398 posts, RR: 3 Reply 6, posted (2 years 1 month 1 week 4 days 19 hours ago) and read 1129 times:
Well, I doubt it! I tend to go with the conspiracy theory, and I believe manufaturers will assign these golden numbers to giant customers with big fat orders. MEA doesn't qualify!
raffik From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2006, 1646 posts, RR: 4 Reply 7, posted (2 years 1 month 1 week 4 days 6 hours ago) and read 1005 times:
Quoting OD-BWH (Reply 6): I believe manufaturers will assign these golden numbers to giant customers with big fat orders. MEA doesn't qualify!
That's a shame! When I toured BEY in 2004 we were treated to a tour of the workshop where designers design celebratory stickers for the airline with giant printers that produce these huge stickers.
Has MEA any more outstanding orders? Would be nice to see them increase their A330 fleet