The A400M will shortly take over as Europe’s military transport aircraft. Offering both tactical and strategic capabilities, this aircraft owes some of its multirole characteristics to the Messier-Dowty landing system. We talked to Joël Berkoukchi, Vice President of the Airbus business unit at Messier-Dowty.

For Messier-Dowty, what are the special features of the A400M program?

The manufacturer wanted to choose a single supplier to handle production of the complete landing system. This means that Messier-Dowty is managing design, development, manufacture and integration of the system, while coordinating the work of various European partners. From the technical standpoint, the A400M landing gear is a very sophisticated unit to guarantee the aircraft’s reliability despite the very harsh operating conditions. By this, I mean deployment from unprepared airfields in far-flung locations across the globe. A failure under these conditions doesn’t mean just a flight delay as for a commercial airplane, but an unsuccessful mission.

Is this the first time that Messier-Dowty is acting as complete system supplier and integrator?

We have already played this role for business aircraft. But the A400M is obviously far more complex. The landing system has to deliver a much higher level of performance, in particular the kneeling and hiking of the main gear, which changes the height and angle of the cargo floor for easier loading and unloading. In general, the trend in our market is for this kind of integrated service from suppliers. It is important that Messier-Dowty show that this is within our reach.

Where does the program stand today?

We just finished the design review, where we precisely defined the landing gear specifications. A little over two weeks ago we started the following phase, which will last eight to nine months, and involves the final design of all landing gear components. All development is being carried out in partnership with Messier-Bugatti, which supplies several major subsystems, including servo-controls for the nose gear, extension and retraction controls, etc. The next stage, the critical design review, will approve all of this work before we start production engineering. The first landing gear shipset for the A400M prototype should be delivered by the end of 2006.