Slashdot Mirror
Airbus Launches 800 Passenger Jumbo Jet
voma writes "Airbus, the world's largest planemaker, will unveil its A380, a $16 billion wager that airlines will order giant aircraft to ferry passengers between major airports over the next 20 years. The double-decker A380 plane has a wing span of 80 meters (262 feet), almost the length of an American football field. It's 73 meters long and weighs as much as 569 tons (1.2 million pounds) when fully loaded for takeoff. It will have a range of 8,000 nautical miles."
I though the problem with the airline industry wasn't plane capacity but the more nimble competitors cherrypicking the mist profitable connections.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
The wings for this plane are so big that they are floated out to see on a huge barge down the Dee Estuary in Wales, and taken by ship to be assembled with the reat of the plane in Toulouse, France. On the way, the wings pass on a special vehicle through several hunred yards of farm land and cross a main road. Thise Europeans know how to do big engineering projects.
I stole this
Things should get really interesting here. As I understand it, Airbus and the European aerospace industry in general has been gradually overtaking Boeing and the US industry for a decade or more now. This plane is sort of symbolic - after 40-odd years as the only game in town, the 747 is suddenly no longer the biggest passenger plane suitable for regular use.
This seems to be just another chapter in a gradually emerging rivalry between the EU and the US. Other chapters have included:
- the great banana and steel trade war
- Freedom Fries vs french fries
- the EU vs Microsoft
- Germany and France vs the US over Iraq (although that may have had something to do with sanity vs idiocy too)
- the Euro vs the Dollar, especially in major oil and currency markets
- snooty French people vs loutish American tourists
- the new european GPS equivalent (Magellan?) vs GPS
- everyone on Earth lead by the EU vs the US over Kyoto
- the european vs US approach to Israel and the Middle East
- increasing secularism (EU, see for example banning of headscarves) vs increasing evangelicalism (US/Jesusland)
Anyway, all this adds up to something quite interesting over the next 20-50 years. We have one very old, very industrialised bloc of about 500 million people who have finally decided to stop killing each other for the first time in history and cooperate. Across the atlantic we have 250 million odd people who have been undisputed leaders of the world for several decades now. Other factors of great interest include the massive US military budget compared to Europe's relatively small one, and the big question of who will adapt better to a world without oil and with a powerful China and India in it.
Read Pynchon.
This is a little different, since it actually solves a lot of existing problems (or alleviates them somewhat anyway), whereas Concorde presented a whole bunch of new problems. The A380 has lower cost per passenger, better fuel economy, more eco friendly than existing large passenger jets.
And certainly in the UK, and I believe much of Europe also, landing slots and airspace are what is in short supply at airports, packing more passengers on each airplane helps both.
Oh no... it's the future.
In somewhat related news, Boeing recently unveiled a prototype section of its 7E7 Dreamliner:
e /s tory/4440746p-4194580c.html
http://www.thenewstribune.com/business/aerospac
From that article:
The 22-foot-long fuselage section represents the fruit of years of development by Boeing engineers in composite technology. At 19 feet in diameter, it is the largest pressurized composite airliner fuselage section ever built by Boeing or any aerospace company....
The huge structure is just one piece, not the thousands of pieces of aluminum and fasteners it would have been had Boeing made it of metal.
to see how the flying public reacts to the first accident or near accident on one of these things.
Personally, I welcome our massive economy-fare overlords. I fly constantly, but rarely have ever ridden in a 747. If they can take the bulk hub/hub passenger loads, I hope that will drive down prices across the network.
Even simply debarking from a full 747 from an unfavorable seat can take seemingly forever. This one will take a significant amount of time.
-Styopa
Look, Airbus is showing us images of bars and water fountains inside these planes. Boeing did the same thing when the 747 first came out 35 years or so ago. I have flown in a lot of 747s and have NEVER seena bar.
I expect to be seeing 800 seat flights in the next few years that are just going to suck becasue the gates, customs and baggage handling have not caught up. As it is, I already prefer to take a 767 or 777 over a 747 for becasue the stampeede is smaller.
If you book well in advance, your air tickets are less than 1 pound per flight . I was able to fly from Edinburgh to NW France via Luton (EasyJet and Ryanair) for 2 pounds total - The airline duty taxes and airport taxi fairs amount for another £45 pounds). It's only when you book at the last minute that the prices rocket up to something like 120 pounds per flight. Fortunately, most flights are less than 1 hour in duration (Edinburgh to London is around 400 miles - about the same as SF to LA) - By train this takes 6 to 8 hours.
Ryanair operate by avoiding the big city airports (London Heathrow/Gatwick, Paris) and using provincial airports. They used to do deals with the local airports, where in return for running a regular service, the airport would upgrade their facilities using local government subsidies. But this was ruled illegal under EEC laws.
The other important thing is to check in at least two hours before departure, as you are given a seating priority number based on order of check-in. While there aren't any seat reservations on the flights, order of entry is based on being disabled, having children with you, and then priority number. It really sucks being the last on the plane, as the only lockers left remaining for hand luggage are about 10 rows away from whatever seat you find. Easyjet actually herd their passengers into separately fenced queues based on priority number.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It isn't so much that Boeing wasn't nimble enough in this case, it was too jingoistic. Remember the year (2001-2003) when everybody in the US (well, the white house and the mainstream media anyway) was all anti-french, "Old Europe", and all, becasue France and Germany wouldn't back the invasion? Well, that year Boeing didn't go to the Paris air show, where a lot of deals are signed. Airbus wasn't as stupid (they're not American anyway) and they got an order of 45 A380s from Kuwait airlines. That is a big order. An order that the extended version of the 747 then being planned did not get. So all of a sudden Boeing starts talking as if they made a strategy shift to smaller planes.
No one gives up a race they've been leading for 40 years just like that! Boeing was stupid, they should've gone to Paris and eaten french fries, they probably would've gotten some orders, and the jumbo jet wars wouldn't end up so lop-sided.
Maybe folk need to ask why the US government is willing to subsidise a business model that is so obviously flawed?
Because the large airlines run their own (very expensive) pension systems which are insured by the federal government.
It's far cheaper to give the airlines support in the tens of billions of dollars to keep them afloat than to let them...hehe..crash and burn, and then have to cover pension liabilities in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
I'm sure the bars etc. exist - in special planes. Likewise, some engineers are already planning custom-order A380s. Yes, there are people with enough money to buy one as their private plane. One idea I happen to know about is building a bowling lane into the lower deck.
And no, swimming pools are not realistic. You can't keep that much water under control in turbulences. Which is the same reason I doubt one with a fountain was ever actually built.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Megajumbos should use less fuel per passenger
Yes, they do, but the breakeven point is obviously much higher. Depending on fare structure, it's entirely reasonable for a 767 and a 747 have a breakeven point of 65% maximum passenger loads. However, for the former, that's 143 passengers (assuming 220 total) and the latter that's 240 passengers (assuming 370 total.)
There isn't really a "gravy point" with economy class seating at discounted pricing. A great example of that is Continental airlines flying 757s across the atlantic. Continental doesn't give a rats ass about what's in economy, because, for instance, on the Cleveland to London flight, a half full first class one way pays for the entire flight both ways. Everything else in the back cabin is either profit or an expense, depending on average price paid (and the 757 is a smaller aircraft overall that's cheaper to fly than a wide bodied aircraft. There are other routes on which Continental could fly a 757, but fly a 767 or 777 instead...why? Because those routes get lots of profitable cargo, which the 757 doesn't have room for. For this reason transatlantic flight routes are best chosen based on their ability to attract first and business class passengers, plus cargo regardless of the quantity in economy.)
Super Jumbos are inherently inflexible on this point...since it takes a lot of first class passengers/cargo on such a big plane to pay off its costs. If there is a mad rush of economy passengers for a particular route, the airline is in a far better position to raise fares on 150 economy passengers than have 100 economy seats given away for free. It's not about quantity, it's about revenue per seat quality.
There's a difference between "people living next to the airport" and "people living in the middle of nowhere that suddenly have to deal with sonic booms every hour".
Concorde was restricted to supersonic flight over unpopulated areas - it flew from the UK coast to the US coast supersonic, so no sonic booms every hour over anyone in the middle of anywhere. It was America "not invented here" syndrome at its worst. I have lived under two Concorde flightpaths in the UK (no-one ever believes you when you say you used to see Concorde go over you house several times a day), guess what it was quieter than any of the Boeing 7x7's that went overhead. Not that they make much noise most of the time compared to the roads.
Please remember, it is the airline, not the aircraft manufacturer, that installs the seating. Boeing and Airbus have nothing to do with the hideous seating arrangements the airlines inflict on the public.
Planes are the wrong solution for the problem. What we should be using are Airships or Zeppelins. Instead of cramming people into a steel tube, you can create a small flying hotel and all for lower fuel costs than a jumbo. Admittedly, it's slower than a plane, more like a very fast yacht, but people used to put up with far worse in the last century and these days we have tele-conferencing, email and reliable phone systems so there should be less urgency in flying for most of us.
And just imagine flying across the Atlantic whilst sitting round a dining-table. Hell, larger ones might even have space for a small kitchen. We (the species) need to slow-down and make better use of the technology we have. I mean, hasn't anyone else ever seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? - "No ticket!" Didn't it look grand?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Speaking as a European, I'd like to congratulate the United States on its latest airliner.
Seriously. 50% of the A380 subassemblies come from the USA. Boeing is playing the "it's an evil foreign plot to topple American dominance of the aerospace industry!" card, but that's just self-serving FUD. Remember, for each $280M A380 that sells, American companies pick up 50% of the assembly work. Similarly, large chunks of Boeing's products come from EADS, BAE systems, and other non-American contractors.
So let's get over the jingoistic flag-waving and evaluate this rather impressive piece of hardware on its actual merits, shall we?