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Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production (nytimes.com)
The days may be numbered for the world's largest passenger aircraft. An anonymous reader shares a report: Airbus, the European aerospace group that makes the A380 superjumbo, said on Monday that it would have to end production of the plane if its only major customer, Emirates, did not order more (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). The admission by John Leahy, the company's chief operating officer, was the latest indication that Airbus miscalculated more than two decades ago when it bet that clogged runways would create demand for larger planes that could deliver more people with fewer landing slots. Instead, airlines bypassed the major hubs and ordered midsize planes that could fly directly between regional airports.
[...] When Airbus started delivering the A380 a decade ago, after spending $25 billion to develop it, the company based near Toulouse, France, saw the plane as the solution to airport congestion and to increased demand for air travel. Only so many planes can land at an airport in any given day, so Airbus reasoned that planes carrying more people would allow airports to absorb more passengers. The A380 can carry more than 500 passengers while also offering amenities like showers, first-class suites and a bar.
[...] When Airbus started delivering the A380 a decade ago, after spending $25 billion to develop it, the company based near Toulouse, France, saw the plane as the solution to airport congestion and to increased demand for air travel. Only so many planes can land at an airport in any given day, so Airbus reasoned that planes carrying more people would allow airports to absorb more passengers. The A380 can carry more than 500 passengers while also offering amenities like showers, first-class suites and a bar.
I have been told all my life that Europe can do no wrong. It is not possible that a European product can fail. I cannot go on. Goodbye.
Since this comment is your only comment on this article, I'm not sure where you are intending me to look.
"Routing is not an issue"... says the guy who has clearly never had to write software to perform the task.
Coming from someone who has: trust me, routing is an unforgiving bitch who will not hesitate to fuck you over fully and completely in ways you never thought possible.
Then again, some of the trouble I've encountered came from having to deal with a multi-dimensional, cyclic, directed path-graph with cycles filtered out, per dimension, at run-time. If you don't know what that is, enjoy your fortune. You're a luckier man than I.
I really hope my travel route doesn't go multidimensional, is cyclic or my plane gets filtered out at runtime..
That's nothing compared to the weird routing I got from the German rail site when I wanted to go from Berlin to London. The route went straight into Belgium, pivoted down into France via some tiny little port I'd never heard of, Dunk-erg or something, and then headed for Paris. Never did make it to London on that trip.
Mind you that's nothing compared to the tortuous route I got when I wanted to go from Berlin to Moscow..