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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.
The 777 has been "certified for trans-ocean flights" from day one - its the only aircraft to achieve ETOPS 207, which gave it the ability to cross the Pacific, and that was well before the A380 came on the scenes.
The A380 comes into its own when you look at slot restricted airports - O&D (origin and destination) traffic from many of the worlds hubs has simply continued to grow, even in the "age of point to point", so people obviously want to travel to hubs for reasons other than going elsewhere afterward. The problem comes when these airports become so congested that they can't just accept another aircraft landing or take off - so you have to increase the size of the aircraft rather than add a second flight.
So yeah, it makes sense for some airlines to buy A380s, but those airlines it makes sense to do so have already bought it.
Basically Boeing and Airbus bet on the air travel market going two ways. Airbus bet big on the hub and spoke model - travelers will travel to hub airports, then board an A380 who will bulk carry them to another hub airport halfway around the world, then another flight to their final destination.
Boeing bet big on the niche flight model - airlines operating flights out of smaller airports near where the big hubs are. This is the point to point model. This is an innovative model that requires a small plane that can go far, hence the 787 Dreamliner which can hold a mere 267 passengers, but go 8000 miles. This is considered innovative as in the past, small planes aren't used because most don't go far, so you needed larger jets like the 747 in order to go transcontinental. But with the 8000 mile range, a 787 departing London can basically fly to everywhere except Australia.
This model is appealing for another reason - cheap flights. With the rise of the ultra-low-cost-carrier, they can suddenly run reasonably priced flights from oddball places between the US and Europe, where the smaller airports are cheaper to operate. These smaller places will have less passengers, but it's a lot easier to have a high load factor with a 260-seat plane than a 680-seat plane.
A neat YouTube video that summarizes this is https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That's not to say the A380 is useless. Japan uses 747 on short haul runs that last under an hour. So much so that Boeing has had to come up with a special table for their 747 flight manuals on the most efficient way to fly them short haul. It's not range, it's capacity - only in Japan could you have hourly flights in a 747 that fly within the nation.Given a maxed out configuration of an A380 is 800-odd seats, double that of a 747, that could help during the many times the planes are just packed.
As if Boeing has never received subsidies...
Oh wait, they did.
The Japanese government paid for the design and development of the 787s wings - funny how no one remembers that.
Boeing also got massive tax relief from Washington State, but again, that's often never remembered.
Airbus receives its subsidies via repayable launch aid - it's still paying millions per airframe with each A320 family delivery, when the original forecast for that was 500 deliveries, and yet here we are where the 737 and A320 are about even on orders to date... EU government shave made massive profits on Airbus. Can't really same the same for Japan and Washington State for Boeing...
IMHO The A380 works pretty well servicing flights into or out of Australia. I think It's pretty much the ideal case for the plane right now. Lots of people wanting to travel half way around the world, with varied destinations. Routes that no plane can yet do in a single hop, with enough demand to fill each plane. So fill a few A380's going to other travel hubs, and swap there for another large plane.
But for the northern hemisphere, there's enough demand for single hop flights between regional airports, and a few choices for planes that can fly those routes efficiently. Plus smaller airports are much cheaper to fly into and out of. Bigger is not always better.
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I live in NZ but I'm from the UK. I go home every so often for visits. I always fly Emirates just so I can fly in the A380. Why?
I've flown in 747's so many times I've lost count which is why the first time I flew in an A380 I almost shit myself.
So used to hearing the engines of the 747 go full throttle, being thrown back in my seat as it launches itself down the run way, I expected the same of the A380.
Not so. When it took off (from Auckland) it felt like it was taxi-ing down the run way. In my head I'm thinking "come on Cap'n put the f-ing boot down".
He didn't. It just trundled leisurely along. I'm now thinking "FFS, there's water at the end of this run way, stop teasing and go man!"
Then all of a sudden it lifted it nose. My knuckles went white. It soared gracefully into the air. I was gob smacked.
That and it's so much quieter than any other jet I've ever flown in.
If you have to spend a whole day at 36,000 feet sitting on your arse watching tv & movies then I recommend doing in this bird - while you still can...
You seem to forget the military contracts the US throws Boeings way when it needs propping up - such as the tanker leasing deal Boeing got back in 2001, before it was revealed as a shitstorm of corruption (the USAF would have ende up paying more than four times what the tankers were worth, and then it was revealed that Boeing had paid off a governmental contracts negotiator to hand over Airbuses offer details on the rematch - people went to prison for that)...
Add to the fact that Boeing received subsidies from EU governments when they placed 787 assembly contracts with Spanish and Italian companies.
There's enough mud here to throw at both Airbus and Boeing, but some people try their hardest to make it seem like Airbus is alone out there - at least EU governments show a return on each airframe delivered.
Your phone probably has a barometer on it - I use the app "PressureNet" to graph changes in air pressure.
Emirates makes you fly to Dubai *because* so few countries allow fifth freedom rights - the right to fly O&D passengers between two countries of which neither is the country of the airline.
Therefore, apart from a few routes, Emirates *has* to fly you via the UAE, or they don't have a viable airline at all.
Emirates fleet and network is the product of other countries protectionism, rather than a grand desire to make people visit Dubai.
Of course Airbus won't close; it's too important to several EU Governments and has strong backing from them.But the data does show that Boeing leads in deliveries for most of the last 10 years, and that is what matters. As a person who grew up in Seattle - home of Boeing back then - sales and bookings make news, but deliveries actually made money.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Boeing knew this all along. They only made the original 747 a double-decker because they wanted the cargo variant to have a fold-up nose, so it would have the capability to slide fuselage-filling cargo pallets in from the front. This necessitated putting the flight deck above the fuselage. And the aerodynamic bump behind the flight deck provided a little extra space where they could put a few passenger seats.
Once the second deck was fixed into the design, Boeing realized they could greatly increase capacity by making the plane a full double-decker. They continuously pitched this possible variant to the airlines from the 1970s to the 2000s. Every time, their market research said there just wasn't enough market demand to justify making such a large plane. So they never made one. Over the years they increased the length of the upper cabin a bit, but never got enough airline interest to warrant a full double-decker.
Then Airbus came along and insisted there was enough market demand to pay for developing a full double-deck airliner. That's the kind of risk you can take when the governments grant you loan guarantees (Airbus wouldn't have had to pay back the loans for developing the A380 if hadn't generated sufficient sales to pay for itself). As it stands, it looks like the A380 program will just barely break even, so at least the EU citizens won't get stuck with the bill.