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.

Comments

Re:Not surprising...

[Richard_at_work]

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.

Re:Essentially a human problem

[tlhIngan]

No, the problem is keeping all the seats full when the aircraft is flying. Loading and Unloading process times are not a huge issue. Load factors are the issue.

What's happening is that the large direct routes that warrant a 380 are relatively few and there are enough aircraft flying now to service them while keeping the load factors in profitable zones. Airlines thus are not buying 380's. They are not buying 747's either. The market is saturated with large capacity aircraft, so they have stopped building them.

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.

That's sad. I'd be gutted if it went

[seoras]

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...

Re:Airbus didn't predict the rise of the big twins

[Richard_at_work]

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.