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Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production (nytimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the nearing-the-end dept.

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.

25 of 298 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprising... by wbr1 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    In many topologies, a network with more nodes allows for more fail over paths and more flexibility, albeit at the expense of more complex routing. Routing however is not an issue - just look to the IT world for examples.

    So, it is not surprising - especially of the cost of mid-size planes decreases - that airlines would go this way.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
    1. Re:Not surprising... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Not surprising... by Carewolf · · Score: 4, Funny

      "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..

    3. Re:Not surprising... by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 5, Funny

      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..

    4. Re:Not surprising... by Solandri · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  2. General lesson - same problem as the Concorde by JoshuaZ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The general lesson may be the same as that behind the Concorde. There's not a massive market for people willing to pay a massive amount of money for travel by planes. That applies whether the increased cost is for incredible luxury or incredible speed. If this is what is going on, then this does not bode very well for ideas like Musk's point-to-point transit with the Big Falcon Rocket.

    1. Re:General lesson - same problem as the Concorde by iamgnat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The general lesson may be the same as that behind the Concorde.

      Unlike others, I agree

      There's not a massive market for people willing to pay a massive amount of money for travel by planes. That applies whether the increased cost is for incredible luxury or incredible speed.

      But I think you went to the wrong conclusion

      The biggest issue with the 380 is that not all major airports can accommodate it. Even those that could handle the 747. Remodeling an airport is not a simple affair. Especially those where communities have grown up around them and effectively limited their expansion space.

      The Concorde had a similar issue where there were only a few airports could accommodate it's runway requirements and even before it started running into regulation problems there wasn't a swell of airports looking to sink the money into supporting it.

      A related issue with the 380 is that many airports are already at or near capacity as it is, so the idea of more people in the same number of flights is another infrastructure problem they have to solve at the same time they are dealing with runway/traffic/gate changes. That doesn't give them much incentive to invest in letting those monsters land.

    2. Re:General lesson - same problem as the Concorde by itsdapead · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The general lesson may be the same as that behind the Concorde. There's not a massive market for people willing to pay a massive amount of money for travel by planes.

      Except the showers, cinemas, shopping malls etc, are entirely optional on the A380, and airlines can (and do) just fit them out with regular economy, business and first sections and just carry more people for the same price - or add deluxe accommodation in first without reducing the number of cattle in the back.

      I've ended up on an A380 from San Francisco to Heathrow a couple of times in premium economy - the accommodation was no different from any other plane, except everything is a bit newer. What makes it more pleasant is that it is noticeably quieter and, supposedly, higher air pressure (I'll have to take that on trust since I had to give my barometer away to some bloody architect).

      Nope, I suspect the "failure" of the 380 is that the easier solution to airport capacity is to add new flights between alternative, less crowded airports ...which is probably why, on my last trip, I ended up on a flight from Gatwick to Oakland on a regular plane that avoided the scrum of mega-airports, took me closer to where I needed to go and cost less.

      --
      In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
    3. Re:General lesson - same problem as the Concorde by complete+loony · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
    4. Re:General lesson - same problem as the Concorde by jittles · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      The A380 works great for Emirates because they want to fly everyone into their country, making it an important international hub. So they can have these huge planes flying people in and out, 500 at a time, because these people have to travel around the world and need to take two flights no matter what. What US airlines have found, however, is that it's a heck of a lot cheaper to fly back and forth between regional airports than to have a hub and spoke model because congestion at one regional airline only affects flights back and forth between that airport. If your hub goes down for whatever reason, your entire flight schedule is thrown into jeopardy. If you look at schedules, you'll see that UAL has planes that do nothing but fly between SFO and ATL all day, or IAH and ORD all day. Delta has routes between AUS and ATL all day long, etc. These planes do nothing else. They continue to make revenue as long as those two airports do not experience delays. If DXB has delays, all of Emirate's flights will be delayed. They all go through Dubai.

    5. Re:General lesson - same problem as the Concorde by Ksevio · · Score: 3, Informative

      Your phone probably has a barometer on it - I use the app "PressureNet" to graph changes in air pressure.

    6. Re:General lesson - same problem as the Concorde by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  3. The A380 is to big for many airports. by Qbertino · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That could be part of the problem. They've probably reached a point where mass transport of passengers doesn't pay off anymore. At least not well and fast enough to justify further investment any time soon.

    I would expect the market for the A380 to grown in time though. Just not as fast as Airbus might hope,

    Then again, this could be just some marketing babble or call for more EU funds for Airbus. The latter being the most likely.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:The A380 is to big for many airports. by alvinrod · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think the bigger problem is that flying as an experience kind of sucks in general (not all of this is the fault of the airlines) and big planes are mostly good for a hub-based model where you might need some additional connecting flights with the possibility for long layovers in between. Mid-sized planes have much greater range now and unless you're making some truly long haul international flights, it's not a major obstacle to have direct flights between the smaller airports that these hubs used to connect. A lot of budget airlines have sprung up to do exactly that and the narrow focus on a few routes lets them keep costs down which is as big of a factor as anything else.

  4. Not enough locations by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The A380's poor service record with being grounded so much didn't help. It also didn't help that it didn't actually end up helping congestion. The wake off the 380 is so bad they have to space out landings further at major airports like Heathrow. Plus, very few runways were structurally capable of landing a 380, since the last update to max gross weight for runways was the 747.

    It just isn't living up to Airbus' promises. And, now that you only need 2 engines for transoceanic flight and 2 engine aircraft like the 787 can cover the world's longest routes, there's no need to have a bigger plane to get good long range performance. There's no business case for the A380, just like there's not much of a business case for the 747.

    1. Re:Not enough locations by Tailhook · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There was never much business case for the A380. It's a prestige plane, built to prove that Airbus is a world class manufacturer. Boeing had a legitimate reason to build the 747 and the market rewarded that with 40+ years of sales. It was easy for rational people to see at the time the A380 was announced (and as demand for the 747 was tapering off) that the A380 wasn't really needed. But they built it anyhow and cut a bunch incestuous deals leveraging EU trade to move them (which is why so many A380s are operated out of Asia.)

      All the trade deals are signed so that bargaining chip is gone, no one actually wants the plane.

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
  5. Re:Too ugly by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't get why people hate on the A380 for it's looks and then hold up the 747 as the counter example - to me, the 747 has always looked like it needed a nose job doing, it's simply got a massive disproportional snoz and I can't understand what people see in it.

    Now, a plane like the Caravelle or the Comet - those were things of beauty. The Bombardier CSeries has nice proportions, as do the 787 and A350.

  6. My life is over by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  7. Essentially a human problem by Dorianny · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The problem they couldn't solve is how to load/unload all the passengers efficently. How fast you can get in/out of the gate is just as important as how many passengers you can carry

    1. Re:Essentially a human problem by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  8. Airbus didn't predict the rise of the big twins by mykepredko · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you go back 20 years ago when the A380 was being proposed - Airbus confidently proclaimed that there would be a 1,300+ unit market for a huge four engine jet. Boeing predicted that, at best, there would be a 360 unit market.

    The difference was based on the assumptions made by each manufacturer. Airbus, at the time, was pushing the A340 (four engine) over the A330 and getting reasonably good traction which lead them to think that four engines and more passengers was the way to go. Boeing had just finished the B777 and could see it eating into the B747 market - the B777 offered better economics for 250-350 passengers which Boeing decided was the optimal passenger size for long range.

    It's interesting to see what happened as Airbus started to develop the A380, it gained a lot of good press and a gold plated launch customer in Emirates (to which Boeing responded with the B747-8 to show they were still in the market but wouldn't require a lot of development funds). Boeing sank their development money into the 7E7 (which became the B787), gained sales of almost a thousand sales before the first roll out and Airbus scrambled with the A350.

    The A380 failed simply because Airbus misread the demand for the aircraft (along with the desire to have the bragging rights on the largest airliner out there) and Boeing had a better product roadmap for this space. Boeing is now finishing up the first the second generation B777 prototypes while Airbus is trying to finish the A350 line and revamp the A330.

    The writing has been on the wall for the A380 for at least 5 years (arguably 10) and really the big question is when will Airbus decide to take the write-down on the lost development costs.

    --
    Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    1. Re:Airbus didn't predict the rise of the big twins by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Informative

      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...

    2. Re:Airbus didn't predict the rise of the big twins by Richard_at_work · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Airbus didn't predict the rise of the big twins by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Informative

      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!
  9. That's sad. I'd be gutted if it went by seoras · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...