Airbus Is Giving Up On the A380 (cnn.com)

"It's the end of the line for the biggest passenger jet ever built: the A380 is going to cease production," writes Slashdot reader Required Snark, citing a report from CNN. From the report: The European plane maker said Thursday that it will stop delivering A380s in 2021 after its key customer, Dubai-based airline Emirates, slashed its orders for the huge jetliner. "We have no substantial A380 backlog and hence no basis to sustain production, despite all our sales efforts with other airlines in recent years," Airbus CEO Tom Enders said in a company statement. The company has delivered 234 of the superjumbos to date, less than a quarter of the 1,200 it predicted it would sell when it first introduced the double-decker aircraft. Its plans were undermined by airlines shifting their interest to lighter, more fuel efficient passenger jets that have reduced the need to ferry passengers between the big hubs. "Passengers all over the world love to fly on this great aircraft. Hence today's announcement is painful for us and the A380 communities worldwide," Enders said. "But keep in mind that A380s will still roam the skies for many years to come and Airbus will of course continue to fully support the A380 operators."

Comments

Who says direct is more expensive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Direct is faster but more expensive.

Obligatory Wendover Productions video.

And if you don't have 10 minutes to kill, here's the moral of the story: When airplanes are full, direct is always cheaper. You pay for less fuel, less labor, less airplane flight time (maintenance), less airport fees, etc. But the challenge has always been filling seats for low-demand routes. Airport logistics aside, you can't fly an A380 between Raleigh, NC, and Dublin, Ireland, because there's not that much demand. And smaller planes couldn't fly over the Atlantic. Hence the need for the hub-and-spoke model of flying: small planes to and from hubs, and large airplanes between hubs.

But now small airplanes -can- fly over the Atlantic. What Airbus loses in the A380, it gains in the Airbus A220, a.k.a. the Bombardier C-Series. (Another obligatory Wendover Productions video.) Now here's a narrow-body airplane that seats 100-130 passengers that -can- fly across the Atlantic, making direct flights between small markets possible. And as December 2018, Airbus has over 500 orders for the airplane, with demand for the airplane continuing to grow. Best yet: Boeing has no competitor to this class of airplane. Airbus has a monopoly on this class of airplane, and it's going to make them rich.