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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."
Is moving away from super-giant bulk-transport fuel guzzlers and trying to fit their purchases to their routes (doesn't make sense buying an A380 to a drop in a regional airfield that can't even accommodate the thing landing (let alone taking off).
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Plenty of airports have reached, or are reaching, their maximum capacity. If a single takeoff/landing could carry more passengers, that would be very welcome.
The problem with the A380 is that it creates more turbulence in the air around it than any other plane. This necessitates, for safety reasons, a longer delay between the A380 and the plane after it than is required for other planes. So if you have more passengers on each plane, but a longer wait between planes, that neutralizes the capacity advantage of the A380.
Good news. The hub-and-spoke model needs to die a quick death. If that means taking impressive planes like the A380 with it, so be it. You haven't known anxiety unless you have been subjected to the experience of running around the airport with your handbag trying to catch the second leg of your flight (after the first leg has been delayed) because the flight after the one you are about to miss is scheduled for tomorrow at 6:30AM.
Those of us who are better at math know that 234 is slightly less than a FIFTH of 1200. Airbus, 19.5% is way below the "passing" threshold.
the only plane with a cargo hold large enough for the elephant cargo straps he needs
So Boeing guessed correctly about the direction of the aviation market when they went all-in on the 787.
Now, imagine if Boeing were competent and not propped up with military contracts...
The A380 has always been a monument to European stupidity/delusion of grandeur and meeted its obvious fate. Just like a lot of other European pie in sky projects. It was obvious to everyone, not now, but 20 years ago that commercial aviation would have gone the route of point to point travel instead of hub to spoke for intercontinental travel . The death of the A380 couldn't have come quicker.
Geez, 20 billion euros thrown down the drain, and the company Airbus won't even have to reimburse the national governments that financed this shit. When you make such a mistake (because this mistake wasn't made on rational grounds, it was made on the stupid French altar of The Grandeur) is made the higher ups should be thrown in jail and their assets confiscated. Let Airbus live or die on its merits. Enough with public money going to such stupid companies.
Yes, Boeing guessed correctly and explicitly stated that their forecast for the entire global market for super jumbos like the A380 to be around 250 planes in total IIRC. So their forecast proved to be spot on. The market wasn't worth competing for, and they let Airbus have it, knowing that it wasn't worth the investment.
Airbus isn't interested so much in profit as it is in being a european jobs program.
The government-backed A380 project only had one purpose - for Europe to build a bigger airplane than the 747. It certainly succeeded at that, even if it was worthless as a passenger jet.
Sure, they built a bigger airplane, but didn't understand that the only reason the 747 was not bigger was because, back in the day, we did what made sense in the real world markets instead of what made sense in the media or on the Internet.
It was destined to fail from the beginning because the market did not want it. It deserved to fail, and I am glad that it did. Now there is room in the market for investment in something the market actually wants and needs.
The short haul market has been eviscerated by TSA. It is almost like an auto-immune disease. Terrorists caused a flea bite of a damage. And the over reaction by the public, the politicians and the media resulted in this huge organized mass gate-rape, adding two hours to all flights. It is simply not worth flying less than 400 miles.
On the long haul, Europe keeps making wrong bets on fuel prices. Arab oil shock killed Concorde. A380 cost estimates was based on cheaper aviation fuel deliverable in the middle east, and range needed fly to anywhere in the world after a cheap fillup. The advantage is half the differential between fuel price in the middle east and the price at major airports. Boeing with its longer range smaller plane nullified the advantage without incurring the disadvantages of the huge size.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
I think you can blame airlines who don't plan out flights properly instead they do more frequent smaller capacity flights instead of less bigger capacity flights. Everybody wants to fly when they want to fly, so planned bigger less frequent flights to destinations simply doesn't work.
We need to stop being in a rush all the time.
Boeing with its longer range smaller plane nullified the advantage without incurring the disadvantages of the huge size.
Boeings military contracts help a lot.
At least $60 Billion expected according to that link. If it were not for these, Boeing would be in trouble too.
It seems the 380F didn't do well, but we'll see.
When the a-380 came out, it was heralded around the traveling globe as the next new thing. Boeing didn't see it that way - for a lot of the reasons already cited here.
Airbus - and I've done business with them and Boeing - epotimizes "big socialist government plus a smattering of French laissez-faire."
The hand of the market has spoken.
As a capitalist, but not anywhere near a "regulation is bad" one, having a competitor is goodness. The a380 pushed Boeing to finish the dreamliner.
I'm not enough of a flying nerd to know, but haven't heard any call signs describing a flight other than "heavy," so am curious - and too lazy to DDG - if there's substantial difference in required separation of a 747, a-380 and a 777. They're all huge.
But passengers do not love to fly the routes that the A380 is economical to fly on.
Not to mention that passengers are NOT the customers for this plane, airlines are.
That's anxiety? Your a pampered piece of shit. Worrying about making rent out buying groceries is really anxiety. Worrying about pregnancy when scrapping by is anxiety. Your city being rocketed by the Americans or Palestinians is anxiety. Missing a connection? Go fuck yourself.
Plenty of airports have reached, or are reaching, their maximum capacity. If a single takeoff/landing could carry more passengers, that would be very welcome.
There is FAR more to the cost equation than capacity constraints for takeoffs/landings at a handful of airports.
The problem with the A380 is that it creates more turbulence in the air around it than any other plane.
The article you linked to is from 2005. That might be a problem with the A380 but it's not even near the top of the list of the reasons why it is struggling economically. The A380 is designed for long flights between big hubs. Smaller more fuel efficient planes, low cost point-to-point airlines, minimal number of economically viable routes for such a big aircraft, cost of airport modifications and servicing infrastructure, etc. Basically the A380 only made sense for a few airlines on a few routes. Boeing knew this from their experience with the 747 and so they bet on the 787 instead. Boeing was right about where the market was headed. This isn't to say the A380 was a terrible idea but it just doesn't reflect the economic reality of the airline industry today.
I'm glad I read the summary. From the headline, I thought they were stopping production to get in line with the Green New Deal!
As it turns out, it was cheaper to open smaller regional airports (used by Ryanair, Easyjet etc) than to economize the traditional airports using more seats per landing window. The A380 and 747 had Reagan's de-regulation in their rearview mirror. The object was closer than it appeared.
Gently reply
To me personally the golden age of air travel was the early Seventies. Everyday passengers could enjoy the mass comfort of three competing widebodies, while wealthy early adopters could go supersonic on the Concorde. Now both the widebody and supersonic options are gone, and seats keep getting smaller. Even the speed of the average large commercial craft has declined from 600 mph to 500-550.
The plane the airlines really like now is the 737. Although it was designed for short domestic flights by carriers like Southwest, there is a steady trend to push this craft into the ind of longer-range applications it was never designed to serve. I hereby predict that Boeing will produce a 737 Ultra Extended Range, with additional fuel tanks, drop tanks on the wings, and room for perhaps 50 passengers, to serve transpacific long-haul routes.
This plane forgot to plan in that crashes will happen. (human cost) = (rate of crash) * (count of passengers) must be less than financial profit
Boeing is having a record year. 2018 was a record year and 2019 looks to be even better. The 777x platform has a huge backlog, mostly taking customers away from the older A380.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/30...
I have been raised and I haved lived my whole life knowing in my heartcof hearts that Europe is perfect, that Europeans are the greatest people on Earth and that European civilization is the proudest achievement of mankind. If the A380, a product of European superiority, must cease production then it follows that Europe can fail. I cannot accept this. I cannot live in a world where Europe does not stand for absolute perfection. Goodbye.
We will all be taking High Speed rail everywhere in the next 10 years, even across the Atlantic.
Airliners will be a relic of the past. /s
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Good thing Google doesn't make airplanes - otherwise Google would be announcing today that in 2 months they'd stop all production of the A380 including all sales, service and support.
Limited on where it can park at airports. Runways were not the issue, but the gate space was.
It rolls off and flies like a Rolls-Royce automobile. Absolutely smooth and quiet.
"Airbus". Busses are so out of fashion. If they'd been called AirTram they'd be successful, as trams are cool once more.
Also don't discount the Trump factor. He made 'murica great again, so naturally the world was going to embrace boeing, and ditch those faggats across the pond at Airbus ("bus" lol. no one rides a bus).
Congratulations I just wasted your time talking complete nonsense.
[1] Boeing made the better bet, post 9/11 (multiple versions of the 777 and vmultiple versions of the 787)
or perhaps
[2] They read the "Green New Deal" and decided tha either there is no future for the A380 in a world without airplanes, or the future generations who are stupid enough to fall for it are the sort who should not be allowed on planes.
Like Concorde, this was a attempt to go down in history, in this case by building a bigger passenger plane than anyone had tried before. AFAIR, people scoffed at the idea right from the start, saying the need to rebuild airports, and the increased turbulence, would make it uneconomic. But the leaders with vision pressed on.
Speaking here as an aviation buff. I'm much less concerned with the Airbus versus Boeing competition. And yeah, modern flying isn't much fun anymore, for passengers.
Put all that aside. The A-380 seemed to presage an era of super-jumbo airliners, which meant that aviation would clearly develop in an airframe direction that I would characterize as awe-inspiring and perhaps even grandiose. There's something visceral in watching a very large aircraft take flight. It's not logical; it's emotional.
And aside from the super-jumbos, I gotta say that modern airframes are kinda... boring. The SST's died off. No, don't raise the issue of the new supersonic companies; I doubt any of them will achieve commercial success. Talk of blended wing-body airframes has never gone much beyond talk. Lighter than air systems have fundamental problems their proponents either cannot or will not address.
I thought the super-jumbos might become a little like the grand old amphibious aircraft of the 1930's were; symbols of modernity, travel, the good life, and the best parts of cultural connection.