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Given that the A380 seems to be doing so poorly, what has taken over in the big jumbo market? Or is it just that the big jumbo market is ceasing to exist altoge

Given that the A380 seems to be doing so poorly, what has taken over in the big jumbo market? Or is it just that the big jumbo market is ceasing to exist altogether?

tckrcr 9y ago
Mostly 77W's with some routes using the newer 787/A350 because their better fuel efficiency.
ulfw 9y ago
The reason 747 was so successful wasn’t the amount of people it could transport. It was its range. Larger frame led to larger tanks and large range. 747 started long haul non stop flights that weren’t possible with 707 not with two engine planes (before ETOPS). This has changed with longer ranges of A330/340 and 777 and has only exasperated the issue since. Airlines have simply right-sized their fleets.
- briandear 9y ago
  The 707 has 4 engines and a slightly longer range than the 747... though the 707 held considerably fewer passengers.
epmaybe 9y ago
Wouldn't it just be the 777 that competes with the a380? It seems like it's just not very cost effective for US airlines to compete with the likes of Etihad or Emirates, which operate with government subsidies. In general, it looks like competition and demand for some international routes are dwindling and thus fewer new big jumbo planes are being bought. For example, United is the only US airline that flies to India.
jpatokal 9y ago
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 can both seat up to ~350 passengers, which is not hugely different from the 350-450 on a longhaul 747, but is much more efficient since they're twin-engine instead of quad. (And yes, you can cram in well over 500 pax into a 747 if you use an tight economy-only config, but few airlines do.) The overall trend in aviation is point-to-point routes and frequent flights on smaller planes. Just today it was announced that Sydney-Melbourne is now the world's second busiest air route, even though it's almost entirely served by "small" 737/A320s: https://www.ausbt.com.au/sydney-melbourne-is-now-the-world-s-second-busiest-airline-route https://www.ausbt.com.au/sydney-melbourne-is-now-the-world-s... There are still A380s flying, but they only make sense on those fairly rare routes where you've got massive volume and tight slot restrictions. London-Singapore/Dubai-Sydney works, not a whole lot of other routes do.
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  Is the point-to-point model more fuel-efficient than the hub model from a global rather than local standpoint? I get that it's more fuel-efficient per-flight but I wonder if they end up compensating with more flights or something. (I'm ignoring costs here; I'm just wondering what is the most green approach.)
  - lmm 9y ago
    The small planes have roughly the same fuel consumption per passenger per mile as the large ones these days (AIUI the disadvantage of more engines balances the advantage of a larger plane. Maybe a hypothetical "twin-engine A380" could be more fuel-efficient - I'm not sure why that hasn't been attempted). So assuming equal loadings on all flights, point-to-point would be more fuel-efficient than a hub model (since passengers travel further in the hub model). Obviously if point-to-point leads to planes flying half-empty then at some point that becomes a bigger effect.
    - matt4077 9y ago
      To add to this analysis: the hub model, by definition, add at least one, and possibly two flights. It's not just an increase in distant, but all the fuel inefficiency of starting, landing, idling on the ground etc.
    - willyt 9y ago
      Rolls Royce had to design special extra large engines for the A380. Because of the large diameter of the fan they had to use clever blade geometry to overcome problems with supersonic airflow at the ends of the fan blades. So I'm guessing that two even larger engines would be tricky.
      - selectodude 9y ago
        A380's engines are the same size as the early-90s 777 engines, and smaller than both the GE90 and the new GE9X. They didn't have to do anything tricky for them. You may be thinking of the new Pratt & Whitney PW1000G, which will be on the A320neo, which has a geared turbofan for that reason.
ahakki 9y ago
The A380 was purpose built for the Airlines like Etihad which use the Hub-Model, where flights are routed through big hubs such as Dubai Airport. To run this you need huge Planes to manage the high passenger flows between the hubs. However most Airlines seem to be moving to a point-to-point model, flying directly between destinations. They utilize larger fleets of smaller planes, like the A320. Boeing has specially designed the B787 to serve as a point-to-point plane. Airbus has also acquired a contolling stake in Bombariers C-Series Programme in a move towards smaller planes.
- kogepathic 9y ago
  > Airbus has also acquired a contolling stake in Bombariers C-Series Programme in a move towards smaller planes. The C-Series compares to the Embraer E-Series and the CRJ series (owned since years by Bombardier). It's meant to be more of a regional/short hop plane than a direct competitor to the A320/B737. This is why after Airbus surprised Boeing by acquiring a majority stake in the C-Series program Boeing is now looking at acquiring a significant stake in Embraer.
  - apendleton 9y ago
    The C-Series is bigger than the existing CRJ and E-series. Its largest models overlap with the smallest 737s, and definitely fits in generally with the larger point-to-point narrative, only for smaller domestic city pairs rather than international ones.
- aglionby 9y ago
  The Airbus + Bombardier C-series deal was confirmed in in October 2017. In September 2017 Boeing filed a suit against Bombardier, claiming that they were selling their C-series jets to Delta at illegally low prices (less than cost of production). Seems like interesting timing for the deal, although doubtless it's good strategically anyway.
  - linkmotif 9y ago
    Why is it illegal to sell below the cost of production?
jasode 9y ago
>, what has taken over in the big jumbo market? The "big jumbo market" itself has shrunk in demand and was made less relevant by the newer generation of long-range fuel-efficient (but smaller) planes like Boeing 737Max/777/787 and Airbus A330. Airbus originally projected sales of 1200 A380s in 2005 but only sold ~300 so far. The "missing" 900 sales happened because many airlines rejected A380s designed for hub-&-spoke in favor of smaller planes designed for point-to-point. The youtube channel Wendover has lots of educational videos about transportation and he has a 10 minute video about the different economics of Airbus A380 vs Boeing 787: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M
skgoa 9y ago
The answers you have gotten so far are terrible. There is no discernible move to a "point to point" model in commercial aviation. That's a myth straight from Boeing's marketing department. Instead, the reason the 747 and A380 sales have suffered is that the entire aviation industry has suffered from the tripple whammy of 9/11, the Global Financial Meltdown and high fuel prices. Both p2p and trunk routes saw massive shrinkage in passenger numbers for a while and strong growth in recent years. I.e. airlines couldn't even fill the flights they had, so they did not spend big money (that they didn't have either) on big airplanes. This has changed however. The 777, the newest version of which seats almost as many people as a 747 does, is selling very nicely. Since the A380 project is close to breaking even now and airlines have shown a willingness to discuss new sales, Airbus is almost ready to commit to a midlife upgrade. That doesn't sound like much, but it's a massive step up from just a few years ago. The reason the 747 is the only big airliner that just no one is interested in buying anymore is that it is an incredibly old design that was kept alive by the fact that it was the biggest commercial airliner on the market. The moment the A380 was announced, 747 sales started to taper off. Once the latest embiggening of the 777 was announced, there was just no raison d'être for the 747 anymore. Also, the claim that twin engine airliners are cheaper or more efficient than quads is a myth as well. The number of engines itself has nothing to do with it, because quads can generate the same amount of thrust with smaller engines than twins, making every engine cheaper. Upfront costs for airliners scale linearly with size (i.e. maximum take-off weight) and running costs (i.e. fuel and maintenance) scale linearly with thrust. Both are independent of the number of engines, though larger airplanes that require more thrust tend to have a larger number of engines.
- oconnor663 9y ago
  The 737 is also an old design, right? Is there any particular reason that one has been modernized more than the 747?
  - coredog64 9y ago
    Airlines buy a lot more 20 million dollar planes than they do of 140 million dollar planes. The installed base makes it like Windows. Sure, there are many flaws, but it's so cheap and easy to run most airlines don't care.
walrus01 9y ago
Not ceased to exist, but the 777X (900 variant) and A350XWB are 400+ capacity and significantly more efficient. The 747-400 was designed at a time before modern ETOPS ratings and when fuel was significantly cheaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777X

Given that the A380 seems to be doing so poorly, what has taken over in the big jumbo market? Or is it just that the big jumbo market is ceasing to exist altogether?

tckrcr 9y ago

Mostly 77W's with some routes using the newer 787/A350 because their better fuel efficiency.

ulfw 9y ago

The reason 747 was so successful wasn’t the amount of people it could transport. It was its range. Larger frame led to larger tanks and large range. 747 started long haul non stop flights that weren’t possible with 707 not with two engine planes (before ETOPS). This has changed with longer ranges of A330/340 and 777 and has only exasperated the issue since. Airlines have simply right-sized their fleets.

briandear 9y ago
The 707 has 4 engines and a slightly longer range than the 747... though the 707 held considerably fewer passengers.

epmaybe 9y ago

Wouldn't it just be the 777 that competes with the a380? It seems like it's just not very cost effective for US airlines to compete with the likes of Etihad or Emirates, which operate with government subsidies. In general, it looks like competition and demand for some international routes are dwindling and thus fewer new big jumbo planes are being bought. For example, United is the only US airline that flies to India.

jpatokal 9y ago

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus A350 can both seat up to ~350 passengers, which is not hugely different from the 350-450 on a longhaul 747, but is much more efficient since they're twin-engine instead of quad. (And yes, you can cram in well over 500 pax into a 747 if you use an tight economy-only config, but few airlines do.) The overall trend in aviation is point-to-point routes and frequent flights on smaller planes. Just today it was announced that Sydney-Melbourne is now the world's second busiest air route, even though it's almost entirely served by "small" 737/A320s: https://www.ausbt.com.au/sydney-melbourne-is-now-the-world-s-second-busiest-airline-route https://www.ausbt.com.au/sydney-melbourne-is-now-the-world-s... There are still A380s flying, but they only make sense on those fairly rare routes where you've got massive volume and tight slot restrictions. London-Singapore/Dubai-Sydney works, not a whole lot of other routes do.

mehrdadn 9y ago
Is the point-to-point model more fuel-efficient than the hub model from a global rather than local standpoint? I get that it's more fuel-efficient per-flight but I wonder if they end up compensating with more flights or something. (I'm ignoring costs here; I'm just wondering what is the most green approach.)
- lmm 9y ago
  The small planes have roughly the same fuel consumption per passenger per mile as the large ones these days (AIUI the disadvantage of more engines balances the advantage of a larger plane. Maybe a hypothetical "twin-engine A380" could be more fuel-efficient - I'm not sure why that hasn't been attempted). So assuming equal loadings on all flights, point-to-point would be more fuel-efficient than a hub model (since passengers travel further in the hub model). Obviously if point-to-point leads to planes flying half-empty then at some point that becomes a bigger effect.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    To add to this analysis: the hub model, by definition, add at least one, and possibly two flights. It's not just an increase in distant, but all the fuel inefficiency of starting, landing, idling on the ground etc.
  - willyt 9y ago
    Rolls Royce had to design special extra large engines for the A380. Because of the large diameter of the fan they had to use clever blade geometry to overcome problems with supersonic airflow at the ends of the fan blades. So I'm guessing that two even larger engines would be tricky.
    - selectodude 9y ago
      A380's engines are the same size as the early-90s 777 engines, and smaller than both the GE90 and the new GE9X. They didn't have to do anything tricky for them. You may be thinking of the new Pratt & Whitney PW1000G, which will be on the A320neo, which has a geared turbofan for that reason.

ahakki 9y ago

The A380 was purpose built for the Airlines like Etihad which use the Hub-Model, where flights are routed through big hubs such as Dubai Airport. To run this you need huge Planes to manage the high passenger flows between the hubs. However most Airlines seem to be moving to a point-to-point model, flying directly between destinations. They utilize larger fleets of smaller planes, like the A320. Boeing has specially designed the B787 to serve as a point-to-point plane. Airbus has also acquired a contolling stake in Bombariers C-Series Programme in a move towards smaller planes.

kogepathic 9y ago
> Airbus has also acquired a contolling stake in Bombariers C-Series Programme in a move towards smaller planes. The C-Series compares to the Embraer E-Series and the CRJ series (owned since years by Bombardier). It's meant to be more of a regional/short hop plane than a direct competitor to the A320/B737. This is why after Airbus surprised Boeing by acquiring a majority stake in the C-Series program Boeing is now looking at acquiring a significant stake in Embraer.
- apendleton 9y ago
  The C-Series is bigger than the existing CRJ and E-series. Its largest models overlap with the smallest 737s, and definitely fits in generally with the larger point-to-point narrative, only for smaller domestic city pairs rather than international ones.
aglionby 9y ago
The Airbus + Bombardier C-series deal was confirmed in in October 2017. In September 2017 Boeing filed a suit against Bombardier, claiming that they were selling their C-series jets to Delta at illegally low prices (less than cost of production). Seems like interesting timing for the deal, although doubtless it's good strategically anyway.
- linkmotif 9y ago
  Why is it illegal to sell below the cost of production?

jasode 9y ago

>, what has taken over in the big jumbo market? The "big jumbo market" itself has shrunk in demand and was made less relevant by the newer generation of long-range fuel-efficient (but smaller) planes like Boeing 737Max/777/787 and Airbus A330. Airbus originally projected sales of 1200 A380s in 2005 but only sold ~300 so far. The "missing" 900 sales happened because many airlines rejected A380s designed for hub-&-spoke in favor of smaller planes designed for point-to-point. The youtube channel Wendover has lots of educational videos about transportation and he has a 10 minute video about the different economics of Airbus A380 vs Boeing 787: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M

skgoa 9y ago

The answers you have gotten so far are terrible. There is no discernible move to a "point to point" model in commercial aviation. That's a myth straight from Boeing's marketing department. Instead, the reason the 747 and A380 sales have suffered is that the entire aviation industry has suffered from the tripple whammy of 9/11, the Global Financial Meltdown and high fuel prices. Both p2p and trunk routes saw massive shrinkage in passenger numbers for a while and strong growth in recent years. I.e. airlines couldn't even fill the flights they had, so they did not spend big money (that they didn't have either) on big airplanes. This has changed however. The 777, the newest version of which seats almost as many people as a 747 does, is selling very nicely. Since the A380 project is close to breaking even now and airlines have shown a willingness to discuss new sales, Airbus is almost ready to commit to a midlife upgrade. That doesn't sound like much, but it's a massive step up from just a few years ago. The reason the 747 is the only big airliner that just no one is interested in buying anymore is that it is an incredibly old design that was kept alive by the fact that it was the biggest commercial airliner on the market. The moment the A380 was announced, 747 sales started to taper off. Once the latest embiggening of the 777 was announced, there was just no raison d'être for the 747 anymore. Also, the claim that twin engine airliners are cheaper or more efficient than quads is a myth as well. The number of engines itself has nothing to do with it, because quads can generate the same amount of thrust with smaller engines than twins, making every engine cheaper. Upfront costs for airliners scale linearly with size (i.e. maximum take-off weight) and running costs (i.e. fuel and maintenance) scale linearly with thrust. Both are independent of the number of engines, though larger airplanes that require more thrust tend to have a larger number of engines.

oconnor663 9y ago
The 737 is also an old design, right? Is there any particular reason that one has been modernized more than the 747?
- coredog64 9y ago
  Airlines buy a lot more 20 million dollar planes than they do of 140 million dollar planes. The installed base makes it like Windows. Sure, there are many flaws, but it's so cheap and easy to run most airlines don't care.

walrus01 9y ago

Not ceased to exist, but the 777X (900 variant) and A350XWB are 400+ capacity and significantly more efficient. The 747-400 was designed at a time before modern ETOPS ratings and when fuel was significantly cheaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777X