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Was listening to Bloomberg Radio this morning and Tom Keene brought this up randomly...I was surprised to hear only ~1500 were ever built; seems like a low numb

Was listening to Bloomberg Radio this morning and Tom Keene brought this up randomly...I was surprised to hear only ~1500 were ever built; seems like a low number for a plane that's been around since the 1970s. One thing I have always wondered about tho is, where are the relatively short domestic route (2-3 hours) where a 500+ person 747 would make sense? It's almost like airlines need the inverse for which this plane was made. Same goes for the A380.

tesseract 8y ago
> where are the relatively short domestic route (2-3 hours) where a 500+ person 747 would make sense SE Asia and Japan, mostly. The 747 was never intended for domestic US routes - Pan Am, the launch customer, only had international routes.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  On a related tangent, there was a general expectation that the A380 superjumbo would find a lot of customers on core domestic routes between Chinese and Indian megacities like Beijing-Shanghai, Mumbai-Delhi, etc. Aside from the odd filler hop between long-haul flights, this has entirely failed to materialize: there's tons of traffic between these cities but the vast majority is single-aisle 737/A320.
  - dx034 8y ago
    It's similar to NYC-LAX or NYC-SFO. Airlines realised that passengers prefer 10 flights a day with a small plane rather than 4 a day with a large plane. Boarding/deboarding is faster on single-aisle planes and it gives more flexibility on travel times. Operating costs for large planes are also not lower, as long as you can get landing rights. So apart from a few overcongested airports (e.g. London Heathrow), there's really no reason to use a large plane if you can use a small one instead.
    - tesseract 8y ago
      Plus, more flights on smaller planes gives finer granularity in tuning the number of seats flown per day to match the demand for that route.
      - ra 8y ago
        plus if you provide a more frequent service, more people will use it.
    - cylinder 8y ago
      But the amount of gates is pretty much fixed. As Asia becomes richer you can see large populations now demanding seats. Perhaps the A380 was built a few decades too soon...
      - volkl48 8y ago
        Maybe in a lot of US/European airports that originally date from the first half of the 1900s, they're too close to the city center and don't have enough land to expand. Even then, they seem to be regularly able to find ways to get more gates in renovations (ex: Newark/EWR's Terminal A replacement is going to have the ability to be expanded for 12 more gates). I'm sure there's an upper limit, but plenty of those older airports can find space for more gates in modern redesigns. Most of the big modern airports were built with massive expansion in mind. Well outside the city centers and with large land areas that they already own (and so won't be developed).
      - dx034 8y ago
        You can turn-around a A320/B738 in ~20 minutes (low cost carriers do that frequently), a A380 is really challenging to turn around in less than 1 hour. Furthermore, the A380 will need space of ~2 A320/B738. So per given space and time during peak hours, small planes can actually get you more capacity than large planes. You could change that (boarding A380 through 7 doors, probably faster refuelling) but planes like the A380/B747/B777 were never designed for quick turnarounds.
    - geezerjay 8y ago
  - oasisbob 8y ago
    It may qualify as an "odd filler hop" as you call it, but I was really surprised to board an A380 for a short Chennai to Sri Lanka flight last year. (The half-dozen other Indian flights were all 737/A320s)
- robin_reala 8y ago
  Japan actually got a specialised short range model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#747SR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#747SR
Gibbon1 8y ago
> I was surprised to hear only ~1500 were ever built Compare with the never gets any respect 737, at over 10,000 units built.
- notahacker 8y ago
  I'm not convinced there's anyone within the aviation industry that doesn't respect the 737. (Which was of course designed for a much more common use case anyway)
psergeant 8y ago
That Jeju Gimpu route is all sky blue KE 747s
cylinder 8y ago
1544 aircraft in 49 years... That's 2.6 a month!
shalmanese 8y ago
Sydney to Auckland Qantas flights used to be on the 747 (3 hour flight time). It was always quite weird to get on such a massive plane and not feel like the plane had really gotten up to altitude before it was already preparing to land. My first ever experience with business class was when I booked a Melbourne to Sydney flight and it happened to be on a plane that was doing Mel-Syd-LA in a 747. We were one of the few passengers doing just the Mel-Syd leg so we all got bumped up to business class for the 90 minute flight.

tesseract 8y ago

> where are the relatively short domestic route (2-3 hours) where a 500+ person 747 would make sense SE Asia and Japan, mostly. The 747 was never intended for domestic US routes - Pan Am, the launch customer, only had international routes.

jpatokal 8y ago
On a related tangent, there was a general expectation that the A380 superjumbo would find a lot of customers on core domestic routes between Chinese and Indian megacities like Beijing-Shanghai, Mumbai-Delhi, etc. Aside from the odd filler hop between long-haul flights, this has entirely failed to materialize: there's tons of traffic between these cities but the vast majority is single-aisle 737/A320.
- dx034 8y ago
  It's similar to NYC-LAX or NYC-SFO. Airlines realised that passengers prefer 10 flights a day with a small plane rather than 4 a day with a large plane. Boarding/deboarding is faster on single-aisle planes and it gives more flexibility on travel times. Operating costs for large planes are also not lower, as long as you can get landing rights. So apart from a few overcongested airports (e.g. London Heathrow), there's really no reason to use a large plane if you can use a small one instead.
  - tesseract 8y ago
    Plus, more flights on smaller planes gives finer granularity in tuning the number of seats flown per day to match the demand for that route.
    - ra 8y ago
      plus if you provide a more frequent service, more people will use it.
  - cylinder 8y ago
    But the amount of gates is pretty much fixed. As Asia becomes richer you can see large populations now demanding seats. Perhaps the A380 was built a few decades too soon...
    - volkl48 8y ago
      Maybe in a lot of US/European airports that originally date from the first half of the 1900s, they're too close to the city center and don't have enough land to expand. Even then, they seem to be regularly able to find ways to get more gates in renovations (ex: Newark/EWR's Terminal A replacement is going to have the ability to be expanded for 12 more gates). I'm sure there's an upper limit, but plenty of those older airports can find space for more gates in modern redesigns. Most of the big modern airports were built with massive expansion in mind. Well outside the city centers and with large land areas that they already own (and so won't be developed).
    - dx034 8y ago
      You can turn-around a A320/B738 in ~20 minutes (low cost carriers do that frequently), a A380 is really challenging to turn around in less than 1 hour. Furthermore, the A380 will need space of ~2 A320/B738. So per given space and time during peak hours, small planes can actually get you more capacity than large planes. You could change that (boarding A380 through 7 doors, probably faster refuelling) but planes like the A380/B747/B777 were never designed for quick turnarounds.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
- oasisbob 8y ago
  It may qualify as an "odd filler hop" as you call it, but I was really surprised to board an A380 for a short Chennai to Sri Lanka flight last year. (The half-dozen other Indian flights were all 737/A320s)
robin_reala 8y ago
Japan actually got a specialised short range model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#747SR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#747SR

Gibbon1 8y ago

> I was surprised to hear only ~1500 were ever built Compare with the never gets any respect 737, at over 10,000 units built.

notahacker 8y ago
I'm not convinced there's anyone within the aviation industry that doesn't respect the 737. (Which was of course designed for a much more common use case anyway)

psergeant 8y ago

That Jeju Gimpu route is all sky blue KE 747s

cylinder 8y ago

1544 aircraft in 49 years... That's 2.6 a month!

shalmanese 8y ago

Sydney to Auckland Qantas flights used to be on the 747 (3 hour flight time). It was always quite weird to get on such a massive plane and not feel like the plane had really gotten up to altitude before it was already preparing to land. My first ever experience with business class was when I booked a Melbourne to Sydney flight and it happened to be on a plane that was doing Mel-Syd-LA in a 747. We were one of the few passengers doing just the Mel-Syd leg so we all got bumped up to business class for the 90 minute flight.