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A decade after debut, first A380 jumbos to be broken up
- kokey 8y agoIt's a shame these didn't sell in the numbers that Airbus initially hoped for, but I also think breaking these down for parts make a lot of sense considering that updating the customer interior of such a large aircraft for a new operator is so expensive. I hope Airbus can continue making this model, if they can keep bringing the cost down as manufacturing of this continues to improve, that should be possible.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> I hope Airbus can continue making this model The A380 was doomed from the start. It was built to compete with the 747, a jet which first flew in 1969 [1] and designed for hub-and-spoke "trunk" routes. In that narrow aim, the A380 succeeded. The problem is the entire A380/747 category peaked before the A380's first flight. High-efficiency engines mean long-and-skinny routes are now profitable. Instead of packing Chicago to London and D.C. to London passengers into a JFK-Heathrow megaflight, one runs Chicago-Heathrow and D.C.-Heathrow with medium jets. At the end of the day, the A380 was designed to be impressive to European politicians more than to airline executives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
- hodgesrm 8y agoIt's interesting that Europeans also went live with the Concorde, another 'consortium' product whose technology hype did not match the economics. To be fair other Airbus models like the A32x line have been phenomenally successful.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> It's interesting that Europeans also went live with the Concorde, another 'consortium' product whose technology hype did not match the economics The Concorde was ahead of its time. Fun fact: the 747 was designed with its "hump" so it could be turned into a freighter once the Concorde's successors made it obsolete. The assumption was everyone would be flying supersonic by the new millennium. Unlike the A380, the Concorde was assumed to be a vision of the future.
- InTheArena 8y agoNot Concorde per se - The Boeing 2707 - which Boeing canceled as it became clear that the numbers just didn't make sense.
- ghaff 8y agoAnd the US government cut funding--which of course made the numbers make even less sense.
- jandrese 8y agoAnd also people complained about sonic booms which caused a bunch of rushed legislation and killed the potential market even harder. Honestly, the extra fuel burn (carbon emissions!) from SSTs would be problematic even today. I'm not sad that aircraft manufacturers instead focused on boring but profitable fuel efficiency instead.
- ghaff 8y agoI don't disagree with any of that. Honestly, with modern lie-flat seating (much less Emirates-class luxury) and communication/entertainment options, long-haul flights are still sort of boring but they're comfortable enough to a degree that they weren't when the Concorde was flying. I actually find them a good opportunity to catch up on reading books and watching some movies. Even if one of these supersonic startups get off the ground (sorry), I expect they'll be in the province of CEOs and investment bankers billing by the hour hopping over to London to close a deal. It's hard to see the economics working for just about anyone else.
- jandrese 8y agoI'm still waiting for an airline with Fifth Element style beds for seating. Lie flat seating is nice, but it takes up so much room that it ends up being quite expensive most of the time. I'd like to be able to lie down and take a nap at the price of a coach ticket.
- robbiep 8y agoThe bigger question which is still unaddressed is: with the growth in passenger traffic, will there be a return to hub and spoke, or can long and skinny win? Even if the a380 is dead, food for thought: In 5-10 years we may have a 300 person 1 hr transport from sydney to New York by way of the BFR. That is hub and spoke
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> with the growth in passenger traffic, will there be a return to hub and spoke, or can long and skinny win? Long-and-skinny scales better than hub-and-spoke. Comparing the systems, you have identical origin and destination airport traffic. With long-and-skinny, however, traffic at congested hubs is avoided and reduced. Long-and-skinny is purely a reality because of improved jet technology, in reliability and efficiency. What four engines could barely do in 1969 two engines comfortably manage today.
- yock 8y ago> In 5-10 years we may have a 300 person 1 hr transport from sydney to New York by way of the BFR. Is your average human's health and safety really compatible with the acceleration required for ballistic travel?
- reaperducer 8y agoAt one time people thought that any transport faster than a horse would cause the human body to fly apart. Engineering finds a way.
- notahacker 8y agoWe're in the opposite position from people that doubted whether the human body could cope with transport faster than a horse. We have pretty good data for what very high G-forces do to the human body and what the failure rates of rocket launches are, and neither are compatible with routine commercial flight.
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- selectodude 8y agoI mean, British Airways flies a 747-400 and an A380 daily to Chicago. It's cities like Austin, TX, San Jose, CA and Portland, OR that are getting huge boosts of non-stop service to western europe.
- savoytruffle 8y agoWhile Heathrow to Austin did start on a 787, as seemed appropriate, it has become so successful that it upgraded to 777 and now actually a 747, amazing as that is. http://www.austintexas.gov/news/british-airways’-747-begins-serving-austin-london http://www.austintexas.gov/news/british-airways’-747-begins-...
- selectodude 8y agoThat's remarkable, though a huge downgrade for passenger experience. Those 787s are really magnificent.
- joezydeco 8y agoThe only reason Airbus is continuing is because of the large order from Emirates, and who knows what they hell they think they can do with over 100 A380s and 50+ more on order.
- InTheArena 8y agoEK is still pushing on the global hub concept. They recently have been talking to Denver about a non-stop ther, but I don't see how you do that when there are already 7 non-stops to Europe (two Norwegian, one united, One Edelweiss, two Lufthansa, one Iceland Air) and one non-stop to Asia, plus connections on both sides of the country. That's route fragmentation at work.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoDenver+Boulder+Colorado Springs area is growing by quite a bit, however. Since 2010 (to 2017) Colorado's population increased by more than 500K people. And, since they all come from "somewhere else" that means that likelihood of them needing flights is possibly higher also.
- sitepodmatt 8y agoI think its 20 on the way with some more options. regardless of the economics the a380 is best in class in economy for Joe public since the densification program of the 777 started some years ago - Qatar used to be great in 9 across - 10 sucks, and the change to 3/3/3 on 787 vs initial guidelines of 2/4/2 which only JAL stuck to. Unless invested, or a 26" waist, or flying biz, one should be wishing a future success of a380. Economy sucks but a380 makes it bearable
- InTheArena 8y agoThe exact opposite is happening. They need a certain number of orders to keep the line efficient. Only the recent A380 order by EK keeps them above that line, and just barely at that.
- majurg 8y agoConsumers preferring point-to-point air travel killed the A380.
- dingaling 8y agoWhich is ironic as the self-proclaimed 'King of point to point', the 787, mainly flies between or from hubs. It's the smaller and more mundane 737 Max and A320 Neo that are following the lead of the old 757 as hub-bypassers. I also note that no reference was made to the fact that Boeing has broken-up two early, unsaleable, 787s and took a $1.25 billion charge for doing so. Billion.
- sitepodmatt 8y agoUnless list for a 787 is 600m and there no salvagable parts these figures see way wrong
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoI'm guessing, but they're probably unsellable because they're pre-production testbeds. Those will cost much more than a production plane. It also tells you exactly nothing about the market for 787s...
- lostlogin 8y agoIsn’t it in Boeing’s interest to have that figure as high as possible for tax reasons?
- walrus01 8y agoThe very early 787 production after those two units were sold to Ethiopian at a significant discount. They are far overweight and were plagued with a series of defects requiring warranty service.
- hodgesrm 8y ago>Early copies of a new plane tend to be less efficient and Singapore Airlines recently ordered some new A380s. However, overall demand is thinner than Airbus expected, forcing it to slow production to a trickle while looking for more business. Boeing had sales difficulties with 787 aircraft early in the production run due to excess weight among other issues. [0] The rest of the article makes it seem this does not apply to the A380s in question, so it's more a reflection of weak market demand. The problem of reselling customized planes is an interesting issue--so far as I know Boeing 747s did not have the problem. This seems unique to the A380. [0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/boeing-sells-overweight-terrible-teen-dreamliners/article23190304/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/internati...
- Arnt 8y agoThe A380 did have weight and other issues early on. The A380s that are being broken up were replaced with new ones (Singapore Airlines leased five early A380s for ten years, when the lease was ended they didn't renew, but instead bought five new ones from Airbus).
- ak217 8y agoBoeing did go out of their way to make sure those "change incorporation" frames ended up in working condition and flying with customers. This spreadsheet shows what happened: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FH3Y2-vRUgojntPkCSJI5Pd-15rsJ1a0SFCRaT-iqgo/edit#gid=2 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FH3Y2-vRUgojntPkCSJI... - look at the dates in the "Load"/"Delivered" columns up to LN 19. LN 10 spent almost 8 years before entering revenue service. In Airbus's case, the equivalent might be to buy back the frames and place them with customers at a subsidy. There's definitely a marketing hit that they take when a 10 year old flagship airframe is scrapped.
- hodgesrm 8y agoWow! Where did these numbers come from? (This is what I love about HN.) It's awesome you can see details like the distribution of RR vs. GE engines, just to pick one bit of interesting data out of that sheet.
- sandworm101 8y agoI was going to make a comment about the a380's efficiency, that it had a very low carbon emission per passenger-mile, but.... >>> Throwing the loss-making program a lifeline for a decade, Emirates recently ordered up to 36 more A380s and set out plans on Tuesday to install 56 Premium Economy seats. Ya. If it is going to live on as a luxury liner, its upper deck wasted on a handfull of seats, it is an environmental nightmare.
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoEmirates needs the A380. Its airport exists as an East-West hub. The modern trend, running long-and-skinny direct routes, cuts Dubai out. (Instead of Paris --> Dubai --> Delhi, one can now just fly Paris --> Delhi.)
- rootusrootus 8y agoPremium economy is still pretty dense, though a lot better than coach. The reason I flew BA for my last PDX-HYD visit was because BA has prem econ and Emirates doesn't. Otherwise I think I'd stick with Emirates. Nice to see them adding the option.
- InTheArena 8y agoThe A380 program was almost terminated this year, and only a lifeline order by Emirates (which is incredibly exposed, as they have almost half of the A380s that have been delivered or ordered) kept the line alive. Lessors won't touch the plane due to a lack of a secondary market (as reflected in this order). The problem with the A380 was that it was a prestige project formed around a core concept that never materialized, and was directly opposite of the trend over the last 30 years. Namely routes were becoming more fragmented, not less. The a380 required huge amounts of centralization for it to be effective. Places where that is true - Dubai primarily - it's worked well. Everyone else it simply is way to big. None of the passenger or cargo carriers in the United States, which has half of world wide lift, have received a A380. Several studies have concluded that the only reason the A380 was feasible was because of Government launch aide. When you looked at it logically and with non-pollyannaish analysis, you do the same thing that Boeing did with the 747-600/700 and cancel it. (Boeing eventually built a scaled down 747-8i, which was also a failure, but it only cost them a few billion instead of tens of billions).
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoI do think the A380 helped Airbus brand image a lot. It might not be worth the money invested.
- InTheArena 8y agoYep, I think the A380 helped both Airbus's and Europe's brand. And that's why the government assistance in the form of launch aide might have been worth it.
- tim333 8y agoWell, I think kind of mixed results for the brand. It shows we can build the largest plane (good) and use subsidies for unprofitable stuff (less good).
- _Codemonkeyism 8y ago
- nabla9 8y agoBoth UPS and FedEX canceled their A380 orders decade ago because A380 was late and used 767's and 747s are cheap. There will be another opportunity when existing fleets are used up and fuel costs continue to increase. Converting stripped A380s into freight might be a good option. Couriers use spoke and hub model that A380 is well suited for.
- mnw21cam 8y agoThe problem with the A380 for freight is that it has a lower cargo density. That is, it has a much greater interior volume than other planes, but not as proportionately greater maximum cargo mass. This is great for passengers (more legroom, etc), but not so much for cargo. Unless it's a shipment of guitars.
- InTheArena 8y agoTo be fair, the A380F was delayed indefinitely before UPS and Fedex canceled their order. It was a bit of a "I broke up with you before you could break up with me" thing. The current A380s are not a good fit for freight (lack of nose loading and crappy density), and ironically the freight logistics actually make the A380 harder to use. This is because the most efficient way to do overnight and freight traffic between Europe, Asia and America is to centralize traffic in places like anchorage with a fleet of smaller planes that go to smaller cities. (IE, traffic can go directly from Denver to Shenzhen via a 767 to Anchorage, and another 767 from Anchorage to Shenzhen). You can't put a A380 on each leg of that.
- AmVess 8y agoIt's not popular on the used market because of the $40 million reconfiguration bill. This plane really only works well for Emirates flying people to a few airports.
- tannhaeuser 8y agoIt's sad, but such are economic realities. I've seen an A380 flying directly over my head at low altitude at a show a couple years ago. I was super-impressed at how agile, almost sports plane-like it was behaving.
- lostlogin 8y agoIt’s less impressive when it’s over your backyard. They have been trialing a more aggressive landing approach here in Auckland. It’s lower, faster and shorter and it’s very irritating. It’s been handled aggressively by the airport but I sort of admire their handling. They started with the more annoying option as a test, so any future route will seem like a concession to public pressure. They have been encouraging people to complain, then producing stats showing that a high percentage of complaints relate to old flight paths. https://corporate.aucklandairport.co.nz/smart-approaches https://corporate.aucklandairport.co.nz/smart-approaches
- gshakir 8y agoA380 comfort level beats 787 and others. You will never feel the take off or landing and no turbulence either. I have flown with Emirates and I am hesitant to fly anything else. The business class experience was amazing with full recline seats. Fly them and try it out yourselves.
- InTheArena 8y agoI respectfully vehemently disagree. I like EK and their A380s, but give me a 787, even on a budget carrier like Norwegian. Lower atmospheric pressure and higher humidity, plus a non-stop makes all the difference in the world.I'm fine, even on a old 777 from the US to Asia, but US to Europe wrecks me on anything but a 787. I haven't flown a A350 yet, but my understanding is that the humidity is lower (due to the fact it's not a true composite frame) so I am more likely to get jet-lag.
- koyote 8y agoI don't think you can really compare EK A380 with any 787, especially in Economy. The problem with the 787 is that pretty much every operator has decided to cram as many seats in as possible. It's probably the worst plane to fly long haul in currently. The A380 is by far the quietest and smoothest plane operating at the moment. EK's A380 in particular have ample legroom and seat width. I've flown on numerous 787, A350 and A380 flights on various operators and although I can definitely tell the difference between an A330/777/747 flight and the planes above in terms of jet-lagginess after a flight, I can not tell the difference between these newer planes. All three of them are much more comfortable and have better air.
- sitepodmatt 8y agoAgree. A380 economy is much better than any recent densified 777 (Eva air exception still 9 across), or 787 where airlines threw the Boeing design guidelines of 2/4/2 out the window and went for 3/3/3 (JAL exception).
- lostlogin 8y ago> but US to Europe wrecks me on anything but a 787. That gave me a pained laugh. I’m doing a 17 hour flight next week and expect to be feeling pretty bad.
- paulsutter 8y agoWhat I loved about the A380 was the cheap last minute business class seats on LA/Tokyo because they couldn’t fill it up otherwise, the whole upper deck was business. Good for me bad for the airline.
- pgtan 8y agoSocialism is never worth it and has never worked.
- matthewmacleod 8y agoStrategic government investment in industry is not “socialism”, even by the warped standards of modern American political discourse.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoDidn't know the US was socialist, but what do I know, haven't been there for quite some time. "The United States paid around $20 billion in 2005 to farmers in direct subsidies as "farm income stabilization" via farm bills." -Wikipedia
- grokYourWords 8y agoWhat is the military?
- sctb 8y agoThis is a record-breaking leap to generic political controversy. Could you please resist the temptation? We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17266290 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17266290 and marked it off-topic.
- vermontdevil 8y agoFive of the top 27 long haul flights are on A380. I was surprised to learn this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_flights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_flights
- lostlogin 8y agoThe top 5 are NZ and Australia - this possibly explains my hatred of airports and dislike for flying. I’m trying the longest one next week, with a child.
- mrpippy 8y agoAs others have said, these 2 airframes are the first two delivered, significantly overweight and a nightmare to maintain. The frames were essentially wired by hand, after the pre-made wiring harnesses were the wrong length (French/German Airbus facilities used different versions of CATIA, the lengths didn't match, 2 year delay costing billions)
- bodi 8y agoAn excellent Smithsonian documentary on the whole project for anyone interested. https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/mighty-planes/airbus-a380/1003002/3361526 https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/mighty-planes/airbu...
- olskool 8y agoA major problem for the A380 is that it is too large for the gates at most airports and the airports have little incentive to build up for just a few flights.
- TheMagicHorsey 8y agoThis is why huge, govt-subsidized projects often fail. The people that conceive and plan these projects with govt. aid do not bear the full extent of its failure. They don't have skin in the game. Perversely, sometimes its better for their career to helm or participate in a failed large prestige project than it would be to participate in more successful smaller projects. Europe isn't alone in these debacles. Military procurement in the USA is rife with the same BS. And I don't want to pretend like private companies don't do the same thing on their own (Google Plus anyone?) ... but at least private companies pay the costs on their own and make the heads of failed projects feel the pain (or if they don't ... the companies go out of business or get cut down to size soon enough ... like HP).