15 ms·

Knowing the state of things and the history of the project I'm not much surprised by this, yet I'm a bit taken aback that this indeed has come to pass. I always

Knowing the state of things and the history of the project I'm not much surprised by this, yet I'm a bit taken aback that this indeed has come to pass. I always hate it when a serviceable, if not especially outstanding, aircraft gets shuttered well before it had a meaningful lifecycle in the industry. But from everything I've read (am I'm no industry expert on the business side) it was a dick-swinging contest from the get-go. Boeing saw that a full-on new spec 4-engine plane was not going to pay itself back; if Airbus execs saw it, they didn't let it change their path. "Build it and they will come," was perhaps the irrational source of motive for pressing on from the beginning. I don't recall the market (at the time the project was greenlit) clamoring for a bigger, more efficient, more pax friendly quad-jet. It's almost as if Airbus managed to upsell this beast to the carriers that did choose to purchase the ones they have. The shifting winds of route topology from hub-n-spoke to point-to-point were already brewing, and the stair-step jumps in the ETOPS allowances for twins had obviously not yet reached its limit ... but still, they went for it. Well, I hope the ones that are built, and those yet to be built, will run for decades more because they are mighty beasts to behold; that much is true. I know the international departure slots out of LAX and when I remember and the sky is clear I step out on my deck and get to watch them on initial climb-out (it's usually Emirates, but sometimes there are others). They look like freight trains in the sky and are really quiet, but the four engines together make a unique drone that will pull me outside even when I'm not even planning to take a peek. Farewell, A380; we barely knew thee.

the_duke 8y ago
My understanding is that Airbus assumed the worldwide increase in traffic, in part fueled by developing countries, combined with limited slots in busy airports would give a large boost to the hub and spoke model and make a large plane viable. I agree that the shift in the market to point-to-point was becoming apparent during A380 development. A major reason for the 747s popularity was it's range. With much more efficient engines coming along, smaller twin engine aircraft could cover most routes, and do so cheaper, so the A380 wasn't really needed anymore. But I reckon the project was too far along, with too much buy in and investment by European countries and partners, to pull the plug. Boeing foresaw this and focused on smaller, more efficient models instead. This sure saved them a lot of money and engineering resources. It's a shame for aviation enthusiasts though, it sure is a fascinating plane.
- dingaling 8y ago
  > This sure saved them a lot of money and engineering resources. The 787 development was so poorly planned and executed that it cost Boeing $28 billion in additional unplanned expenditure. And they've kicked that can down the road by booking that as 'deferred costs', an accounting sleight of hand that lets them pretend they haven't spent each dollar until they have earned it on a sale. Neither company of the duopoly came out of that rivalry looking good. But at least Airbus has accounted for all the A380 dev costs, no-one has to face that 10 years hence.
  - the_duke 8y ago
    Yeah I remember the whole supply chain mess of the 787. Turns out outsourcing everything is not so ideal after all. Airbus had it's own fair share of development troubles with the A380 though, including the infamous cabling issue due to different software versions between France and Germany, and accompanying years of delays. I also highly doubt that the A380 has broken even. Building these beasts that are modern airplanes is just tough. I am fascinated with the whole supply chain topic though.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      > Turns out outsourcing everything is not so ideal after all. If you want a good reason military aerospace is a mess and NaSA couldn't build a replacement for the space shuttle, that's a big big reason.
    - pgeorgi 8y ago
      >> But at least Airbus has accounted for all the A380 dev costs > I also highly doubt that the A380 has broken even. That's not what it's saying, but that A380 dev is written off, while Boeing still has it on the books somewhere to make an appearance in the future.
    - mannykannot 8y ago
      An engineer commenting on the DC10 / L-1011 battle for market share said something like "it turns out we outsourced all the profit and none of the risk" - I have not tracked down the source, unfortunately. Maybe John Hart-Smith of Douglas... http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030309&slug=boeingcritique09 http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...
samstave 8y ago
Can these fly with two engines? Could one be setup to only do LAX<-->SFO on constant rotation?
- lisper 8y ago
  > Can these fly with two engines? In an emergency, yes. But they can't take off with two engines. And if they are cruising with only two engines they go a lot slower. > Could one be setup to only do LAX<-->SFO on constant rotation? Yes, but it would be foolish. The plane was designed for long-haul flights, and it would be ridiculously un-economical on a short route.
  - ggm 8y ago
    I believe briefly a 380 did a sub 1hr flight in the ME possibly during crew training but with real commuter traffic
    - dx034 8y ago
      Emirates used the A380 for short-haul traffic but rotated planes so that they would only fly short-haul occasionally. Wear and tear would otherwise be too high.
    - gmac 8y ago
      BA flew them London - Paris for a short while early on. It was kind of ridiculous, not least because embarking/disembarking such a big plane took about as long as the flight.
    - billfruit 8y ago
      I think in China there is a scheduled A380 China Southern Airlines service Guangzhou to Shanghai.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    As a Boeing employee once explained it to me: If you take off two engines, you have to redesign the wings. If you’re redesigning the wings, you might as well do the whole aircraft. Implication being that the fuselage is a fraction of the cost of an airplane design.
jayalpha 8y ago
Your analysis is wrong from many points. There is a huge market for the plane. The plane came too early. Build now with lighter materials, better engines and in the long version (the wings are designed for a much longer version, this also makes it heavy for the short version). Is there a demand for such flights from Chicago to NYC? No. But Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Deli, Mumbai via hubs such as Moscow, Istanbul or Addis there is. So unfortunately the truth is, that there is a market, but the plane come too early. In fact, the Airbus CEO said exactly this in an interview.
- mcrae 8y ago
  That's an odd selection of cities you propose.. there's not even daily flights between some of those city pairs, let alone an a380
  - ggm 8y ago
    There are huge numbers of people in these cities flying international every day. I agree the hubs may not be right but between LHR, FRA, DXB, SIN and the supersize megacities it makes sense to fly 380 to maximize landing slot efficiency.
  - jayalpha 8y ago
    Nope. It is not an odd selection. I named Asian centers. Shanghai has 20 Million people. The Yangtze Delta is an aggregation of probably around 200 Million people. So I named big population centers in Asia. The big airlines in Singapore and Hongkong have declined a lot. They are missing the hinterland, they can't serve as hubs for China anymore. The same will be happening in UAE. Etihad airlines has problems already. So what are the future hubs for Asia<>Europe and Asia<> Africa? 1. Moscow. Aeroflot is most of the time the cheapest airline from China to Europe. 2. Istanbul and Turkish Airlines. I think no other airlines serves more countries, the new airport in Istanbul aims to be the biggest in the world in the final stage. 3. Addis Abeba and Ethiopian airlines. Addis will be the future hub of Africa (Ethiopia has more than 100MM People). At the same time they will hurt the UAE airlines a lot. Also see: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ethiopian-best-airline-south-african-airways-profit-loss-africa-travel-a8258836.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ethiopi... Now, I never claimed that there are now A380 flights. But this would be the market, had the plane be build 10 years later and in the stretched version. Not for a flight Moscow to Frankfurt. Not for a flight Addis to Entebbe. But definitely for Shanghai to Moscow. Guangzhou to Addis. Etc. etc. Bring customers from big centers to the Hub. The Hub must have - good geo-location - government backing - enough local customers (e.g. Moscow vs. Dubai) I fly a lot between Asia, Africa and Europe (All three alliances Gold Elite :-) ). I think I know what I am talking about.
kijin 8y ago
The A380 will last quite a while on long-haul routes with lots of passengers between busy airports. There's no other plane that allows cramming 500+ passengers into the same departure slot, and places like LAX and LHR don't have many departure slots to spare. Emirates makes heavy use of the A380 because they are geographically forced to operate on a hub-n-spoke model. The same is true for other heavy A380 users such as Qantas, Singapore, and Korean Air. All of them fly primarily out of a small number of hubs. They simply can't do point-to-point. There are also lots of A380's flying between major cities across the Pacific, such as LAX and Seoul, Honolulu and Tokyo, etc. where there's enough demand to fill an A380 every day.
- yitchelle 8y ago
  Are the really long haul flights (17+ hrs) going to be using A380? I could see more flights on these routes to increase capacity.
  - kijin 8y ago
    Last time I checked, some airlines did use the A380 for 17-hour flights such as Dallas-Sydney and Dubai-Auckland. But other aircraft like B777-200LR, B787-9, A340 and A350 also have a similar (or even greater) range, so it will be more economical to use these smaller twinjets unless there's a lot of demand. Even if there is enough demand, it might make more business sense to offer four flights a week instead of two.
walrus01 8y ago
I'm skeptical they will run for decades, two early model a380 which were on a ten year lease to Singapore were recently returned to the lessor. They tried to find buyers for them and couldn't. They're being scrapped for spare parts now.
- kenneth 8y ago
  These were the first two planes off the line and they were significantly heavier and performed much worse than most of the other 380s. Singapore Airlines got rid of them for that very reason, while still taking delivery of new 380s. This is why they weren't attractive to any buyers. Note one of the early SQ 380s is now operated by Portuguese charter airline Hi Fly. I wouldn't count of the first two's demise being indicative of secondary value of all aircrafts of the type.
cm2187 8y ago
What I remember reading about the decision to launch the A380 is that at the time where the B747 was in hot demand, Boeing had no competitor for the jumbo jet, and used that as a point of pressure on airlines: you’d better order Boeing for smaller jets if you want a nice price and place in the queue for the B747. So that likely weighted on the decision to launch the A380. But I remember at that time, it wasn’t an obvious decision to make (not the least because airports had to redesign their gates to accomodate such a large plane).
- detuur 8y ago
  I've long held the opinion that Airbus had no choice but to build the A380. The 747 was a hen with golden eggs and gave Boeing an entrenched position from which they could play advantage in other market segments. Killing the hen, even at a loss at face cost, was something Airbus had to do to even out the playing field.
ringaroll 8y ago
As far as I know, Boeing was selling smaller planes at a loss or at very near a loss and subsidizing it with the 747's. Hence Airbus made the A380's. The A380 was not meant to profit, but to stop Boeing from subsidizing other smaller planes.
- tim333 8y ago
  If true that didn't work out so well for them.
stcredzero 8y ago
Knowing the state of things and the history of the project I'm not much surprised by this, yet I'm a bit taken aback that this indeed has come to pass. You can't beat the laws of physics. I've read somewhere that the Boeing 747 sat in some kind of design configuration sweet spot. The A380 achieved a larger size by taking on a higher wing loading than what was ideal.

the_duke 8y ago

My understanding is that Airbus assumed the worldwide increase in traffic, in part fueled by developing countries, combined with limited slots in busy airports would give a large boost to the hub and spoke model and make a large plane viable. I agree that the shift in the market to point-to-point was becoming apparent during A380 development. A major reason for the 747s popularity was it's range. With much more efficient engines coming along, smaller twin engine aircraft could cover most routes, and do so cheaper, so the A380 wasn't really needed anymore. But I reckon the project was too far along, with too much buy in and investment by European countries and partners, to pull the plug. Boeing foresaw this and focused on smaller, more efficient models instead. This sure saved them a lot of money and engineering resources. It's a shame for aviation enthusiasts though, it sure is a fascinating plane.

dingaling 8y ago
> This sure saved them a lot of money and engineering resources. The 787 development was so poorly planned and executed that it cost Boeing $28 billion in additional unplanned expenditure. And they've kicked that can down the road by booking that as 'deferred costs', an accounting sleight of hand that lets them pretend they haven't spent each dollar until they have earned it on a sale. Neither company of the duopoly came out of that rivalry looking good. But at least Airbus has accounted for all the A380 dev costs, no-one has to face that 10 years hence.
- the_duke 8y ago
  Yeah I remember the whole supply chain mess of the 787. Turns out outsourcing everything is not so ideal after all. Airbus had it's own fair share of development troubles with the A380 though, including the infamous cabling issue due to different software versions between France and Germany, and accompanying years of delays. I also highly doubt that the A380 has broken even. Building these beasts that are modern airplanes is just tough. I am fascinated with the whole supply chain topic though.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    > Turns out outsourcing everything is not so ideal after all. If you want a good reason military aerospace is a mess and NaSA couldn't build a replacement for the space shuttle, that's a big big reason.
  - pgeorgi 8y ago
    >> But at least Airbus has accounted for all the A380 dev costs > I also highly doubt that the A380 has broken even. That's not what it's saying, but that A380 dev is written off, while Boeing still has it on the books somewhere to make an appearance in the future.
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    An engineer commenting on the DC10 / L-1011 battle for market share said something like "it turns out we outsourced all the profit and none of the risk" - I have not tracked down the source, unfortunately. Maybe John Hart-Smith of Douglas... http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030309&slug=boeingcritique09 http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...

samstave 8y ago

Can these fly with two engines? Could one be setup to only do LAX<-->SFO on constant rotation?

lisper 8y ago
> Can these fly with two engines? In an emergency, yes. But they can't take off with two engines. And if they are cruising with only two engines they go a lot slower. > Could one be setup to only do LAX<-->SFO on constant rotation? Yes, but it would be foolish. The plane was designed for long-haul flights, and it would be ridiculously un-economical on a short route.
- ggm 8y ago
  I believe briefly a 380 did a sub 1hr flight in the ME possibly during crew training but with real commuter traffic
  - dx034 8y ago
    Emirates used the A380 for short-haul traffic but rotated planes so that they would only fly short-haul occasionally. Wear and tear would otherwise be too high.
  - gmac 8y ago
    BA flew them London - Paris for a short while early on. It was kind of ridiculous, not least because embarking/disembarking such a big plane took about as long as the flight.
  - billfruit 8y ago
    I think in China there is a scheduled A380 China Southern Airlines service Guangzhou to Shanghai.
- hinkley 8y ago
  As a Boeing employee once explained it to me: If you take off two engines, you have to redesign the wings. If you’re redesigning the wings, you might as well do the whole aircraft. Implication being that the fuselage is a fraction of the cost of an airplane design.

jayalpha 8y ago

Your analysis is wrong from many points. There is a huge market for the plane. The plane came too early. Build now with lighter materials, better engines and in the long version (the wings are designed for a much longer version, this also makes it heavy for the short version). Is there a demand for such flights from Chicago to NYC? No. But Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Deli, Mumbai via hubs such as Moscow, Istanbul or Addis there is. So unfortunately the truth is, that there is a market, but the plane come too early. In fact, the Airbus CEO said exactly this in an interview.

mcrae 8y ago
That's an odd selection of cities you propose.. there's not even daily flights between some of those city pairs, let alone an a380
- ggm 8y ago
  There are huge numbers of people in these cities flying international every day. I agree the hubs may not be right but between LHR, FRA, DXB, SIN and the supersize megacities it makes sense to fly 380 to maximize landing slot efficiency.
- jayalpha 8y ago
  Nope. It is not an odd selection. I named Asian centers. Shanghai has 20 Million people. The Yangtze Delta is an aggregation of probably around 200 Million people. So I named big population centers in Asia. The big airlines in Singapore and Hongkong have declined a lot. They are missing the hinterland, they can't serve as hubs for China anymore. The same will be happening in UAE. Etihad airlines has problems already. So what are the future hubs for Asia<>Europe and Asia<> Africa? 1. Moscow. Aeroflot is most of the time the cheapest airline from China to Europe. 2. Istanbul and Turkish Airlines. I think no other airlines serves more countries, the new airport in Istanbul aims to be the biggest in the world in the final stage. 3. Addis Abeba and Ethiopian airlines. Addis will be the future hub of Africa (Ethiopia has more than 100MM People). At the same time they will hurt the UAE airlines a lot. Also see: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ethiopian-best-airline-south-african-airways-profit-loss-africa-travel-a8258836.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ethiopi... Now, I never claimed that there are now A380 flights. But this would be the market, had the plane be build 10 years later and in the stretched version. Not for a flight Moscow to Frankfurt. Not for a flight Addis to Entebbe. But definitely for Shanghai to Moscow. Guangzhou to Addis. Etc. etc. Bring customers from big centers to the Hub. The Hub must have - good geo-location - government backing - enough local customers (e.g. Moscow vs. Dubai) I fly a lot between Asia, Africa and Europe (All three alliances Gold Elite :-) ). I think I know what I am talking about.

kijin 8y ago

The A380 will last quite a while on long-haul routes with lots of passengers between busy airports. There's no other plane that allows cramming 500+ passengers into the same departure slot, and places like LAX and LHR don't have many departure slots to spare. Emirates makes heavy use of the A380 because they are geographically forced to operate on a hub-n-spoke model. The same is true for other heavy A380 users such as Qantas, Singapore, and Korean Air. All of them fly primarily out of a small number of hubs. They simply can't do point-to-point. There are also lots of A380's flying between major cities across the Pacific, such as LAX and Seoul, Honolulu and Tokyo, etc. where there's enough demand to fill an A380 every day.

yitchelle 8y ago
Are the really long haul flights (17+ hrs) going to be using A380? I could see more flights on these routes to increase capacity.
- kijin 8y ago
  Last time I checked, some airlines did use the A380 for 17-hour flights such as Dallas-Sydney and Dubai-Auckland. But other aircraft like B777-200LR, B787-9, A340 and A350 also have a similar (or even greater) range, so it will be more economical to use these smaller twinjets unless there's a lot of demand. Even if there is enough demand, it might make more business sense to offer four flights a week instead of two.

walrus01 8y ago

I'm skeptical they will run for decades, two early model a380 which were on a ten year lease to Singapore were recently returned to the lessor. They tried to find buyers for them and couldn't. They're being scrapped for spare parts now.

kenneth 8y ago
These were the first two planes off the line and they were significantly heavier and performed much worse than most of the other 380s. Singapore Airlines got rid of them for that very reason, while still taking delivery of new 380s. This is why they weren't attractive to any buyers. Note one of the early SQ 380s is now operated by Portuguese charter airline Hi Fly. I wouldn't count of the first two's demise being indicative of secondary value of all aircrafts of the type.

cm2187 8y ago

What I remember reading about the decision to launch the A380 is that at the time where the B747 was in hot demand, Boeing had no competitor for the jumbo jet, and used that as a point of pressure on airlines: you’d better order Boeing for smaller jets if you want a nice price and place in the queue for the B747. So that likely weighted on the decision to launch the A380. But I remember at that time, it wasn’t an obvious decision to make (not the least because airports had to redesign their gates to accomodate such a large plane).

detuur 8y ago
I've long held the opinion that Airbus had no choice but to build the A380. The 747 was a hen with golden eggs and gave Boeing an entrenched position from which they could play advantage in other market segments. Killing the hen, even at a loss at face cost, was something Airbus had to do to even out the playing field.

ringaroll 8y ago

As far as I know, Boeing was selling smaller planes at a loss or at very near a loss and subsidizing it with the 747's. Hence Airbus made the A380's. The A380 was not meant to profit, but to stop Boeing from subsidizing other smaller planes.

tim333 8y ago
If true that didn't work out so well for them.

stcredzero 8y ago

Knowing the state of things and the history of the project I'm not much surprised by this, yet I'm a bit taken aback that this indeed has come to pass. You can't beat the laws of physics. I've read somewhere that the Boeing 747 sat in some kind of design configuration sweet spot. The A380 achieved a larger size by taking on a higher wing loading than what was ideal.