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Not a huge Airbus fan in general real but the A380 was a pleasure to fly. However Airbus was just wrong on the business side. It was the wrong plane built with

Not a huge Airbus fan in general real but the A380 was a pleasure to fly. However Airbus was just wrong on the business side. It was the wrong plane built with old technology at the wrong time. It’s also not clear why Airbus didn’t focus more on a freight version. The Boeing 747 is rarely used as a passenger plane anymore but Boeing realized these aircraft would have a second life as freighters hence why the nose section is as such (you can chop off the nose and put a giant door there for cargo). The 747 will continue as a freighter for many years to come. Sadly it’s likely that many of the currently grounded A380s will never take off again.

agurk 6y ago
One point to bear in mind is that converted 747s don't have the option of a nose door and there are some disadvantages to converting vs buying a freighter variant [0]. A380s also have a greater volume than a 747 but not a radically higher carrying capacity. A 747-8I (passenger variant) has a cargo capacity of 76t vs 84t for an A380. Numbers from wikipedia, excluding the freighter variant of the 748 as it's not comparing like with like. This means that there could be some cases where transporting bulky low density items would be much superior on a A380 freighter but there's not a clear cut case for it in the market. [0] https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/airline-leader/air-cargo-booms-747-freighters-needed-but-conversions-unlikely-427366 https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/airline-leader/air-ca...