7 ms·

the 747-8F freighter will continue, so the title is misleading. The era is not over, at a maximum closing the era of jumbo passenger jets. and as points of int

the 747-8F freighter will continue, so the title is misleading. The era is not over, at a maximum closing the era of jumbo passenger jets. and as points of interest, the hump on the 747 keeps the cockpit out of the way allowing freight to be loaded more easily and completely, and freighters don't mind stopping to refuel (too expensive to carry all that fuel for the whole trip) and that's what makes the 747 continue to make economic sense for freight, while the A380 never did.

bobthepanda 6y ago
The A380 also had other issues, in that a freighter version was never developed, and also the dead weight of the plane was a lot heavier than the 747.
- fsckboy 6y ago
  The freighter version was offered, it was never developed because the small number of orders it received were cancelled when it was realized it would not deliver economies. I believe I read that the dead weight issue would not have been as important if freighters didn't stop for refueling because of A380's range; that's why I brought up the stopping.
- adwww 6y ago
  Something to do with volume limits versus weight not being in it's favour IIRC. That is, you'd fill up it's max weight limit way before filling the empty volume inside the plane with most normal cargo.
- fsckboy 6y ago
  [I already answered you once but I thought of another way to think about it that is substantially different than my other comment so thought I'd write another one.] The freight economics issue between the 747F and the A380F is related to the complex soup of fixed costs and variable costs that go into the carrier's choice of platform; in addition to the fuel, the carrier has to amortize the purchase price, and the A380F with newer technology is a much more expensive platform to the freight carriers. Because the 747 is so old, most of the development costs are long since amortized. This gives Boeing more pricing flexibility if the two companies are competing head to head. The A380 otoh needed to earn back lot of money to get back to breakeven for Airbus, so Airbus did not have the same pricing flexibility as Boeing. It was in the interest of the freight carriers to be able to play the two companies off against one another on price, but it was in Boeing's interest to kill the A380F so they wouldn't need to compete with it. And on Airbus's side, the A380F was also "competing" with the passenger A380 for slots on assembly line; since the passenger version paid a premium for the longer range capability that the freighter could not command (because freighters stop to refuel anyway) it didn't make sense in the short run for Airbus to compete in the freighter space. And as it turns out, there was no longer term for the platform as a whole, especially considering it didn't actually have cost advantages as a freighter anyway.
  - rlpb 6y ago
    > Because the 747 is so old, most of the development costs are long since amortized. This gives Boeing more pricing flexibility if the two companies are competing head to head. The A380 otoh needed to earn back lot of money to get back to breakeven for Airbus, so Airbus did not have the same pricing flexibility as Boeing. How does that work, given that development costs are a sunk cost[1]? The accountants shouldn't care. If it's necessary to compete, the development costs should no longer matter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
    - fsckboy 6y ago
      Generally, the sunk cost argument is used to mean "just because you've put a bunch of money in does not mean that your "progress" is worth what you paid for it, and is therefore not a justification to keep putting more money in; you've already lost what is gone so that's off the table." However, if a company borrowed the money it "sunk", it still has to pay that money back from future sales; if it was raised through equity, continued losses will continue to drag the share price down. Sunk cost is not a free lunch argument. This is where the "competing for production slots" with passenger variants comes in. The program could only be run cash flow positive at a higher rate of production than the orders were justifying, and that is on the back of the higher priced passenger variants. As it was, Airbus needed to amortize overhead costs over two production lines, the overhead was too much for one production line; worth it in the short term only if you expected sales to pick up in the future. (and you can't shut down a production line and then fire it back up without a lot of extra overhead, so for example, they can't just keep the A380 idea around in case demand develops) For each piece of the program, there are separate sunk costs. The sunk cost of design does not justify sinking further funds into building an assembly line, if the expected production is not going to pay for itself, even though the design you now paid for is so to speak "free!" And the freighter variant required new sunk costs before it would be ready to sell (the 747-8 itself cost $5B more on top of the already existing 747 platform) And anything Airbus chose to do, Boeing could disrupt by dropping it's prices/profits; there is a lot of "chess" entailed in marketing these large scale projects. Would have potentially been a different story had there not been competition.
manigandham 6y ago
Don't takeoff/landing cycles on the engines and airframe counteract the fuel savings? EDIT: Specifically pressurization cycles and metal fatigue, since that's how aircraft lifespan is measured.
- Johnjonjoan 6y ago
  I wonder if the limiting fact to cargo capacity is weight or volume. If it's weight then perhaps the additional freight offsets those costs rather than saving fuel.
  - WJW 6y ago
    IIRC it really depends on the cargo. A very cool example I came across was iPhones being fairly heavy relative to their volume while roses were very light relative to their volume. The solution of the air freight company was to fill their aircraft 50/50 with roses and iPhones so that they were both at their weight limit and at their volume limit.
    - ravoori 6y ago
      Ingenious on the part of freight company, but roses being transported halfway around the world is an indicator of what's wrong with modern commerce
      - yorwba 6y ago
        iPhones being transported halfway around the world isn't? In both cases the difference in labor cost is large enough to make the flight profitable.
        megablast 6y ago
        Yes, since roses can be grown almost anywhere, and they are 100s of replacement for a rose.
blackrock 6y ago
In the long run, would it be cheaper to build cargo planes that can refuel in midair? That way you don’t overburdened the ground airport system. And eventually, the refueling airplane can become robotic, and fly fully automated also.
- quink 6y ago
  Cargo can accept an hour or five refuelling in Anchorage or be half a day late. And cargo planes fly far fewer hours each day than passenger planes, leading to fewer movements per plane. OTOH the fact that the MD-10/MD-11 has a second life in cargo also is evidence that fuel burn isn’t the primary concern. And that’s cheaper than ever now, while being the primary operational cost. And weight (and thus fuel burn) is only one constraint, the other is volume. Anyway, this whole thing goes away by just adding a runway in Anchorage at most assuming anything like current demand. And especially after the still unresolved 737MAX saga there is very little appetite in commercial aviation towards increased aviation. We’re down to two people, that’s enough.
- ethagknight 6y ago
  Fun idea to think about. FedEx (and many others) refuels at Ted Stevens Anchorage Airport, and it looks like they have 8 refueling pads. Obviously thats a primary function of Ted Stevens and the reason why it has 3 long runways. I dont know how long the refueling stopover is, but the delay cost cant be that bad compared to an efficient, ground-based refueling operation. Then there are other challenges, like a KC-46 (the latest 767 based tanker), can only carry enough fuel to for 3 747-Fs, (or 6 half-fills). Speculating, but these jumbo jets also create so much downdraft causing a trailing plane to fall into an aerodynamic "hole," so that they need a lot of space between planes. The KC-46 costs about $150mm (flyaway cost), plus you have pilot crews, ground crews, etc to maintain them. A robotic system isn't going to look too terribly different, getting a gigantic auxiliary fuel tank up into the air. But hey, solve those problems, you might have something!
  - totallyabstract 6y ago
    You'd need two KC-46 to fully refuel a 747-400F. KC-46 holds about 120KL of fuel, the 747 takes about 200KL.
gsnedders 6y ago
And it's worthwhile noting the 747-8I (the passenger variant) hasn't received any orders since 2013 as far as I'm aware (the VC-25Bs are being converted from unsold airframes which had originally been ordered in 2011) and the last rolled off the production line in 2017.
mlyle 6y ago
This is the end of the 747-8F. There's 16 orders (all 747-8F) in the book, and the last one is rolling out of the factory in 2022 and the line is being decommissioned. I presume if someone really wants to rush and order a few more the run would be continued slightly, but this is unlikely...
- fsckboy 6y ago
  fwiw, the article itself with the bad headline says the freighter will continue, which is why I called it a bad headline.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    I can see why you read this sentence > While Boeing’s hump-nosed freighters will live on, the fast-disappearing A380 risks going down as an epic dud. that way, but it's referring to A380 flights largely stopping but that the 747 freighter variants will be flying for a long time. But, the article (and other sources) are clear that production of 747-- including 747-8F-- is stopping. Explicitly explained later: > Boeing’s jumbo freighters will continue to ply the skies for decades after production stops, said Aboulafia. .. > “At a build rate of half an airplane per month, the 747-8 program has more than two years of production ahead of it in order to fulfill our current customer commitments. We will continue to make the right decisions to keep the production line healthy and meet customer needs,” Boeing said for this story. > The planemaker has just 15 unfilled orders for the 747 -- all freighters. A dozen of them are headed to United Parcel Service Inc., and the fate of the rest is unclear, part of a dispute with Russia’s Volga-Dnepr Group.
    - fsckboy 6y ago
      we are in so deep now :) just have one thing to add: Boeing has not pulled the plug on anything, it's the customers not ordering. 747 is open for business and sadly, based on your deep dive, Boeing seems not expect more orders of any variant. oh, one more thing: in terms of passenger versions, there are two Air Force One's on order, aren't there? yeah yeah, I know, it's not AF1 if the president's not on it.

bobthepanda 6y ago

The A380 also had other issues, in that a freighter version was never developed, and also the dead weight of the plane was a lot heavier than the 747.

fsckboy 6y ago
The freighter version was offered, it was never developed because the small number of orders it received were cancelled when it was realized it would not deliver economies. I believe I read that the dead weight issue would not have been as important if freighters didn't stop for refueling because of A380's range; that's why I brought up the stopping.
adwww 6y ago
Something to do with volume limits versus weight not being in it's favour IIRC. That is, you'd fill up it's max weight limit way before filling the empty volume inside the plane with most normal cargo.
fsckboy 6y ago
[I already answered you once but I thought of another way to think about it that is substantially different than my other comment so thought I'd write another one.] The freight economics issue between the 747F and the A380F is related to the complex soup of fixed costs and variable costs that go into the carrier's choice of platform; in addition to the fuel, the carrier has to amortize the purchase price, and the A380F with newer technology is a much more expensive platform to the freight carriers. Because the 747 is so old, most of the development costs are long since amortized. This gives Boeing more pricing flexibility if the two companies are competing head to head. The A380 otoh needed to earn back lot of money to get back to breakeven for Airbus, so Airbus did not have the same pricing flexibility as Boeing. It was in the interest of the freight carriers to be able to play the two companies off against one another on price, but it was in Boeing's interest to kill the A380F so they wouldn't need to compete with it. And on Airbus's side, the A380F was also "competing" with the passenger A380 for slots on assembly line; since the passenger version paid a premium for the longer range capability that the freighter could not command (because freighters stop to refuel anyway) it didn't make sense in the short run for Airbus to compete in the freighter space. And as it turns out, there was no longer term for the platform as a whole, especially considering it didn't actually have cost advantages as a freighter anyway.
- rlpb 6y ago
  > Because the 747 is so old, most of the development costs are long since amortized. This gives Boeing more pricing flexibility if the two companies are competing head to head. The A380 otoh needed to earn back lot of money to get back to breakeven for Airbus, so Airbus did not have the same pricing flexibility as Boeing. How does that work, given that development costs are a sunk cost[1]? The accountants shouldn't care. If it's necessary to compete, the development costs should no longer matter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost
  - fsckboy 6y ago
    Generally, the sunk cost argument is used to mean "just because you've put a bunch of money in does not mean that your "progress" is worth what you paid for it, and is therefore not a justification to keep putting more money in; you've already lost what is gone so that's off the table." However, if a company borrowed the money it "sunk", it still has to pay that money back from future sales; if it was raised through equity, continued losses will continue to drag the share price down. Sunk cost is not a free lunch argument. This is where the "competing for production slots" with passenger variants comes in. The program could only be run cash flow positive at a higher rate of production than the orders were justifying, and that is on the back of the higher priced passenger variants. As it was, Airbus needed to amortize overhead costs over two production lines, the overhead was too much for one production line; worth it in the short term only if you expected sales to pick up in the future. (and you can't shut down a production line and then fire it back up without a lot of extra overhead, so for example, they can't just keep the A380 idea around in case demand develops) For each piece of the program, there are separate sunk costs. The sunk cost of design does not justify sinking further funds into building an assembly line, if the expected production is not going to pay for itself, even though the design you now paid for is so to speak "free!" And the freighter variant required new sunk costs before it would be ready to sell (the 747-8 itself cost $5B more on top of the already existing 747 platform) And anything Airbus chose to do, Boeing could disrupt by dropping it's prices/profits; there is a lot of "chess" entailed in marketing these large scale projects. Would have potentially been a different story had there not been competition.

manigandham 6y ago

Don't takeoff/landing cycles on the engines and airframe counteract the fuel savings? EDIT: Specifically pressurization cycles and metal fatigue, since that's how aircraft lifespan is measured.

Johnjonjoan 6y ago
I wonder if the limiting fact to cargo capacity is weight or volume. If it's weight then perhaps the additional freight offsets those costs rather than saving fuel.
- WJW 6y ago
  IIRC it really depends on the cargo. A very cool example I came across was iPhones being fairly heavy relative to their volume while roses were very light relative to their volume. The solution of the air freight company was to fill their aircraft 50/50 with roses and iPhones so that they were both at their weight limit and at their volume limit.
  - ravoori 6y ago
    Ingenious on the part of freight company, but roses being transported halfway around the world is an indicator of what's wrong with modern commerce
    - yorwba 6y ago
      iPhones being transported halfway around the world isn't? In both cases the difference in labor cost is large enough to make the flight profitable.
      - megablast 6y ago
        Yes, since roses can be grown almost anywhere, and they are 100s of replacement for a rose.

blackrock 6y ago

In the long run, would it be cheaper to build cargo planes that can refuel in midair? That way you don’t overburdened the ground airport system. And eventually, the refueling airplane can become robotic, and fly fully automated also.

quink 6y ago
Cargo can accept an hour or five refuelling in Anchorage or be half a day late. And cargo planes fly far fewer hours each day than passenger planes, leading to fewer movements per plane. OTOH the fact that the MD-10/MD-11 has a second life in cargo also is evidence that fuel burn isn’t the primary concern. And that’s cheaper than ever now, while being the primary operational cost. And weight (and thus fuel burn) is only one constraint, the other is volume. Anyway, this whole thing goes away by just adding a runway in Anchorage at most assuming anything like current demand. And especially after the still unresolved 737MAX saga there is very little appetite in commercial aviation towards increased aviation. We’re down to two people, that’s enough.
ethagknight 6y ago
Fun idea to think about. FedEx (and many others) refuels at Ted Stevens Anchorage Airport, and it looks like they have 8 refueling pads. Obviously thats a primary function of Ted Stevens and the reason why it has 3 long runways. I dont know how long the refueling stopover is, but the delay cost cant be that bad compared to an efficient, ground-based refueling operation. Then there are other challenges, like a KC-46 (the latest 767 based tanker), can only carry enough fuel to for 3 747-Fs, (or 6 half-fills). Speculating, but these jumbo jets also create so much downdraft causing a trailing plane to fall into an aerodynamic "hole," so that they need a lot of space between planes. The KC-46 costs about $150mm (flyaway cost), plus you have pilot crews, ground crews, etc to maintain them. A robotic system isn't going to look too terribly different, getting a gigantic auxiliary fuel tank up into the air. But hey, solve those problems, you might have something!
- totallyabstract 6y ago
  You'd need two KC-46 to fully refuel a 747-400F. KC-46 holds about 120KL of fuel, the 747 takes about 200KL.

gsnedders 6y ago

And it's worthwhile noting the 747-8I (the passenger variant) hasn't received any orders since 2013 as far as I'm aware (the VC-25Bs are being converted from unsold airframes which had originally been ordered in 2011) and the last rolled off the production line in 2017.

mlyle 6y ago

This is the end of the 747-8F. There's 16 orders (all 747-8F) in the book, and the last one is rolling out of the factory in 2022 and the line is being decommissioned. I presume if someone really wants to rush and order a few more the run would be continued slightly, but this is unlikely...

fsckboy 6y ago
fwiw, the article itself with the bad headline says the freighter will continue, which is why I called it a bad headline.
- mlyle 6y ago
  I can see why you read this sentence > While Boeing’s hump-nosed freighters will live on, the fast-disappearing A380 risks going down as an epic dud. that way, but it's referring to A380 flights largely stopping but that the 747 freighter variants will be flying for a long time. But, the article (and other sources) are clear that production of 747-- including 747-8F-- is stopping. Explicitly explained later: > Boeing’s jumbo freighters will continue to ply the skies for decades after production stops, said Aboulafia. .. > “At a build rate of half an airplane per month, the 747-8 program has more than two years of production ahead of it in order to fulfill our current customer commitments. We will continue to make the right decisions to keep the production line healthy and meet customer needs,” Boeing said for this story. > The planemaker has just 15 unfilled orders for the 747 -- all freighters. A dozen of them are headed to United Parcel Service Inc., and the fate of the rest is unclear, part of a dispute with Russia’s Volga-Dnepr Group.
  - fsckboy 6y ago
    we are in so deep now :) just have one thing to add: Boeing has not pulled the plug on anything, it's the customers not ordering. 747 is open for business and sadly, based on your deep dive, Boeing seems not expect more orders of any variant. oh, one more thing: in terms of passenger versions, there are two Air Force One's on order, aren't there? yeah yeah, I know, it's not AF1 if the president's not on it.