> "And the Airbus A380 Stretch could have carried 1000 passengers." Ticket prices have little to do with how many passengers a plane can carry at once. The A38

> "And the Airbus A380 Stretch could have carried 1000 passengers." Ticket prices have little to do with how many passengers a plane can carry at once. The A380 failed in large part because it didn't produce lower per-passenger costs than multiple smaller aircraft on the same route. More importantly the hub-and-spoke model isn't necessarily cheaper than direct flights, since a connecting passenger incurs additional costs (extra mileage flown, meaning extra fuel burn, extra employee expense, and much more fixed costs like airport fees and ground handling) There are situations where a larger plane makes sense - the Japanese domestic flight industry experiences extreme passenger volume, and landing/takeoff slots are constrained, that it makes sense to fly larger planes. But even that demand can be satisfied by large widebody heavies that aren't the A380, like the A350, 777, or 787. Super-heavies like the A380 only make sense on routes where the passenger volume is so extreme, and takeoff/landing slots so constrained, that you must carry > 1000 passengers in a single slot. There are almost no route pairs like this in the world.