4 ms·

As the article noted, this isn't just a US thing and actually isn't just an A380 thing. The A380 is just a very high-profile victim of it. The problems are two

As the article noted, this isn't just a US thing and actually isn't just an A380 thing. The A380 is just a very high-profile victim of it. The problems are twofold: 1. Four-engine airliners, regardless of size, are losing, basically worldwide, to twin-engine airliners with better fuel consumption. This is why the A380 and 747-8 sales are sluggish. This is why the A340 buyback program exists (airlines can't get rid of the planes since nobody else will buy them), etc. 2. The airline market as a whole is shifting away from the "have a single massive international hub and send all flights there" model -- only a few airlines can really support that, and not coincidentally they're the only ones continuing to buy A380s. This is part of the reason why the 787 and the A350 are selling so well; they enable flights to and from secondary or tertiary hub cities for which there is plenty of demand, just not enough demand to fill daily super-jumbo aircraft. This is why the 787 and the A350 are such a big deal, and why Airbus doubled down and announced a revamp of the A330. Boeing is facing the same problem with its 747-8; the passenger variant just isn't selling, the only airline that's taken delivery (Lufthansa) has announced it may retire them within 5-6 years of acquiring them, and rumor has it Boeing is only keeping the production line open to win the contract to replace the VC-25 (the modified 747 better known as "Air Force One").

walterbell 12y ago
> airline market as a whole is shifting away from the "have a single massive international hub and send all flights there" model Dubai airport is closing in on Heathrow at the #1 spot. If long-haul traffic through Dubai continues to increase, will this change demand for A380s by non-Emirates airlines? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_busiest_airports_by_international_passenger_traffic http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_busiest_airports_by_i...
- ubernostrum 12y ago
  It is important to understand the two types of traffic at a hub. There is connecting traffic -- people who are going from somewhere else to somewhere else and just using the hub as a point to change flights. And there is what the airline folks call "O&D" traffic (which stands for "Origin and Destination") -- people who are either starting their trip at the hub or ending their trip at the hub. Traditionally, hub locations have been chosen based on offering convenient connections to other places, but also on high levels of O&D. Thus, for example, New York in the United States, London in the UK, Frankfurt in Germany, and so on; all of these are convenient locations to get to other parts of their respective countries, but they are also major business and/or tourism centers, meaning lots of people are either based there or want to go there. O&D traffic is typically more valuable to an airline than connecting traffic. But there are now four airlines/hubs which have extremely low O&D traffic, and exist almost solely to provide connections between points in Europe/the Americas and points in south/southeast Asia and Oceania. Those are Emirates (Dubai), Etihad (Abu Dhabi), Qatar (Doha) and Singapore (Changi). This is a very different business model from other airlines, and to an extent it can only work if the carrier and the hub are heavily subsidized by the local government. So there's less incentive for other airlines to fly into those airports; generally it only happens when the airline can partner with the home carrier (as Qantas has done in the past with Singapore, and now does with Emirates, or British Airways connecting to alliance partner Qatar in Doha), but it still isn't as desirable as flying to a place which has significant O&D traffic. Which means it's less likely that the middle-eastern hubs will see significant increases in service from other airlines, and much less likely for them to see lots of other airlines buying A380s to fly to those hubs, because for most of them it just doesn't make financial sense. BA, for example, does fly to Dubai as a connecting point, but does it on a more-economical 777, and uses the A380 for heavier O&D routes like London-Hong Kong and London-Los Angeles.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Thanks for the analysis. Book publishers (vs. Amazon-as-hub) should take a lesson from the airlines in avoiding pure hubs :) Hopefully the newer versions of smaller aircraft will be as quiet (inside and outside) as the A380.
    - gsnedders 12y ago
      Note that many business jets derived from passenger carrying aircraft sell themselves as being quieter — they just take the extra weight in sound insulation, which decreases the freight capacity of the aircraft (which is incredibly lucrative) as that's not something most owners of business jets care about.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    Singapore, Dubai, and Qatar are increasingly becoming important business destinations. Plus, airlines like Emirates/Etihad/Qatar are partly commercial ventures but also partly prestige projects by Arab royalty, similar to owning football clubs (like PSG and Man City, coincidentally sponsored by Emirates and Etihad respectively) or bribing FIFA into awarding them the World Cup.
seanmcdirmid 12y ago
The 380 makes a lot of sense in heavily congested air corridors. Anywhere in China, Japan, SE Asia...there is more demand than airports and runways, so a bigger plane will just work better. The US market is better for point to point because we have many more small airports and lots of redundant infrastructure that doesn't really need to be maximized. Europe is somewhat in the middle.
- ubernostrum 12y ago
  The 380 makes a lot of sense in heavily congested air corridors. Anywhere in China, Japan, SE Asia... You'd think that, but the Asian carriers who've bought A380s are still mostly using them on their long-haul routes. This is a lesson Boeing has learned twice now: once with the 747SP, and again with the proposed 787-3. Both were designed as specialized aircraft to bring efficiency to slightly shorter high-density routes. But the 747SP only had a production run of 45 aircraft, and the 787-3 was cancelled due to lack of interest. The 787-8, on the other hand, has been doing well in Asia, and several low-cost carriers fly them now. The A380 is an even worse fit because it requires upgrading the airport infrastructure, which either won't happen or won't happen soon enough on some of the highest-density routes (as the article notes, Mumbai couldn't handle A380s until very recently). Boeing seems to be sensitive to this with their planned folding wingtip on the 777X family, designed to guarantee that airports which can handle current 777s will be able to handle the larger 777X. It'll be interesting to see if that pans out.
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    I believe Japan is the only country that actually uses a lot 747s for domestic routes...because so much traffic and so little airspace. Thailand also uses some 747s for domestic routes (e.g. Bangkok to Phuket). There are plenty of airports in Asia that can only handle N flights per hour and are now handling N + K, so bigger planes are inevitable until new airports can come online (and even then, it might just be cheaper to fly a bigger plane for something like BJ to Shanghai).
    - hudibras 12y ago

walterbell 12y ago

> airline market as a whole is shifting away from the "have a single massive international hub and send all flights there" model Dubai airport is closing in on Heathrow at the #1 spot. If long-haul traffic through Dubai continues to increase, will this change demand for A380s by non-Emirates airlines? http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_busiest_airports_by_international_passenger_traffic http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World's_busiest_airports_by_i...

ubernostrum 12y ago
It is important to understand the two types of traffic at a hub. There is connecting traffic -- people who are going from somewhere else to somewhere else and just using the hub as a point to change flights. And there is what the airline folks call "O&D" traffic (which stands for "Origin and Destination") -- people who are either starting their trip at the hub or ending their trip at the hub. Traditionally, hub locations have been chosen based on offering convenient connections to other places, but also on high levels of O&D. Thus, for example, New York in the United States, London in the UK, Frankfurt in Germany, and so on; all of these are convenient locations to get to other parts of their respective countries, but they are also major business and/or tourism centers, meaning lots of people are either based there or want to go there. O&D traffic is typically more valuable to an airline than connecting traffic. But there are now four airlines/hubs which have extremely low O&D traffic, and exist almost solely to provide connections between points in Europe/the Americas and points in south/southeast Asia and Oceania. Those are Emirates (Dubai), Etihad (Abu Dhabi), Qatar (Doha) and Singapore (Changi). This is a very different business model from other airlines, and to an extent it can only work if the carrier and the hub are heavily subsidized by the local government. So there's less incentive for other airlines to fly into those airports; generally it only happens when the airline can partner with the home carrier (as Qantas has done in the past with Singapore, and now does with Emirates, or British Airways connecting to alliance partner Qatar in Doha), but it still isn't as desirable as flying to a place which has significant O&D traffic. Which means it's less likely that the middle-eastern hubs will see significant increases in service from other airlines, and much less likely for them to see lots of other airlines buying A380s to fly to those hubs, because for most of them it just doesn't make financial sense. BA, for example, does fly to Dubai as a connecting point, but does it on a more-economical 777, and uses the A380 for heavier O&D routes like London-Hong Kong and London-Los Angeles.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Thanks for the analysis. Book publishers (vs. Amazon-as-hub) should take a lesson from the airlines in avoiding pure hubs :) Hopefully the newer versions of smaller aircraft will be as quiet (inside and outside) as the A380.
  - gsnedders 12y ago
    Note that many business jets derived from passenger carrying aircraft sell themselves as being quieter — they just take the extra weight in sound insulation, which decreases the freight capacity of the aircraft (which is incredibly lucrative) as that's not something most owners of business jets care about.
- philwelch 12y ago
  Singapore, Dubai, and Qatar are increasingly becoming important business destinations. Plus, airlines like Emirates/Etihad/Qatar are partly commercial ventures but also partly prestige projects by Arab royalty, similar to owning football clubs (like PSG and Man City, coincidentally sponsored by Emirates and Etihad respectively) or bribing FIFA into awarding them the World Cup.

seanmcdirmid 12y ago

The 380 makes a lot of sense in heavily congested air corridors. Anywhere in China, Japan, SE Asia...there is more demand than airports and runways, so a bigger plane will just work better. The US market is better for point to point because we have many more small airports and lots of redundant infrastructure that doesn't really need to be maximized. Europe is somewhat in the middle.

ubernostrum 12y ago
The 380 makes a lot of sense in heavily congested air corridors. Anywhere in China, Japan, SE Asia... You'd think that, but the Asian carriers who've bought A380s are still mostly using them on their long-haul routes. This is a lesson Boeing has learned twice now: once with the 747SP, and again with the proposed 787-3. Both were designed as specialized aircraft to bring efficiency to slightly shorter high-density routes. But the 747SP only had a production run of 45 aircraft, and the 787-3 was cancelled due to lack of interest. The 787-8, on the other hand, has been doing well in Asia, and several low-cost carriers fly them now. The A380 is an even worse fit because it requires upgrading the airport infrastructure, which either won't happen or won't happen soon enough on some of the highest-density routes (as the article notes, Mumbai couldn't handle A380s until very recently). Boeing seems to be sensitive to this with their planned folding wingtip on the 777X family, designed to guarantee that airports which can handle current 777s will be able to handle the larger 777X. It'll be interesting to see if that pans out.
- seanmcdirmid 12y ago
  I believe Japan is the only country that actually uses a lot 747s for domestic routes...because so much traffic and so little airspace. Thailand also uses some 747s for domestic routes (e.g. Bangkok to Phuket). There are plenty of airports in Asia that can only handle N flights per hour and are now handling N + K, so bigger planes are inevitable until new airports can come online (and even then, it might just be cheaper to fly a bigger plane for something like BJ to Shanghai).
  - hudibras 12y ago