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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

> if the A380 is struggling, the 747 is moribund or dead

Boeing has built and sold over 1,500 747s [1]. It first flew in 1969 and is now being end of lifed. It has been obscenely profitable over its lifetime. The A380 first flew in 2005 [2]. It has been a commercial disaster.

The 747 was a great plane for 1969. Airbus built the finest horse-drawn carriage just as the Model T came out.

> constrained slots at major airports serving the major routes

Between 30 and 40% of passengers departing from JFK or Newark will go on to a connection [3]. Consider what happens when they start flying directly to their destinations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380

[3] https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR_2015.pdf

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> It has been obscenely profitable over its lifetime

Exactly. And these obscene profits in a line where it had no competition were a problem for Airbus. A problem that has now disappeared.

> The A380 first flew in 2005 [2]. It has been a commercial disaster.

(a) It helped kill the "obscenely profitable" 747.

(b) It was a hedge in case airlines were going to stick with the hub-and-spoke model

Um, the 787 is what kiled the 747. As in Boeing decided, as all companies do, to retire a line in favor of a more modern one. It’s really weird you don’t acknowledge that at all.

The 787 is a little more than half the capacity of a 747.

The general point being nobody wants a passenger plane with the A380 or 747's capacity anymore. Small, efficient, long-distance planes like the 787, A350 and C-Series are rendering the larger format obsolete.

.. just to piggy back on this and add a "why": the smaller long range planes are allowing airlines to connect smaller cities with direct flights while still making money. This is easier for customers, and is insanely popular.

An example here is British Airways' service from New Orleans to London. Obviously, some amount of people have always wanted to get from New Orleans to London, but previously they've been flying though Dallas/Atlanta/New York, etc. The 787 allows BA to offer a much better product to those customers, and the size/cost to operate a 787 is what makes the flight commercially viable. When the sky is full of airplanes operating flights like that, there's no one group of people in one place to fill up a jumbo.

But New Orleans/London isn't two smaller cities, it's one smaller city and one major intercontinental hub. Doesn't expecting to have a nonstop flight from London to every city in the world put unsustainable pressure on landing slots in London?

Yes. But that's a slightly different problem, and one that could potentially be solved in other ways (an extra runway at LHR, going to a different airport in another European capital if London is unwilling to make the changes needed to keep their airport competitive for connecting passengers transiting through, stuff like that).

Slot utilization at busy airports is one of the better pro-jumbo arguments going around at the moment, though. There's just not enough market pressure to cause airlines to push passengers away from direct flights and towards less popular routing options right now.

Does the comparison not work if the smaller city is in Europe and he major hub is one of the ones in the US? Or even two US cities?

I think perhaps using London as an example is overshadowing the point being made. If you aren't aggregating passengers at hubs which you then use larger planes for the common leg of the journey, you don't need as many larger planes.

For sure, the original intent of the 787 was to enable flights that skip hubs[1], but for whatever reason, in practice that hasn't really happened[2].

Also, it's totally possible that there's a better example of a rote enabled by the 787 than New Orleans/London. That's just one that came to mind.

[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcbabej/2014/12/11/airbus-a38...

[2] - https://centreforaviation.com/insights/analysis/787-network-... (though you only get a lame summary of the article without an account)

Direct flights to more destinations from any hub still means a superlinear increase in the number of slot pairs required. Are you suggesting that that wouldn't also be problematic at hubs in North America?

I'm suggesting, as I took sjm-lbm to be originally, that there are more direct flights that are not using the hubs, therefore less need for larger planes to support aggregated passengers. If flights from New Orleans to New York used to go through Atlanta and the Atlanta to New York flight was full of aggregated smaller flights to Atlanta, that would require a larger plane. If more flights are going direct from New Orleans to New York using smaller planes, that lessens the aggregation in Atlanta, and lessens the need for another 747 at that location.

I think routes like San Jose-Manchester is a better example of why A350s and 787s are great. You're also seeing a lot of 787 flights out of Oakland instead of all bay area international travel being from SF.

When I was a kid and lived in Santa Cruz, we would always have to drive to SFO for international flights because SJC's runway was too short for some of the bigger jumbos. Now with 350s and 787s, its not an issue.

At a lower $/passenger/mile.

Why fly one 747 from NY to London and make people connect to it, when you can fly one 787 from Denver and one 787 from Chicago?

I resent that. Chicago gets 747s and 777s from British Airways and is about to get an A380 :)

My guess as stated elsewhere A380 usage will increase.

I was just being snarky about the implication that Chicago is a new opportunity opened up by the 787 when it’s actually one of the largest cities in the world that already gets multiple flights daily from most major world cities.

Last time I was in Chicago the airport was a pain as the plane needed a long time from the runway to the terminal due to the size of the airport.

Yeah, sure. Let's say Phoenix and Denver. Or, Colorado Springs and Oakland. Or, Gatwick and Midway.

It might be an atypical route, but LHR slot costs and unavailability can certainly wipe out putative passenger mile cost advantages...

by design

However the efficiency allows long, thin routes. Essentially the 787 and now the newer 777 allow more agile routing over longer distances which opens up airlines to greater routing efficiencies that aren’t as dependent on super-hub airports. There are over 600 787 routes, of which 368 are long haul and 90 are completely new routes. For example, ANA flies Tokyo to San Jose and BA flies London San Jose, those I think the BA version runs the new 777s now.

My point is that passenger capacity isn’t such an important metric when comparing the ‘47 and the ‘87. And the A380 is an airplane built for last century’s model of air travel.

> BA flies London San Jose, those I think the BA version runs the new 777s now

Still 787-9s; I'm unaware of any plan to move it to 777s.

It's a better bet to say the 777 killed the passenger 747. The real question is if cargo operations will continue to drive 747 demand.

It'll probably look like tanker/military demand for the 767.

The a380 cargo option never really developed...

> The real question is if cargo operations will continue to drive 747 demand.

The reality is that we're going to have loads of 747-400s that aren't life-expired available, and I imagine many operators will just turn to freighter conversions of them rather than order new 747-8s.

Till now, cargo operations are built on the backbone of older aircrafts that require relatively inexpensive modifications to haul pallets. The economics of the business rarely encourage brand new aircraft purchase with the exception of UPS and FedEx and ad-hoc specialized operators.

In the future, this might not be the case. In the era of fuel efficiency most passenger aircrafts were not designed to haul cargo. In-order to save on weight the main deck on the 777 was made of lightweight materials that is acceptable for passenger traffic. This in-turn makes it very expensive for cargo conversions.

fuel costs killed the 747, not the A380

we know this is true because no one is replacing retired 747s with A380s, they are replacing them with smaller, more fuel efficient planes

Plenty of airlines have replaced 747s with A380s. British Airways, Lufthansa, Air France and Qantas immediately come to mind.

The first three are from countries where Eads doing well is a political thing: Britain Germany and France own chunks of airbus and have a lot invested in it doing well. The former flag carriers are only nominally independent from the state.

Tell me more about this nominal independence. The biggest state owner of IAG (BA’s corporate parent) is Qatar. Lufthansa is fully privatized. France owns ~15% of Air France-KLM.

European airlines prefer european airplanes; its a question of EU pride

So why is Ryanair flying a pure B737 fleet?

There are more connections than ownership.

For example, an airline might get preferred access to airport berths. Governments, and officials of privatised government entities serve to organise and stabilise this sort of cartel.

Like Boeing isn't internationally linked to the US, or "buy American" wasn't a thing...

> The first three are from countries where Eads doing well is a political thing: Britain Germany and France own chunks of airbus and have a lot invested in it doing well. The former flag carriers are only nominally independent from the state.

OTOH, Lufthansa was the initial customer for 747-8.

So while you correctly pointed out that influence, carriers aren't quite as dependent on their host nations as you assume.

It hasn't been a 1-for-1 replacement. At least for BA the 747 has been replaced by the A380, 777, and 787 on many routes. All 3 have different capacities to scale with demand; 787 < 777 < A380. And all 3 are more fuel efficient per passenger than the 747.

Qantas are currently replacing 747s with a fleet of A380s and 777s

Qantas don’t have any 777s (or any 777 orders). I think that going so hard on the A380 and never getting any 777s was one of their biggest mistakes. Now they’re doing better having cancelled their remaining A380 orders (after they got 12) and have started using the A330 on some routes with smaller demand and have finally got their first 787.

That, and their Emirates alliance have finally turned things around (they weren’t profitable internationally for several years until about two years ago).

What do you mean "started using the A330" ? It has been Qantas's go-to medium-haul airliner more than 10 years, long enough they they've all been refurbished recently with "A380 like" interiors.

I don't think the A380 really competes that directly. The 747 can use many more airports than the A380.

The 747 was a problem that was disappearing on it's own. When the A380 was approved, the 747 was no longer obscenely profitable, it was already facing lower demand and the requirements for an expensive update.

Airbus crippled itself trying to eliminate it with the A380, they blew a huge amount of capital they'll never get back.

The hub and spoke model is dead and won't be coming back. New slots can be easily created by adding runways or building new airports. Flying point to point isn't just more convenient and faster, it is cheaper and more fuel efficient.

> New slots can be easily created by adding runways or building new airports.

I wouldn't call that "easy". How many new runways are going to be built next year? How many new airports? I'll make a guess that the answers are "none" and "very few or none".

Well, demand is the driver of that. Right now the need isn't that great. If it becomes that great, a far easier solution than the A380 is new runways and new airports.

Demand may be the driver, but the transmission is broken. There's zoning, and environmental regulations, and NIMBY opposition, and on and on.

I mean, how's Heathrow's new runway coming? The demand is clearly there, but the runway is not. It received the support of the government clear back in 2009. After much back and forth, it's ready for a final decision this winter, with the earliest possible year of operation being 2025. And that's with the demand being clearly there.

> How many new airports?

maybe berlin, if they decide to rebuilt the failed project.

I think this depends where in the world you are. In a lot of places it is very easy.

I'm sure you realize this, but some might not: a 747-8 in 2017 is very different from a 747-100 in the 1960s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747#Specifications

Same goes for the modern 737

Off topic: any chance you'd be willing to discuss your transition from algo trading to what you're doing now (per your profile)? As an ex- algo trader and pilot, I'd love to get your perspective.

Posting this from a throwaway because my colleagues read HN, but the email in my profile is valid. Thanks!

I would be interested on how your comment fits your quote.

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