Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production | Hacker News Reader

Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

nytimes.com

201 pointsokket242 comments

I am a frequent business flyer, 10+ per year international long haul from Australia. I appreciate that from a north american perspective the 380 didn't make sense either economically from the economy which bankrolls Boeing, or strategically from the economy which has specific interests in international flights homed out of its east and west coast population centres.

I can tell you that for the South Pacific, Japan, India, China the 380 makes perfect sense, and if passenger disposable income choices can direct to 380 flights in preference to current generation 777 and 787, they will. I know, because within limits I can do this, and I do, and almost everyone I know who flies transcontinental at this frequency or better does too.

You're mainly discussing supply side logic around wet leasing, dry leasing, models of operation. I am talking about what the consumer side actually wants: In business, its not 11 abreast pack-em-in which is what the 787 has done. Its not the 777 which is a fine beast, but noisy as hell and getting old (refit costs) We love the 380. We prefer to fly the 380. I've flown it on Emirates, Singapore, QANTAS, China Southern and its a premium quality experience. Its worth it.

I'm the same, I fly NZ -> DE often and I will choose my flights to get the A380 over the 777 or 787.

I find it really hard to agree with you. Maybe you flew exclusively in business or first class?

> its not 11 abreast pack-em-in which is what the 787 has done

787 is designed for 8-abreast seating. In reality, carriers almost always went for 9-abreast. 11-abreast is physically impossible. It is possible in an A380 though, and airlines are really considering it.

> ... and its a premium quality experience

How is flying on an A380 premium experience? When you pack more people in the same plane, boarding and deplaning takes longer, food and beverage service takes longer, getting checked luggage takes longer, and the immigration queue gets longer. There's a higher chance a crying baby will be there to ruin your sleep, and I really hate the curvature of the fuselage, which makes it impossible to rest my head against it. Yes, I'd pick a Singapore A380 over a United 787, but it has nothing to do with the type of the plane. It's a soft product problem.

Not OP but I will go out of my way to select Airbus jets; their NVH is noticeably lower than Boeings jets, which results in a far more comfortable travel, especially long-haul (A380 being up there in terms of comfort).

Personally I find Boeing seats to be more comfortable than Airbus seats. Maybe it's just my butt but it is noticeable.

Neither one is a seat manufacturer.

Airline seats are independently purchased, and while both Boeing and Airbus have contracts for factory installed seating (and for their demo aircraft), most larger airlines seem to independently source and install their own seats. One seat model could appear on both an Airbus and Boeing aircraft.

See: http://www.airlineupdate.com/content_subscription/interiors/...

Except for the 787. If memory is correct, Boeing dictates what brand / models of seat is used in the 787 (something rather unusual). I can try and find a source if needed, but I’m pretty sure I heard that from a reliable source.

Their contract with LIFT by EnCore on a single aircraft type doesn't negate the point I made. Which was that neither aircraft manufacturer is a seat manufacturer, and that most seats aren't aircraft manufacturer exclusives.

Seat manufacturers produce seats for both Boeing and Airbus aircraft and aside from brackets, they're identical. So claiming that one manufacturer is more comfortable than the other is a little odd, given the market realities in the industry.

I didn’t disagree with your core point (in fact, I completely agree with it). I was just clarifying that in the case of the 787, it wasn’t the airline’s choice.

So does that mean the placement of the overhead light/call button is the same in all of them?

I had an economy comfort seat on a KLM 787 recently and the buttons were affixed to the inside of the seat arm at leg level, and not recessed. I kept turning on the overhead light with my leg all through the night. Infuriatingly poor design. A few mm's more recess would likely have made it much harder to accidentally press.

Overall quite a negative first 787 experience...

Norwegian 787s have the light and call buttons as part of the touch screen display in front of you. So different per customer

Ah, I wonder if only the bulkhead seats are different. In those the display isn't always in front of you so the light control has to be available elsewhere.

Next time I'll avoid a bulkhead seat in any case.

Weird then that the seats they install in Airbus jets are distinct from the ones they install in Boeing jets.

NVH?

Noise/Vibrations/Harshness

It’s a regular occurrence on HN someone dropping an acronym that is so obscure or specific to the topic at hand, and without explanation, that no amount of googleitsu will find the correct decoding. In this case it was pretty easy,nvh = noise, vibration, harshness.

I had to google it too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise,_vibration,_and_harshnes...

All the “gets longer” reasons you state here are solved by the “add more staff” and “use more exits” options.

I also live in Australia and have flown both the Dreamliner and A380 and if possible will always choose the A380.

Far roomier plane, much quieter and even though it may be just a coincidence every time it seems to suffer far less turbulence.

> it seems to suffer far less turbulence

That's not a coincidence. It makes perfect sense that a large heavy aircraft like the 380 will be harder for wind and air pockets to push it around, just like big ships are far more stable than smaller ones. There's a world of difference between coming into (say) Singapore with its turbulent tropical air on a little a320 and a giant like a 380.

I've been on narrowbody flights where we bounced around like we were inside a washing machine; in a 380 i've barely ever had to even pick up my drink!

The relevant metric (at least in theory) is wing loading, that is supported weight per wing area. Having said that, I find the A380 super smooth (I also take care that I sit near the wing/center of gravity).

> All the “gets longer” reasons you state here are solved by the “add more staff” and “use more exits” options.

No. Longer immigration queues could be solved by the government adding more staff, but they cannot be solved by the airline adding more staff, and the airline is the one buying or otherwise choosing to use the plane.

They should definitely pressure the airport (to pressure the government) to create a few of those precious New Jobs and add some more people to immigration. It's just ridiculous in many airports, particularly in Europe. And it's been done, it's not like it's some pipe dream.

"Let's do the same amount of work with more people" opens the government up to a certain amount of criticism.

Do I really have to explain to them how to do their job?

You're the one suggesting New Jobs. By hypothesis, larger planes mean that arrivals are more concentrated, leading to longer lines, but not that there are more arrivals.

Automation is the other solution. For example in Helsinki-Vantaa, there are far more automated passport check gates than there are traditional immigration desks: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/3176184017

Even at SFO I've gotten to fill the immigration questionnaire a few times with a self-service machine, greatly reducing the time spent on the process.

The plane feels more spacious (taller ceiling in the walkway), the seats are bigger and spaced further, at least on Emirates. Added doors on some airports makes the embarkation and disembarkation feel about the same as on any other plane. I prefer aisle so I haven't noticed anything wrong with the curve of the walls.

I have flown the A380 in economy multiple times. It is a premium experience. The plane is so big that you don't feel turbulences as much. And it's relatively new, so it's very silent. On the upper deck, because of cabin curvature, window seats have a large armrest opening and doubling as a generous chest where you can put all your stuff and keep your legs free of clutter.

Certainly when I flew economy with Emirates, it compared with Premium Economy on Virgin, and was much better than any other economy airlines I've flown.

Yes. huge bad on my part, mistaking nine for eleven. In my defence, I cite stupidity, parity error and failed arithmetic in kindy twice.

The eight-vs-nine thing, very quickly becomes the ten-vs-elevn thing in larger widebody jets. Its a double squeeze: both on the functional seat width, and on the consequence of 3 or 4 or 5 abreast seating and the middle seat passenger.

It also doesn't make sense domestically within the US. A 5-hour flight from coast to coast is not a particularly efficient use of the A380. The only US domestic route that may be a fit is Honolulu to somewhere in the middle of the mainland (Denver, Dallas, or someplace like that).

It's already used extensively TATL and TPAC.

I’m also kinda frequent flyer and I can tell you I dont give a s* if I’m flying A330, A380, 767, 777, 787. Once inside, I barely see the difference, just immigration is more annoying if you’re flying A380 and sitting back in coach. I would never spend more money to fly A380. I’m working at a company where certain people hop on a plane every 2.2 days and I don’t even know a single colleague that would share your opinion.

In addition, if you think in Asia the A380 works well, then please tell me why Airbus is making so little money also there.

It sounds like your complaint is about chosen seating arrangements by airlines rather than the planes themselves. The 787 11-wide configuration has little to do with the plane. You can be packed like a sardine on a 380 as well.

11 abreast in a 777? No wonder you hate that plane. Who flies that monstrosity? Is that 3-5-3 seating in a 6.2m fuselage? Or is it 6-5? Do you have to turn sideways to fit?

That was exaggeration for effect. Not even in the 747 or 380 do you see 11 abreast. (JAL tried it as a short-lived experiment once, nobody liked it, surprise surprise).

It’s an available option that Airbus sells for the A380 (3-5-3 in economy), but thankfully no airlines currently use it that I know of. To my knowledge, Boeing has never considered it.

And I also like planes with four engines.

I haven't been on a 380 but I've been on an older 747, and even in the back, in the middle of a row of seats, it was by far the most comfortable experience I've had in a plane. Cushy seats, enough legroom, and a very smooth flight. I agree with you about the noisyness of the 777; crossing the Pacific in one, compared to a 747, is a night-and-day difference, although that was in a much newer 777.

Perhaps it makes some sense, but not enough sense for airlines to buy/lease these airliners. If people demanded them, the airlines would be supplying them.

Perh if Australia or Japan had 300million people and they had lots of business travelers, airlines would see a future in it, but for now, it seems they don't. Budget airlines seem to have seen the biggest growth. A380s aren't quite budget.

I question anyone who would chose any other plane over the 787 if they had a choice, especially for long haul flights. My sinuses are night and day feeling better after a flight on a 787. That alone makes up for any annoyance with the windows or other minor inconveniences people frequently quote.

> its not 11 abreast pack-em-in which is what the 787 has done

Citation needed! I just checked every airline’s seating config for the 787 and all are either 3-3-3 or more rarely 2-4-2 in economy.

This is true of all the modern fleet, A350, A380, and the 787, in my extensive experience.

The 787 is definitively better than the A380 (spec wise and personal experience wise) for cabin pressurization and humidity, but I’ve not flown on the A350. As it turns out, the A350 specs out better on both air quality measures than the 787 (just looked it up) and professional reviewers agree it’s better.

I think you even cut the quote short...

> In business, its not 11 abreast pack-em-in which is what the 787 has done

“In business” as in business class? Most 787 I’ve been on are 1-2-1 reverse herringbone in business.

Fair point, 11 across seating is complete b/s for business, but it’s being offered by Airbus for economy on the A380 (3-5-3). Funny that he accuses the 787 of doing something lousy the A380 actually offers.

Most of my flights these days are on ANA 787's and I honestly can't feel any resulting difference in the humidity/pressurization even though I'm told it's there.

Take note of how much fluids you drink and how dry your nose / throat feels after the flights. Maybe you’re lucky and it doesn’t make as much difference to your body, but it does for many (including me).

Certainly it makes more or less of a difference to different people but you said "I question anyone who would chose any other plane over the 787", so I was explaining why some people don't see any pros to the 787.

> I just checked every airline’s seating config for the 787 and all are either 3-3-3 or more rarely 2-4-2 in economy.

Is "economy" a more expensive tier? It doesn't seem to make sense that the cheaper tier would give more space per passenger.

Both of those are for economy.

> I question anyone who would chose any other plane over the 787 if they had a choice

Often that choice is also linked with picking a different airline company. For routes I care about I would need to fly United, American or BA and I rank all of those very low on my picks of airlines. I think for my personal comfort the airline matters much more than the difference between a 787, 330, 350 or 380 make.

First class on an A380 is a better experience than a 787, if we're talking economy the economy upper deck on LH flights are truly a bliss to fly in: the first row is highly recommended.

I've had far better experiences as a passenger in Y and C (I rarely fly intl F) on 767, 777, 787, and a340s than on any A380. With some airlines I actively seek out the 767 flights because they pre-date the "maximum density seating" trend, and there are a bunch of airlines where mid-life refit aircraft are better than 3-5 year old newer aircraft.

I'm much more Boeing vs. Airbus as a meaningful distinction, or which generation of a particular airline's seating system (especially in C and F) than a specific-aircraft carer, though.

If you live under the London Heathrow flight path then the A380 makes a lot of sense. Despite many airlines operating point to point services rather than hub and spoke there are places like London Heathrow where a lot of people want to get to and there are not enough plane slots for everyone.

I do not believe that Heathrow is uniquely congested. These few airports, even if there are only five or so that have the same problems, are enough to necessitate some level of on-going A380 production. Simply put, without an A380 then you are not going to find it so easy to get the best Heathrow slots or enough of them for your passenger numbers. Ryanair won't be investing in A380s any time soon or planning to operate from Heathrow with other big planes but all of the former 'flag' airlines that go into Heathrow have the best plane for the job in the A380.

Incidentally I am amazed at how many more Airbus planes fly into Heathrow than Boeing. Particularly with the smaller jets, A320 size the equivalent Boeing planes seem relatively rare. Imaginably they are on a different flight path.

I also fully expect that there are public relations companies with vested interests in saying that the A380 is doomed. I am sure there were public relations companies telling the world the plane was going to sell 4x more than it did.

Despite the hubris of the market I am sure that there are some sensible people in Airbus that work to different market expectations than the salesmen and can appreciate the passenger perspective cited by yourself as well as the realities for folk who live in places close to the likes of London Heathrow. The demand is solid if not as big as first advertised and these big planes have a big future. Which is sad if you are green minded and consider the level of travel a bit silly.

> Incidentally I am amazed at how many more Airbus planes fly into Heathrow than Boeing. Particularly with the smaller jets, A320 size the equivalent Boeing planes seem relatively rare. Imaginably they are on a different flight path.

There's a transatlantic divide here: Airbus is a European manufacturer and disproportionately popular in Europe, the converse is true with Boeing in America. The NYT being a US paper and HN being a mostly-American site, you'll see a tendency to favour Boeing here.

Wide-body aircrafts with lots of space inside to walk around every few hours in a 12 hour flight are great. For such long trips, I prefer the big B747 or A380 over these ultra long wide-body but still quite claustrophobic narrow low ceiling noisy aircrafts (e.g. B777) that barely have enough restrooms fitted in.

Wholeheartedly agree that I prefer the A380, particularly for its comfort, low noise and high stability. BUT, I'd always prefer to fly as directly as possible so I'd pick a direct-to-destination flight any day. And as far as multi-leg-journeys go, for the Asia-Europe route nothing is more infuriating than adding four hours in the air just to detour through Dubai. Granted, it's the smoothest transit experience I've had, but I'd rather save time and run through Schiphol if that is an option.

I've flown to Australia a couple of times now. The first time I specifically tried to book flights on the A380 since I had never flown on one before. The second time I specifically tried to avoid the A380 because the experience wasn't impressive. The only real advantage the A380 had was that the bathrooms were larger.

I'd love to try the 787, but the only real advantage I expect it to have is that they are able to maintain a higher humidity in the cabin.

I completely agree. I actively seek A380 flights out from Australia as they're always far more comfortable. The Dreamliner is ok if you're doing long internal flights (eg. Melb to Perth) but I've never enjoyed a dreamliner flight to Changi as much as I have with an A380.

One interesting point, about airports being at capacity. A third runway at London Heathrow is estimated to cost roughly the same as the entire A380 program!

In a world where an additional runway (at the most congested airport) costs as much as creating a futuristic gigantic airplane from scratch, maybe it's not that crazy? (Not sure how the additional spacing and other costs with the A380 add into this, but still interesting to think about).

An additional runway at London Heathrow Airport will cost $20B USD [1]. The A380 development costs are estimated between $17B-$28B USD [2].

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-42399840

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

Reminds me, got called for mentioning the cost of expanding California's airports as a justification for California's high speed rail.

Combining the two would make more sense, meaning put the airport farther away where land is cheap and the flights won't annoy people and run passengers too and from via a high speed shuttle. Bonus you can put security on the pickup side of the rail line.

Put security inside the damn train and we'll talk.

I'm not sure on the train but Spain has security scans at railway departures for long distance rail. Not as stringent as for an international aeroplane flight but, given the investment, in theory it could be.

Security theatre for trains? Then it's not a train no more, but just an airplane that doesn't fly.

> Combining the two would make more sense, meaning put the airport farther away where land is cheap and the flights won't annoy people and run passengers too and from via a high speed shuttle. Bonus you can put security on the pickup side of the rail line.

This is exactly what Hong Kong did: http://www.mtr.com.hk/en/customer/services/complom_checkin.h...

Shanghai has a maglev shuttle between Longyang Road and the airport, the 30km trip takes ~8mn. Going by car or on line 2 takes ~45mn.

> where land is cheap and the flights won't annoy people

You'd need to back this up with strong zoning. I think it was Sacramento where they put the airport out in the countryside .. and then land developers discovered all this cheap land near it. Sure enough, the new residents started complaining about the noise from takeoffs and landings.

Flight paths is one of the things I look at when I pick a new place to live.

In San Jose they ended up buying up and demolishing a whole neighborhood. It was a big deal at the time, but likely forgotten by most people.

I find it annoying that they build commuter rail projects and scrupulously avoid going too close to the airport when by rights the airport aught to be a standard stop.

I'm from Sacramento. The land that developers built on was formerly designated floodplain (still is a floodplain) but did some trickery to get it cheaply and build houses on it. I believe some rezoning was at play, but regardless, the area around the airport when they built it, was suppose to not ever have houses built on it.

The problem is the extra capacity of the A380 is possibly negated by the extra spacing it needs due to the hellish jet wash behind it.

That's a relevant point - the 380 needs more separation, typically 3 minutes instead of 2. However most of the big "hub" airports are just as constrained by gate availability as by raw landing slots, and the capacity of the 380 makes up the difference (they get paid by passenger and MTOW).

For example, an airport like heathrow might have 3 gates free and 8 minutes clear air on the runway. They could take 2 a380s at 0 and 3 minutes for ~900 passengers, or 3 787s (0, 2, 4 minutes) for about the same number pax. In both cases the runway is clear at 6 minutes, but with the 380 they have a gate free. If they can get another plane then they're ahead. And the numbers get even better if you replace the 787s with narrowbodies..

But the A380 takes longer to unload, clean and load again and so takes up gate space for longer. I'm sure it's not long enough to equal three 787s, but it's certainly diminishing returns.

Oh absolutely. You can turn around a small plane in under an hour, a feat you'd be really pushing to do with a 380. Even refuelling for a long haul can take longer than that.

And different constraints apply to different airports. If you have plenty of gates but no landing slots, like Heathrow, you don't mind if the planes hang around a little longer. Atlanta would have the opposite issue with their 5 runways, which could theoretically fill all their gates in just over an hour.

It's a fairly interesting optimisation problem.

I was always wondering why no one has started using 6/7 doors for loading/unloading. You could get all passengers on/off in less than 10 minutes each, the doors are there.

Cleaning is just a question of how many people work on it and refuelling could be done by 2 trucks I guess? At the moment they just don't need it because the plane won't be turned around faster anyway (boarding with 3 doors takes 20+ min alreay).

> I was always wondering why no one has started using 6/7 doors for loading/unloading.

I can answer your question with a question, name an airport with that many jet bridges at one gate.

Why does one need jet bridges? Setting up the portable stairs seems like an easy solution to this problem.

I think it's just not worth it. Gates would have to be redone at huge expense with aerobridges on either side, and the technical challenge of putting the bridge over or around the wing somehow would be formidable and expensive. Airports would be loathe to eat the cost. And unless you very tightly controlled the passenger load order and which side they were on etc, there'd just be chaos on board anyway with people colliding after loading from the wrong door.

I think the fact is that even though it annoys us as passengers if it takes 10 minutes to get off the plane, it doesn't make all that much difference to the turnaround time. There's still fuel onload, baggage and cargo off/onload, catering (which uses the back doors currently), waste materials offload, technical checks.. there's a certain irreducible amount of time it will always take, which increases with the plane size.

The fastest I've ever seen a flight turned around was about ~15 minutes (a late 737 trying to get away before a storm hit in Sydney), skipping catering, cleaning and my bag. I've heard SouthWest aims for about 25 minutes, but they had to get rid of assigned seating and be pretty strict with carry-on luggage to achieve that. That seems like the most optimised anyone's going to be able to do, and that's exclusively 737s.

I've heard of refuelling being done with 2 trucks though. It can take 2 hours to fuel a 380 going its maximum range. If a plane was an hour late and they needed to turn it around fast to meet a curfew, that's something they can do. Wouldn't be worth it with narrowbodies which can be done in 15 minutes.

Why not use stairs? Many low cost carriers do that for smaller planes. People who don't want to walk stairs can still wait and exit via the front but others will appreciate getting out quicker. Many business travellers only use carry-on so that it doesn't matter to them when luggage comes out. And even a business class in a A380 can currently take long to deboard.

Using stairs is usually safe enough, the left side of the plane tends to be clear and having one person monitoring that no one leaves the area is sufficient.

London Heathrow, which was mentioned here, is solely restricted by runway capacity. They could increase capacity with mixed mode (using both runways for take off and departure) but the government doesn't allow that.

Loosening the rules at Heathrow (mixed mode and removing restrictions for landings between 5am-6am) could easily boost capacity by 20-30%. I'm sure they'd find space for some more gates, part of the Terminal 1/2/3 area is unused anyway because of construction.

Interning at Boeing in 2005, when the Dreamliner was still 2-3 years away from production, I asked a BD manager if Boeing was worried about A380 (the burning question at the time was "Who is going to win, A380/Airbus or Dreamliner/Boeing").

Without pause, he said "Not worried at all, A380 serves the hub and spoke model, which is dying. People hate layovers, they want more direct flights."

Not a hard insight to grasp, and one which seems to have doomed A380 from the start.

It is not a obvious insight to grasp since airlines take a strategy that makes them the most money and passengers are cost sensitive. Wasn't this the driving force behind the hum and spoke model?

Passengers are cost AND travel-time/hassle sensitive. It appears Airbus didn't place enough value into the "travel-time/hassle" part.

More detail: the Dreamliner is 20% more efficient than previous generation planes. This allowed airlines to "break" the major hubs into many quicker/easier direct flights at a price that passengers are willing to pay. Boeing bet increasing value in this manner was superior than Airbus's bet to simply make hubs cheaper to operate.

>Passengers are cost AND travel-time/hassle sensitive.

Especially among business travelers. Many business travelers may still shop on price up to a point but they'll tend to do so given that the flights have the same number of stops.

For me, the price needs to be quite a bit lower to justify a layover even on pure financial grounds. I can't back this up with any hard math, but my sense is that time in transit curtails my productivity severely enough that there'd have to be a pretty enormous savings in ticket price to offset the cost of having me spend (say) twice as much time camping out in airport waiting areas and being subject to takeoff/landing laptop embargos.

I can't really point to a whole lot of productivity when traveling anyway. And, if I'm being honest, I will sometimes take connections to fly preferred (because of programs) airlines on longer flights. But, yeah, it's more time and that many more opportunities to have blown up travel plans that do lose significant chunks of time.

Passangers are sensitive to travel time but the constraint is placed firmly on cost, particular on major tourism destinations where airports are already saturated.

Furthermore, some international and national air travel networks are in fact organized in a hub and spoke pattern, particularly trans-oceanic flights where demand is high and cost is the main competitive advantage, including business travel.

It's easy to claim now that the choice that was made a couple of decades ago was the right or wrong one, just like it's very easy to pick yesterday's lottery numbers, but if the world economy didn't tanked and if Airbus's projects weren't with so many delays then I really doubt Boeing's bet would be so right.

> just like it's very easy to pick yesterday's lottery numbers

It can be harder than it appears. Never forget the poor Chinese guy who noticed that the winning lottery numbers were announced before the close of ticket sales, and got thrown in jail for his pains.

The Dreamliner can also fly about 2x as many miles between servicing (due to more careful logging of wear and tear), which means not only lower costs but also fewer logistical problems about getting the plane back to a maintenance facility before the FAA is breathing down your neck for noncompliance.

And in general, Twins are just lower maintenance.

> Wasn't this the driving force behind the hum and spoke model?

No, the range of small jets (which were constrained by relatively unreliable, inefficient engines) was. Small jets can safely go further today than they could before. Boeing saw this. To be fair, Airbus also saw this. Political factors, similar to those behind NASA’s Space Shuttle debacle, constrained them to making a giant ass plane.

This.

To be fair, Airbus actually owned the big twin market until the 767 and 757 came out. Then those planes (as well as Airbus's own planes) fragmented transatlantic flying. Then they lost their way when they focused on the A380 - but the engines that enabled the 787 were not yet out.

This is a great video on the economics of the hub and spoke vs. direct model embodied by the A380 vs 787: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M

That channel also has alot of very interesting content on the economics of air travel (e.g., seating classes, how tickets are priced, etc).

Others have mentioned the improvements in range in more fuel-efficient aircraft. But there's also other incentives at play. Remember when United had a passenger dragged off the plan on a commuter flight? Turns out that wasn't United, but one of many regional airlines that contracts with United. United's union contract constrains the size of these flights, but the pilots at these airlines make less than members of the union. So there's other incentives for airlines to abandon hub-and-spoke in favor of more commuter flights.

If I were building a model, I would estimate my customers average hourly income and figure that is how to calculate break even in a time vs money calculation for a flight. I make 60 an hour (low for regular flyers I bet), a flight change adds 4 hours, so a $240 cost difference for each direct flight is realistic. That might turn into real money if you scale it.

I have a suspicion which is you are right, ticket prices don't capture full cost. Especially for business passengers.

Problem with the spoke and hub model is passengers not only decide on whether to fly based on price but on psychological stress[1]. When that gets too high they won't fly no matter what the price is. Airlines probably make more money if they _all_ charge more for lower stress flights.

[1] More stress means business travelers need more down time after flights, which lowers productivity and moral. Long stressful flights impacts the quality of vacation travel.

People don't actually value things that way, because people don't work for a wage every hour they aren't doing something else. This kind of calculation comes up all the time when people are trying to "value their time", but the reality is quite different.

Listened to the American Airlines CEO talk about the hub and spoke a couple months ago and they seem pretty committed to it. He was saying that if there was an obvious market for a direct flight, they would break the hub and spoke, but otherwise, it was there to say.

It's probably more accurate to say that airlines have tended to move toward more and often smaller hubs augmented by some point to point flights than that they're abandoning hub and spoke entirely.

Hub and spoke allows the airlines to keep costs down by using smaller airplanes for the spoke routes which can be contracted out to smaller regional airlines that pay their pilots peanuts.

Isn't A350 the competitor to Dreamliner? I think A380 was aimed at replacing B747, which it did. Also I feel (no data) that hub and spoke is alive and well. It's just that it is using more efficient, lower capacity flights (B787, A350) which are easier to fill up and maintain.

The 787 replaced the 767 in Boeing's lineup, which in turn was competitor of the 350. The 747 is still incredibly successful for cargo, so the 380 didn't replace it; it is absolutely nuts that AirBus didn't come up with a cargo version of the 380 yet.

Next up is the 777, which has higher capacity than the 787/350. However, it is modern enough that it can probably just be upgraded, no new plane is needed.

You can't just take the seats out and fill it with boxes? What else is needed for a cargo plane?

Usually you need special flooring with tie-downs and rollers to facilitate moving the load around, which helps maintain an appropriate CG (Center of Gravity).

Purpose-built freighter models also remove things that aren't necessary and just add weight - such as windows (packages don't need a view). This allows the carrier to transport more cargo in the same flight.

You need a good way to get the boxes on and off the plane, such as the 747 freighter's nose door [1]. The A380 can't be fitted with one of these due to its cockpit placement.

The 2nd floor of the A380 also can't be removed because it's required structurally, and that really limits the size of the cargo you could potentially put in it.

1: http://www.aerospace-technology.com/wp-content/uploads/sites...

Supposedly the A380 also has a max weight that would not use all the available volume for cargo.

"The A380-F would be able to carry 60% more volume than the 747, but only 28% more weight."

https://www.flexport.com/blog/airbus-a380-no-cargo-equivalen...

Is that a restriction? Are cargo planes typically flying at weight capacity? I thought with ecommerce, more lower-weight items are now flown.

The A380's maximum takeoff weight is 575,000kg, compared to 447,700kg for a 747-8 freighter. However, the A380 -- sitting empty on the ground -- weighs 80,000kg more to begin with, and also requires more fuel (because of its greater mass).

The result is that the useful payload of an A380 is lower than a 747-8F (about 84,000kg versus 132,000kg).

And that's without getting into the other issues, like the A380's structural middle-deck (which can't be removed to turn the interior into a giant cargo hold) or inability to have its nose turned into a large cargo door like a 747 (the A380's flight deck is too low to the ground, in order to maintain training compatibility with the A330 and A340).

777 has incredible range, the current 777-LR (worldliner) still flies further than the 787. I think Boeing will upgrade the 777 with better composites and engines, but I doubt 777 will be die anytime soon.

The 777X program is already well advanced, with first flight expected sometime next year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777X

There was a 380 cargo version. It was not economical for operators to fly and all the initial orders were cancelled. It was called the 380F.

The Airbus competitor to the 767 is the not the A350, it is the A330, which is ubiquitous outside of NA in the medium haul market. It has been an extremely successful plane for Airbus and will likely continue to be so with the A330neo.

While each company's offerings overlap somewhat, the A350 is a substantially larger plane and competes with the 777.

Widebody twin 2-class capacity (variants):

  767  | 216 / 261 / 296
  A330 |       246 / 300
  787  |       242 / 290 / 330
  A350 |                   325 / 366
  777  |                   313 /     / 396
  777X |                         365 / 414

I stand corrected, thanks! The 767 is replaced by the 787 still (well, the 767 is still in production for non passenger uses), which exists in the space as a smaller wide body.

The A380 doesn't make sense for cargo. Too much volume for the weight it can lift. At the average plane cargo density, an A380 cargo would be at weight capacity way before it gets to volume capacity.[1]

The A380 cannot lift much more than a B747. But it has more volume, which comes in handy for passengers, not for cargo.

[1]: https://www.flexport.com/blog/airbus-a380-no-cargo-equivalen...

edit: 747 n° mistake

The A380's useful payload is actually less then a 747 freighter. The added weight of the aircraft itself, plus the extra fuel necessary to get and keep it airborne, eats up all the extra takeoff weight capacity and then some.

The 380 and the 747 really aren't comparable and the 380 didn't replace the 747. 747 is widely used for cargo routes for example. The 380 was Airbus saying they think there is a market for a jet significantly larger than the 747. Boeing didn't think there was enough market for two superjumbos so they just added a bit to the 747 instead of designing a whole new 380 competitor.

The A350 is more of a competitor to the 777 (it's base configuration is larger then the base configuration then the 787). It basically is in the space between the 777 and the 787.

However, it does compete with the a380. Every time you see a seat on a flight between Denver and Narita, realize that it's a seat that isn't on a A380 flying between San Fransisco or LAX and Japan.

Isn't A350 the competitor to Dreamliner?

No. The A350 and 787 both use composite materials, and that's the end of the similarities; they're planes of different size classes, designed for different market niches.

The A350 is a competitor for the 777; both planes are designed for high-demand long-haul routes.

Airbus currently does not have a competitor for the 787, which is designed for medium-demand long- to ultra-long-haul routes.

Or in other words: an A350 or 777 is what you fly between two major top-tier cities with lots of passenger demand. Think of routes like Hong Kong to San Francisco (which is routinely flown by... A350s and 777s). A 787 is what you fly between places that are far apart, but don't have quite so much demand.

This is important because the 787 has opened up the possibility of flying routes airlines wouldn't have considered before, while the A350 just plops into existing routes easily. The 787 was basically single-handedly responsible for the return of trans-Pacific flights to San Jose, for example, and Qantas is about to launch nonstop(!) service from Perth to London on a 787.

You have to admit that it was a gamble though.

As long as hub & spoke works out cheaper (which it will thanks to centralisation & economies of scale) it'll have a place in the budget market

As far as I am aware, there are no A380s in the charter market yet (which is a lot of budget market) and very very few in the discount carrier world (EasyJet, RyanAir, Sprit, Norwegian, Iceland Air, etc). The charter carriers and discount carriers typically don't have the traffic to sustain these flights, and really don't have first or business class traffic to sustain the flight.

The a380 was made for large traffic to and from Asian cities. If there is going to be a savior for the program, that's where it will come from.

There are rumors that Airbus has approached China to talk about taking over a large portion of the project, in exchange for Chinese orders. That's something to keep a eye on.

It looks like the problem with the hub & spoke model right now is that the big hub airports are all slot-restricted. LCCs like to use smaller airports out of town that have cheaper open slots, and this makes it harder to implement hubs. But I predict as they build out intercontinental travel (like Norwegian are doing now), hubs will emerge for the intra-continental legs.

>right now is that the big hub airports are all slot-restricted

Dubai too? Looked to me like they had loads of capacity left last few times I went through

Can you clarify why it serves the hub and spoke model?

The only routes with enough people to fill an A380 are from one hub to another.

If you flew Buffalo to Chicago to Denver to Colorado Springs, the Chicago to Denver leg could be on an A380 combined with people on tons of other itineraries that use the same hub-to-hub connection.

But airlines are moving toward more small flights that just get you from one place to another without routing through the same central points. Maybe you'd fly direct, or maybe you'd fly to Chicago and then straight to Colorado Springs without going through Denver. Without the hub/spoke model there's no individual flight with so many people on it.

Chicago - Denver is too short a flight to justify an A380 even if it’s full. Nothing short of NYC to SF or NYC to LAX would likely be justified.

Even when a hub->hub flight is that full it might make sense to run two smaller planes. People who arrive a little earlier get the earlier flight and get there sooner. If there is mechanical problems at least half the customers get there (probably more than half as you can fill empty seats) and are happy. If not enough people buy tickets one day you park a plane and fly a full plane instead of a half full one.

But this is also the Dubai business model. Nobody wants to stay there, it's just a convenient stop. With more direct flights Dubai will also die.

Also the EU is strongly behind this project. This is more than just Airbus or Emirates.

So I see no death of the A380, even if the market moved on since.

Dubai won't die but the region won't need 3 super-hubs anymore (DOH, DXB, AUH).

>People hate layovers, they want more direct flights.

still waiting for direct sin-jfk or syd-lhr.

none exist.

SIN-EWR used to exist, but it was too costly to run.

edit: the new a350-900 ULR delivering this year is capable of flying long distance, so we'll see some of these flights reappear, esp now that fuel is cheap again.

Qantas announced last year that they're interested in flying direct to London and some other European cities from the eastern states of Australia. They're still waiting for a plane that can economically I think. A variant of the 777X might be an option.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/qantas-eyes-sydney-to-london-dir...

SYD-LHR will come as soon as technically possible. It'll be a 20h flight but can probably mostly be filled with business and premium eco. The yield on that route would be high enough to justify it (SIN-EWR was only so costly because the plane wasn't built for the distance).

> People hate layovers, they want more direct flights.

But the fact that people hate layovers is a tool that airlines use for price discrimination. I just searched priceline.com for one-way flights to PVG on February 20. SFO to PVG nonstop is $640 and up. LAX to PVG with a layover in SFO is $594.

It might be true for US domestic flights, but for international flights you'll always have many people flying from one population hub to an other.

Think Paris-Tokyo, London-New York, etc. You'll never have a direct flight from Edinburg to Osaka anyway.

While we may never have the Edinburg to Osaka direct flight, the 5 people/month (number made up, it seems reasonable) who make that trip want it. The smaller the plane the can profitably make those long trips the more small airports get direct flights and the happier customers will be.

I know if I could get a direct flight to my in-laws only once a week I'd plan my vacation around when the plane runs over taking a layover someplace I don't want to be.

There are a lot of great books on the founding, planning, engineering and delivering the A380. All of them come to one painful conclusion - the A380 was driven more by politics and enabled by launch aid, rather then by real market need.

Airbus has seen the effect of the Arbus 300, Boeing 767 and Boeing 757 in the transatlantic market and knew that large twins capable of going trans-pacific (777 and 787) would similarly fragment pacfic markets. But it was worth it to the EU project, especially in the heady millennium world when it was planned, to have it as a prestige project, and the market would be solid enough, if not as large as Leahy and others were projecting.

People forget because of the debacle of the 787's engineering, but A380 had massive engineering problems - not with the fundamentals (the 747 was the worlds first double decker, first widebody - and the A380 was only a marginal capacity over the 747) but rather in that they had a lot of political problems, configuration errors, etc. The 787 still hasn't shown a profit (but it will) the A380 will never do so, even if EK does order a new plane.

Finally, Emirates Airline (EK) is in a pickle here. They have a unbelievable percentage of the overall A380 frames. Airbus ending the program plane will result in the resale value of the A380s simnifically depreciating. EK saw this coming a while ago and moves most of their orders over to leasing, but Airbus has EK in a unenviable position here.

Well, it goes both ways: EK, being essentially a monopsony customer, is also in a great place to squeeze more concessions from Airbus. That's why the two sides are currently engaged in a game of chicken, with EK pulling what seemed like a done deal at the last Dubai airshow ("too expensive, lower your price!") and Airbus now making rumbling noises about cancelling production entirely ("price is too low, no plane for you!").

It does. It's the banking debt problem. When you owe the bank money, you have a problem. When you owe the bank a lot of money, they have a problem.

Would you recommend a book on the planning?

> The 787 still hasn't shown a profit (but it will)

I would say that's yet to be seen. Last I heard they're still making a loss on every plane, something like $28B in the hole with no end in sight. But it's a simplistic measurement anyway - obviously they will be able to use their learnings from that program in future projects, just as Airbus will. Luckily both manufacturers have incredibly profitable narrowbody lines to keep the lights on.

Remember the 380 project was what finally forced Airbus to become a proper integrated company rather than a weird conglomerate of disparate working groups in different countries. I don't think anyone would disagree the project will never recoup its costs but an argument could be made that for the company as a whole it was worth it. You could make similar arguments for the 787 project too - both are indeed extremely interesting endeavours at multiple levels.

Is the loss for Airbus really so dramatic? Maybe having a complete line-up and being prepared in case demand had developed differently made it worth having this loss. Car manufacturers also don't run all models at a profit but still need a full line-up to retain customers. I don't think it's that different for airlines. Airbus makes their money with A320 (plus some from A330 and maybe at some point A350).

What a shame. The best flying experience I've ever had was coach on an A380 from SFO to Frankfurt. It was the only time I arrived feeling awake and fresh. The air felt cleaner, the lighting was great, and it was so smooth.

I get why it isn't popular, but it's just too bad. I really liked flying on one.

this so much. same connection.

I recently flew a 787 for first time and felt it provided a similar spacious experience to A380. Ceiling space and the large windows seems to help that experience.

I'd still hate to see jumbo jets (specially A380) to disappear.

Both the A380 and 787 have higher internal cabin pressures (equivalent of 6000ft). All other planes operate at lower pressure. Anything above 6000ft leads to altitude sickness for those who live at ~0ft.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/columnist/hobica/2017/...

You forgot the A350, which is also mentioned in the article.

This is really good marketing but not really true. A recent study of pressurization found that 747s tend to be operated at lower pressurization the a380s (which are typically run a bit higher then their rates). Almost 1k feet IIRC.

What makes a huge huge difference is humidity. I get off a Denver to narita 787 feeling like it was a long Colorado to California flight, whereas a SFO to Narita flight on a 380 or 747 wrecks me.

Given Denver's altitude of ~5000', the smaller take-off pressurization effect may be a (small?) factor. You're almost acclimatized to cabin pressure already.

Denver's altitude also means a lower maximum takeoff weight. Perhaps less cargo/passengers = faster luggage / more empty seats?

The 787 air quality is better for two reasons: it has a higher humidity and it contains less VOCs. The reason for both of these factors is that the 787 is designed to take cabin air directly from the atmosphere rather than from a compressor bleed valve as in every other aircraft.

This was a radical design decision for Boeing because bleed air usually has three key functions: it is hot enough to cause toxic ozone gas to decompose, it is at high pressure so can pressurise the cabin and it is hot so it can heat the cabin. Without bleed air Boeing had to do all these things with new components, they have an ozone filter/catalyst, an electrical compressor and a RAM heat exchanger to heat up the air (basically slows down the air increasing its temperature). The system is more complex but according to Boeing uses less energy [1] and makes servicing the engines easier.

For passengers, external air contains more moisture than the bleed air (air becomes less humid if it is compressed and heated) so the inlet air humidity is around 7% compared to 2% on other planes. But this is still less than the humidity in a typical cabin which is about 10 to 20%. Some of this is residual moisture that is recirculated but most is from passenger respiration and transpiration [2]. Even so the higher inlet humidity coming in can significantly slow down the loss of moisture over a long flight. In addition VOCs and other bleed air contaminants are minimised [3] which Boeing claims means we feel better after a long flight.

[1] http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_4...

[2] http://webserver.dmt.upm.es/~isidoro/tc3/Aircraft%20ECS.pdf

[3] https://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/oam...

This sort of anecdata always crops up on airline threads. Flight experience can vary pretty wildly by airline, even on the same type of plane, since the interior layout and amenities are up to the airline, and not the plane manufacturer.

The best long haul experience I've had in recent years was on a Singapore Airlines A380. The worst one in the same timeframe was on a British Airways A380. Both times economy class.

I've been on a 787 on a few different carriers and they've all been pretty nice.

They're objectively much quieter in the cabin than the vast majority of airliners. That was the huge difference for me at least.

Try a 787 sometime, you'll have a similar experience.

It has everything to do with being a new plane with new technologies (higher air pressure, better lighting, newer seats, etc.). Nothing specific to the A380.

Higher humidity too

> It has everything to do with being a new plane with new technologies

That's true, and I still am looking for a chance to get on a 787.

Although I don't think anything can replicate the smoothness of the A380, it's just so big.

There’s another factor to consider that one doesn’t usually think about, emergency evacuation. Watch this video [0] which many in the industry think was rigged to even get this number and tell me which plane you’d rather be on.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_gqWeJGwV_U

I worked at Airbus while the A380 was being developed, I still remember fondly seeing the test flights over our office and looking at it in awe. Then a while later I got to fly in one and it is indeed the best and most modern plane I've been in.

I like to use A380 as an analogy when a team works to perfect a product, adds lots of features, rewrites it a few times with the latest most buzzword-compliant technology, tests it until it is absolutely perfect, and ships it. ... Only to find out by that time the market has moved on and nobody wants to buy that kind of a thing anymore.

Pretty sure that's a common theme for companies which end up on https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

I'm quite happy the Airbus hasn't adopted "move fast an break things" yet. Because those "things" would possibly include my femur.

The problem is that you cannot simply ship a not "absolutely perfect" plane. Or, actually, it's not a problem but a blessing given that there were no commercial flight related fatalities in the USA in 2017 (per http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aviation-safety-201801...).

No doubt: Without the drastic levels of regulation the FAA (and JAA) impose on civilian flight, fatalities would be orders of magnitude higher.

Cheap shot, but I'll take it.

All 14 days of 2018? :)

It's actually been six years of no fatalities.

The article said in 2017, probably a typo on the poster's side. The article is about Trump trying to take credit for this (as he always does), when it is actually the 6th straight year without fatalities. Politically speaking, we are living in dark times even if aviation is super safe.

> probably a typo on the poster's side.

Yep, blaming this typo on a severe undercaffeination.

> Politically speaking, we are living in dark times even if aviation is super safe.

The interesting question is: given the political climate (and especially the President's habit of "getting rid of rules"), how long will aviation stay super safe?

Reliability is one measure of 'perfection' for an aircraft (and certainly a very important one), but it's hardly the only one that matters, especially when viewing said aircraft as a product that is competing with other similar products.

2017 also saw no commercial flight related fatalities worldwide, in large part due to the NTSB (and it's non-US equivalents) process of getting the root cause of each crash and putting in place systems or procedures to eliminate that particular failure domain.

I have heard of that applied to software development - when a bug happens there two bugs effectively to fix: the bug itself and the reason the bug slipped past testing and QA.

Definitely. Mature (in terms of process, not age) companies realize this and design planning, update, post-mortem processes accordingly.

The 787s had a bad habit of catching on fire in midair shortly after they first launched, and they seem to have been fairly successful since then. Like any other industry, airlines have a wide gulf between "absolutely perfect" and "good enough".

There's "perfect" as in "perfectly reliable and perfectly safe" and "perfect" as in "we achieved every last design goal regardless of other factors".

That last part is where Airbus may have missed the mark as design goals such as the A380's high floorspace to seat ratio were great decisions given its intended market (long haul flights, customers like space on long haul flights) also led to a less-than-optimal passengers per flight to operating cost per flight ratio in a market where hub to hub demand is declining. It also led to a low maximum takeoff weight for the size of its floorplan, making it useless as a freight/cargo aircraft, the one niche where the ancient 747 still reigns as king of the skies. A more robust design intended to hold more passengers would have also allowed it to carry more cargo which may have saved the program considering how expensive 747s are to operate.

I know this is slightly off topic, but this just happened to me recently. I wanted to make a stupid website that let you make those Ajit Pai memes where he was eating popcorn in front of a green screen.

I managed to get the basics working in less than a day somewhere during mid december, but only ended up publishing it nine days ago. The meme was totally dead and the only actual function of the site was in teaching me to (hopefully) not make this mistake again!

In that time there was no absolutely necessary functionality I had added, it was all just polish, yet I wouldn't let myself make it public without adding it. I don't know how to stop doing this, but I feel like it's becoming a serious problem with anything I do.

Alright, let us at least screw around with it, please.

Haha you're more than welcome to https://paiboi.herokuapp.com/

Dank.

> Only to find out by that time the market has moved on and nobody wants to buy that kind of a thing anymore.

... But somebody wanted to buy this product. Airbus expected the project to break even at ~300 sales and they have gotten 317 firm orders so far. People are massively overstating the commercial "failure" of this project. Even with their development troubles, Airbus is getting close to breaking even, if they can generate more sales over the next decade or so. (The break even point is estimated to be ~400 now.)

There are still firm orders for 5 years of production on the books. Early adopters are replacing their oldest planes with newly produced ones right now. ANA put in an entirely new, firm order two years ago despite not operating this type at all. Yes, no sale in 2 years is not great, but even Jan 2016 was long after everyone on the internet was calling for Airbus to kill the entire project already. If the 380 succeeds in ANA's fleet, there is scope for more orders from them or their close competitors.

Iran also has an agreement with Airbus that includes 12 380s, though that's not a firm order as far as I can tell. In addition to this, Emirates will probably have to order 50-100 new planes on top of their existing orders to replace their aging fleet in the near future. Emirates want an 380NEO, but they will probably have to accept the 380Plus that Airbus favors. Once they do, the 380 project will have the orders it needs to reach break even and to keep the production line open until a NEO makes sense. And if passenger numbers keep on increasing at 4-5% every year over the 10-15 years the 380 is likely to stay in production, the market Airbus had expected/hoped for originally might very well materialize.

If you follow @FakeUnitedJeff (United CEO parody account, but obviously an insider), he said this today:

"I predict Airbus will abandon the A380 soon and the type will phase out of non-Mideast 3 as they hit their first major maintenance check or lease end."

Worth nothing that the first A380 to enter passenger service just finished its 10-year lease to Singapore Airlines. SA chose to return the plane.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-08/parked-in...

Are most planes leased? Do the manufacturers try to resell them when they come off lease or are they inspected to be used for parts for repair?

Most aircraft of that size are leased new - and then re-leased or sold to budget carriers.[1]

New models come out and the airline may want to switch/upgrade, and it's a lot of capital tied up in one aircraft if they were to purchase them outright.

[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/2374/2294

This Quora answer is a good resource too:

https://www.quora.com/How-does-the-airplane-leasing-business...

The TLDR is that leasing allows the airline a lot more flexibility in acquiring aircraft (and returning them if demand changes). It's cheaper to break the lease than try to sell a used aircraft on the open market. In the case of A380, it's probably keeping a few airlines out of bankruptcy.

They are not leased by the manufacturers but by aircraft leasing companies like AerCap and GECAS.

Depends on the airline. Most Middle Eastern airlines, for example, own the aircrafts they operate though a small number were indeed leased.

A brand new A380 lists for $300 million dollars so not all airlines have the cash to pay for them upfront, enter leasing companies who put down the capital and rent the planes out to interested airlines. Normally when the lease expires it is off to another renter at a marked.down price, however in case of the 380 this may be a bit difficult since only a few airlines have enough volume out of hubs to fill the plane, and chances are they already have more aircrafts than necessary.

So that makes me even more curious about the fate of airlines like Emirates.

The gulf states have been pouring money into these airlines and (allegedly) price-dumping seats to try and push others out of the routes. Delta has been very vocal about this:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/...

What's the endgame besides making Dubai into some kind of massive hub and spoke while sitting on a pile of A380s that nobody else wants? It seems like a financial black hole at this point as long as oil prices stay where they are.

This is a philosophical difference, in a way - running an asset-light business vs an asset-heavy business. Hotels have mostly moved towards not owning their properties, for example.

Increasingly, many new orders of aircraft are leases. However, they are not usually leased directly from the manufacturer. The airplane is usually owned by a holding company ("trust"), and tranches of the trust are sold to investors - somewhat similar to a mortgage bond.

The benefits of this is that investors from all over the world can invest directly into the airplane, then lease it to the airline. The plane itself is the collateral, and international treaties make it easy for investors to retrieve the plane if the airline isn't making its lease payments. They could then choose to lease the plane to someone else, sell it to someone else, or to scrap it for parts and materials.

What are the benefits for airlines? Typically, if things go south, they don't owe anything beyond giving the aircraft back. Also, given that many US airlines have gone through Chapter 11 recently, I'd assume they wouldn't get great interest rates if they actually want to buy the plane - it's likely cheaper for them to lease through an EETC. For example, American Airlines issued a bunch of EETC's the past few years.

It's a fairly niche subject, so the wiki page isn't too great, but here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equipment_trust_certificate

I don’t have a source to back this up, but I’d say 99% of all commercial jets are “leased”. The question is who holds the lease. I don’t believe it’s usually the manufacturer, far far more often it’s a “holding company” that’s associated with the airline. There’s extensive articles on the web that go in depth about why airlines don’t directly own their planes and rather lease from a holding company, but Tl;dr it’s mostly due to bankruptcy and tax reasons.

Here's a relevant video from Wendover productions explaining why Boeing 787 is doing better than A380.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M

This was super helpful in laying it out and surprisingly worth the time.

That's Wendover for you. All his air travel videos are great.

He's really good but often overly bullish on Boeing. Just because B787 and A380 were developed at the same time doesn't make them comparable. He nearly ignores the A321LR (which is successful because of the new model) and somewhat downplays that the B747-8 (the actual competitor to A380) isn't doing well either. Boeing didn't invest as much money in the B748 so it's not as severe but comparing the A380 with B787 is misleading.

Most comments about the A380 here are US-centered.

1. The A380 can be upgraded and can be made more fuel efficient. But this is an investment Airbus would have to made.

2. The hub model is not dead. There are major hubs that are dying (Singapore and Hongkong), there are current major hubs UAE, Moscow (Asia<>EU), Istanbul and there are coming major hubs (Addis Abbeba (EU, Asia <>Afica), potentially Tehran (geostrategic location, cheap oil, huge inner market, if they open up). At least if I look at it from China.

Especially from huge markets with price sensitive customers like India and China, I predict that the A380 could have a future. I think the Airbus CEO once said "This plane come 10 years too early".

China also has a couple potential hubs as seen from Europe.

China Southern (which flies A380 via CAN) and Air China (one of very few 747-8 operators) often have the cheapest flights to Asia these days.

Yes, of cause. The new China hubs (giant market, gov backed) are the reasons for the Downfall of HK and SG. (tiny market, geolocation not great).

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-01-19/ominous...

Putting public pressure on Emirates, by Airbus's outgoing sales chief: "buy now or you won't be able to buy in the future"

"Mr. Leahy, the Airbus chief operating officer, said on Monday that the A380’s best days were ahead. Passenger traffic is doubling every 15 years, he said, meaning that the original rationale for the model still holds."

They just need to tide it over the lean years.

EDIT: clarified what I meant with "pressure"

But the smaller planes are more efficient and scale better.

More efficient in what terms?

There's a limit to scalability at airports, especially the big & busy ones in western metropolis: JFK, LHR, FRA.

It's easy to build a new runway, or a new airport, in the desert, or when you can evict anyone in the way. But try doing in a country ruled by law, when the city has long engulfed the airport build in the 60s.

There could be more hubs though. Pittsburgh was once a major hub. Could it come back again? Any other airports like that?

It currently looks like you'll get more direct connections and thus fewer hubs. Some routes will never be direct (rural US to rural Europe) but it's enough to have 1-2 hubs serving those. All major city connections can be direct. However, that will not necessarily reduce congestion for large airports, the NYC area then has to serve more destinations than before (by shifting away from hub traffic to LHR).

The scalability of airports is really only an issue at a select few airports, though. JFK and LHR are the big ones that come to mind. FRA and ORD are pretty congested as well. SFO might become extremely congested in the future as they don't have much room to expand.

However, that's still only <10 airports in a world of thousands. Pretty much every major Asian airport (with the exception of Haneda) has tons of room to expand, and most are already doing so. Congestion is hardly an issue there. Even in the US, there are still airports with plenty of unused capacity: DFW, Denver, Dulles, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Detroit, etc have plenty of room to build new terminals and runways as needed. Even LAX and ATL are still sitting on plenty of land awaiting terminal expansion. And the same can be said for much of the small-medium sized airports in the US as well.

The A380 is important to JFK and LHR slots, but I think it's much more likely that we see a the growth of alternate airports and more point-to-point travel than it is that the entire industry will make an about-face regarding the A380 just for the sake of a handful of airports.

Denver's airport was built with ATL scale in mind. It's already the largest airport in the US by land size, nearly twice as large as the next airport on the list, which gives them tons of room to expand without needing to buy up neighboring plots.

The airport already has six runways and the master plan calls for six more. Two of the three existing concourses can be lengthened to add more gates and the plan allows for four more concourses without needing to reconfigure runways. Last year the city approved a plan for 39 new gates.

(In case you've ever wondered why taxiing at DEN takes forever, this is why)

Aye. It's a similar situation for DFW. The original master plan called for thirteen terminals (see pic [1]), not including the additional cargo terminals/ramps. It currently has 5, and although it will probably never expand to 13, there is enough land space for plenty of expansion.

1: https://airwaysmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/noahjeppso...

But the points that people want to fly to are those busy airports. New York, London, Tokyo etc. are not random places in the boonies that serve as hubs, they are destinations.

And traffic growth to those destinations is huge.

Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested.

That's not necessarily true. NYC and London serve as huge hubs. 22% of JFK's traffic in 2016 was connecting passengers, aka passengers that did not start nor end their trip in NYC [1]. That's 22% of traffic that you can free up by adding more point-to-point flights and bypassing JFK entirely. ~35% of LHR's traffic was connecting passengers [2]. If you live in a small/midsize city in the eastern US and want to go to Europe, chances are you'll be taking a small 737 flight to JFK before connecting onto your flight to LHR and then connecting on your flight to your final destination. However, the industry is moving towards more direct flights (see: Delta just added a direct flight from Orlando to Amsterdam). These flights will reduce the congestion of JFK and LHR considerably.

> Also don’t forget that airspace is also quite congested.

Airspace is congested around specific airports, but the same situation applies: there are other airports with almost zero airspace congestion that can easily pick up the slack. If you're talking about jetstreams, we're almost nowhere near saturating the available airspace over the Atlantic.

1: https://www.panynj.gov/airports/pdf-traffic/ATR2016.pdf

2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/303920/flight-transfers-...

Not sure how you can write “that’s not necessarily true” when your numbers confirm what I wrote: the vast majority of the traffic goes to the “hubs”, the connecting traffic is in the minority.

So when total traffic doubles, that’ll be a 160% increase to JFK even if you remove all the “hub” traffic, which is unlikely, and you assume the increase will be evenly distributed, also unlikely.

UPDATE: I don't see how the "direct to smaller airports" is anything but a temporary reprieve that will be overwhelmed by the overall trends: concentration of population in ever larger cities and increasing travel.

I'm not sure how you can claim that they confirm what you wrote. There is a stark difference between what you originally wrote and what your second comment claims you wrote. You originally wrote:

> New York, London, Tokyo etc. are not random places in the boonies that serve as hubs, they are destinations.

This is much different than your second comment stating the "majority" of traffic. Hell, your second comment even contradicts your first comment: in the first, you claim they are not hubs, and in the second, you acknowledge that they are hubs.

Empirically, your first statement is not true, and now you're trying to move the goalposts. As my numbers show, over a fifth of passenger traffic (which is a very significant number) to those airports are connecting passengers, and use those airports as a hub. Therefor, your claim that these airports are not hubs is false.

> There's a limit to scalability at airports, especially the big & busy ones in western metropolis: JFK, LHR, FRA

Between 30 and 40% of passengers departing from JFK or Newark will go on to a connection [1]. Switching to point-to-point travel means reducing traffic at these hubs.

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

Frankfurt is nowhere near runway capacity. They built another runway <10yrs ago for that reason. Munich is the only airport in Germany somewhat restricted by runway capacity at the moment.

Airport capacity scales with number of planes. Major airports are often running at capacity already and can't handle more planes. Increasing airport capacity is a very non-trivial problem.

It's a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, like traffic congestion on a roadway.

> Airport capacity scales with number of planes.

There's another factor: these big-ass planes of A380 and alike produce a lot of wake turbulence - in fact, the A380 so much that it has its own strength category and its wake turbulences nearly shot another plane out of the sky (http://avherald.com/h?article=4a5e80f3). This means that an airport may dispatch more lighter planes in the same time than heavier planes.

There's no tragedy of the commons; airport fees can and are raised, leading some companies to switch to nearby airports, like Ryanair is doing in Brussels (moving some flights to Charleroi). And as fees increase, so does the profit potential of building a new low-fees airport farther away.

The other way to take pressure off airport capacity is to reduce use of the hub and spoke model. If you fly direct from Buffalo to Tampa, you don't need to take up a slot in Newark.

> Putting public pressure on Emirates, by Airbus's outgoing sales chief.

Why is making a private conversation public like this a good sales strategy? (I'd argue that it would have the opposite effect by generating distrust.)

I'd think "leaking" a conversation like this would be aimed at parties not directly privy to the talks.

Making claims public can sometimes increase their credibility, because when you've told everyone, everyone will know if you break your word.

Of course, it's debatable how much a CEO cares about being seen to break their word; it's not like Elon Musk suffers any negative consequences for announcing over-ambitious delivery dates. And it's hard to believe the embarrassment of ending production of your flagship plane would be smaller than the embarrassment of not doing that when you said you would.

Airbus has never hit a single one of it's sales projections or traffic demands for the a380. They were supposed to ahve sold about 1500 frames by now.

They wont in the future as well. Boeing kept the 747-8i alive to try and see if the traffic would eventually start shifting back to the super-jumbo, and it never did.

If the traffic does eventually shift there, it will be the big twins (777/787/middle-of-the-market plane Boeing is working on now) and the A350 that benefit from it.

It seems to have worked. Two days later: "Superjumbo jet future secured by Emirates order"

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42732842

In my personal opinion Airbus needed the A380 to break Boeing's cash cow. The 747 was basically a running money tap at the time the A380 was conceived, and in order to level the playing field, Airbus needed to kill that cow. It's one of the weird strokes of economics where the company has to act against its own short-term interests, in order to create a long-term advantage (or rather, prevent a long-term disadvantage).

Additionally, now they have the tooling, supply lines, know-how, and IP to work at this extra large scale. While this might not translate into profit short-term, it could very well prove to be an interesting long-term asset again. I think in particular this is going to be interesting for them when the middle class of China and India (or Bangladesh) boom, and very heavily trafficked routes pop-up between heavily populated urban centres.

Delhi-Mumbai and Shanghai-Beijing are already in the world's top 10 busiest routes, but AFAIK there is no regular A380 service on either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_passenger_air_...

Beijing to Guangzhou has 380 service via China Southern. Beijing to shanghai isn’t that far, and is better served by more-often service to compete with high speed trains that are also viable.

China Eastern even has an express desk for shanghai flights and they are given priority to prevent all too common Beijing delays.

AFAIK Delhi-Mumbai is served almost completely by A320s and 737s. I doubt most people traveling on that route could afford a 787 or A380 flight.

Isn't the whole point of the A380 that it's cheaper per passenger-mile when fully loaded up? Why would an A320 ticket be cheaper? Is it the cost of the airframe? Could better leasing options (as other airlines leases run out) solve that?

I just assumed that buying a new jumbo jet would need costlier tickets, the initial cost more than offsetting the cheaper operating costs. Otherwise why are they not operating yet?

It's a complex equation. An old enough plane will have higher maintenance costs. And many planes are leased instead of bought outright and those lease prices already price in depreciation and expected lifetime.

Cost isn't the only issue, the A380 is probably slightly cheaper overall (a few dollars/ticket - assuming you fly the and maintain the airplane on the most economical replacement schedules), but it flies each leg half as often to reach that (presumably you have either half as many large planes, or the large plane covers two routes instead of one) which means customers don't have as much convenience in choose when they want to fly.

If you have 400 people every 15 minutes wanting to make a flight, then a lot of A380s makes sense. However if it is 400 people per day you can make them happier by running 2 200 passenger airplanes one for those who want to leave in the morning, one for those who want to leave in the afternoon. (and 100 passenger planes might make even more sense running 4 times a day, down to 25 passenger planes running hourly)

More smaller planes also allows more routing flexibility.

These are very complex decisions that each airline has too make.

Passengers prefer frequency over aircraft size. DEL-BOM is like JFK-LAX. If capacity allows, airlines should (and do) fly 30 daily A320 instead of 10 daily A380. Fuel consumption of A320neo is lower (esp if you can push utilisation higher) so that there's no real reason to use A380.

Runway capacity also isn't really, A320s (and B737) can be spaced very closely on approach and departure, up to a third of that of a A380.

One of the first Aircrafts to get rid of most CAN buses and use Ethernet for internal comm.

Can someone with a better understanding of economics than me explain something:

How is the "point to point" (direct short flights via Ryanair and the like) beating "hub and spoke"(hubs like London and Frankfurt)?

I don't mean for convenience - obviously it's nicer to not have layovers.

But I mean economically. In the last 10 years, fuel prices have only gone up, as has environmental awareness, and the A380 is surely cheaper per passenger than a plane half it's size. So shouldn't flights via hubs be significantly cheaper and be the most popular?

Not an economist, but it may b/c point-to-point can be made cheap enough (vis-a-vis Ryan Air, EasyJet, etc) that customers will choose that service over hub-and-spoke any time their itinerary allows it.

A lot of people value "not having to make a layover" more than you think.

Jet fuel prices are half what they were ten years ago:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_refoth_dcu_nus_a.htm

Prices peaked in 2008, dropped during the recession, reached that peak again in 2011 and are now even lower than they were during the worst days of the GFC.

Whoa that's shocking, why is this?

Crude oil prices tanked over the last ten years. Mostly a combination of OPEC ramping up production and the rise of the American frackers.

tanked

Point to point is more efficient if you can fill the plane.

Hub and spoke - an indirect flight where you perform extra inefficient landings/takeoffs.

Direct flight - shortest possible distance. Maximum time in the most efficient configuration.

The only issue is that you have to fill the plane to 100% and that might be harder with direct flights between certain destinations. Although i'm sure modern booking systems (automatic pricing to fill all planes) help a lot with this.

The A380's engines were developed in the early 2000's.

Newer twin-engine planes (B737-MAX, A320neo, A330neo, A350, B787, the upcoming 777-X) have improvements in engine efficiency that have not been ported over to the A380. Airlines operate on wafer-thin margins, so even a percentage point increase in engine efficiency is huge.

Granted, the engines themselves are not made by Airbus, but there are integration costs involved.

There are other economic issues: (1) It's just hard to fill an A380 year-round. Not an issue on trunk routes like SFO-LHR, but there are only so many of those. (2) If slots at airports were auctioned out, you'd arguably see more demand for larger planes - maybe not the A380, but 777 or 787 sized.

>so even a percentage point increase in engine efficiency is huge.

I interviewed with Boeing out of school many moons ago. To be precise, they offered me a job in response to my mailing them my resume. (In an envelope with a stamp on it; this was a while ago.) But I asked to come out to talk to people.

Did get me the opportunity for a plant tour in Everett (?) if I remember.

Anyway, the engineer who took me out to dinner talked about his project for the past couple of years--some fuel system design of an upcoming design that saved something like a fraction of a percent fuel consumption.

I decided the job didn't sound very appealing.

The big airports cost more to land at than the small ones, Ryan air might say it's landing at a city but actually be at a rural airport an hour or more away.

If the plane loads are good enough and the plane is scheduled in such a way that it always returns to a home airport for maintenance then I can see how it makes economic sense even if logistically it's tougher.

> In the last 10 years, fuel prices have only gone up

This is simply not true.

http://www.iata.org/publications/economics/fuel-monitor/Page...

The question really isn't hub-to-hub versus hub to point to point, it's hub-to-spoke versus spoke to megahub to megahub to spoke. For example, if I were going to travel from Denver to Toulouse, 30 years ago my options would probably be DEN <-> JFK <-> PARIS <-> TOULOUSE. Twenty years ago, it might be DEN <-> FRA <-> TOULOUSE as the 737s and 320s displaced wide-bodies for intra-Europe flying. In ten years, as the 737-MAX, A320-NEOs, and Boeing's new Middle of the Market, you will start to see very interesting secondary markets pop up.

Good case - the 787 has changed Denver so that instead of two international flights daily (To FRA and LAX) - it now has FRA, London(LHR and LGW), France, Japan, Zurich, plus every small tourist Mexican destination you can think of.

> the A380 is surely cheaper per passenger than a plane half it's size

Actually it's not. Both the 787-8 and 787-9 (just below and just above half the A380's size by passenger numbers) are more efficient per passenger mile:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#5,000...

Not sure airplane not selling is really the core issue. Someone working closely with airbus management once told me the real problem with that plane was that they allowed way too much customization of the interiors. No two planes would end up being the same, and so the costs of building the plane weren’t easily going down after some time. The end result was that airbus is actually loosing money on each plane they sell.

That may be the real reason they would stop production IMHO.

As per the article, efficiencies of scale don't matter if you book zero sales in a year.

I'm not sure I buy that reason, unless the customization cost extends to the equipment and process for building out the interior. Surely this cost would be identified and then the options available reduced? But much harder, if your need to retool for a cheaper interior.

Around 1995, Boeing had a HUGE project to address this (DCAC/MRM). I wasn't deep in the project, but the stories I heard were crazy. Something like 30 shades of white paint, or parts that were functionally the same having two or more part numbers.

The one thing that has stuck with me is the statement that you can't undrill a hole. It was the same thing the parent poster mentioned: Every operator wanted their galley/lavatory to be in some Goldilocks location, and that required drilling holes. Boeing pushed hard to limit the choices in order to bring cost down.

Those holes also caused problems if a customer resequenced or walked away from a partially built plane. Southwest would want a discount if you were selling them a plane that was originally kitted out for someone else.

It's an amazing aircraft, and quite comfortable, but I feel like Airbus went for size rather than Innovation.

I am impressed. Most of the HN comments are praise, but A380 is failing because of airlines strategical choice of avoiding hub. Is again the best technical solution killed by intense lobbying ?

All modern planes are similarly advanced. B787 and A350 are as well. A380 is just better known so that more people have flown with it. It's certainly not the best technical solution (designed for larger size which makes it inefficient). Many passengers love it because it's so huge but that doesn't help airlines. Same as with comfort in economy, people like to complain about standards but still end up booking the cheapest flight.

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