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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That channel also has alot of very interesting content on the economics of air travel (e.g., seating classes, how tickets are priced, etc).
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.
Think Paris-Tokyo, London-New York, etc. You'll never have a direct flight from Edinburg to Osaka anyway.
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.
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.
Dubai too? Looked to me like they had loads of capacity left last few times I went through
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.
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.
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...
"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...
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).
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 / 414The 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/qantas-eyes-sydney-to-london-dir...
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.