Airbus Handed A380 Lifeline With $16B Emirates Order | Hacker News Reader

Airbus Handed A380 Lifeline With $16B Emirates Order

bloomberg.com

242 pointsjamesdgb171 comments

Great news for both, Airbus needed that to save the program, finally have a chance to reach profitability, and solve the chicken and egg problem of no-one is buying it because it looks like it will be stopped, it will be stopped because no one buys it.

Emirates, having half the frames out, keeps the program going which means they don't get trapped in maintenance hell.

Funny to look back at the messages a few days ago here on HN saying it will "obviously not happen".

I will save my personal opinion on the A380 for later but about previous comments on HN you always have to remember the crowd is a bunch of professional guessers. It stops to be funny quite fast...

Yep, I thought the public musings about halting production were simply putting the pressure on Emirates. Seems to have worked.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16152902

Nobody outside of HN thinks anything of HN. I'd be deluded to believe otherwise

You misunderstood the comment. Parent was talking about public musings of Airbus.

What we've witnessed over the last few months has basically been the negotiation process.

Emirates know they're the anchor customer with a strong negotiation position and so expect even bigger discounts than airlines normally get from airframers by playing hardball, and humiliating Airbus by not making the anticipated airshow order. Airbus's only counter was to look actually willing to accept the possibility of writing the whole programme off, with negative implications for Emirates' own prospects

Or the reverse, Airbus talking allot about stopping production knowing that Emirates built their business case around the plane....

+1. Parts and maintenance might have just tripled in price and awaiting time. Emirates protected their investment at a low price...plane for plane, why not get this and insure that someone will be there for the previous order's planes.

Parts and maintenance are negotiated as part of the purchase.

For an airline not to do so would be economic suicide.

Also has the side benefit of locking in gradual prices increases for the manufacturer.

Emirates does its own A380 heavy maintenance, but yeah, they'll have guaranteed the parts supplies

> Emirates built their business case around the plane

Absolutely. Emirates needed this deal just as much as Airbus. At the end of the day AB has multiple other profitable lines to fall back on, especially their cash cow 32X program. For Emirates the 380 is irreplaceable, not even by the 777-10, if it was even flying yet, which it isn't.

I have no doubt EK got a good deal but Leahy isn't stupid. He was playing hardball too.

And interestingly, it has not been specified yet whether this order is for the current model or the plus..

The real test will be how well they fare on the second hand market, when Emirates begin to retire their first aircraft over the next few years. Last year an A380 that had been with Singapore Airlines for 10 years was put into storage until a buyer is found [0], and an Irish leasing company decided to start their own airline as they couldn't find anyone to lease their A380s [1].

[0] http://www.traveller.com.au/first-retired-a380-superjumbo-pa...

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/leasing-company-force...

Is 10 years really the expected (first-owner) lifespan of a wide-body? Is that typical for narrow-bodies as well? Seems short, given the cost to purchase.

Well there is no "typical" for an A380-sized widebody and Emirates might have no choice but to keep most of theirs until the end of their lifespans (unless there's a freighter conversion programme). But in general a commercial passenger aircraft lasts around 25 years, so 10 years isn't really a short period of ownership for a first owner (and is a fairly long lease). Fixed maintenance intervals often require the aircraft to be almost totally rebuilt within that timescale, which is a good opportunity to transfer owner/operator and refit to some other airline's spec.

Most airframes - the A380 is an exception - can be readily resold or leased on a liquid market. There's big depreciation over the first few years, sure, but operating costs are bigger than capital costs, and newer aircraft are less thirsty for fuel. Airlines purchasing aircraft also usually get big discounts, and have specialist financial institutions willing to front up the capital and eat some of the downside risk on the depreciation. Airlines leasing aircraft typically do so for periods of more like five years, with lease extensions at their discretion.

Emirates leases their planes on 12 year contracts. They do this because they want to have a young fleet. Singapore Airlines does the same. The leasing company might be stuck with the plane after the lease is up, but the airline is not going to care all that much as long as leasing companies are ready to enter into new deals.

Those leases will typically cover the costs of the aircraft, so the leasing company will basically get a 12 year old airplane for free that they can use to generate a profit from (lease, sell or part out) as they wish. Though there does not seem to be any demand for used 380s right now. The one Singapore Airlines has returned (for an entirely new one on a new lease) is currently in storage without engines. Apparently the parts are worth 100 million dollars. It will be interesting to see how that continues to play out when more leases end, since it's unlikely that there will be buyers for say 200 planes worth of spare parts when ony 100 planes are still in service...

If the lease covers the cost of the plane, why not just buy it instead of lease it?

"Financial engineering": capital investment and depreciation vs. operational expenses, interest/taxes/tax-breaks on those things, that kind of stuff.

If an airline wants to own it longer, buying outright makes more sense. They can still extend the lease but a lot can change in 10 years so that it give some flexibility. For Emirates, which has a lot of ultra-long routes, they can now get newer and more fuel-efficient A380s, selling the first-generation ones to airlines that fly on shorter routes.

10 years is a normal leasing term. You'd expect a significantly longer total service lifetime.

Don't think in terms of wide-body vs narrow-body. Think in terms of long-haul vs short-haul.

The lifespan of a plane tends to have more to do with the number of pressurization cycles it goes through (and the number of take-offs and landings) - they go together, after all. Pressurizing the plane stresses the plane, and eventually the frame just can't be trusted, no matter how good the airline is at maintaining the plane. Short-haul flights (say going back and forth between New York and Washington D.C.) could conceivably manage 5 round trips a day or more, which is much more stress than a plane flying one round trip per day between New York and London.

Even most planes used for short-haul flights would be expected to last more than 10 years, and planes used for long-haul flights can be used for 30 years by major airlines. But keep in mind that airlines will certainly replace planes earlier if a newer plane has enough efficiency gains that will allow costs to recouped more quickly.

Singapore Air returning this plane already (and there's a second as well) means that the plane simply isn't profitable (or profitable enough) for them to keep flying. Most likely whatever route this plane was used for will continue with a smaller flight that costs less to fly.

> Singapore Air returning this plane already (and there's a second as well) means that the plane simply isn't profitable (or profitable enough) for them to keep flying. Most likely whatever route this plane was used for will continue with a smaller flight that costs less to fly.

They returned a plane at the end of its lease and got a newly built one on a new lease as a replacement. They are doing the same with their 4 remaining planes that are nearing the end of their leases. They seem to be happy with the 380.

Also remember that the first few A380s had lots of issues with wiring harnesses, performance, etc and so may not be completely up to spec.

Exactly. The first 25 airframes (of which 22 were actually build to completion) have the wiring problems and were never expected to find much interest on the secondary market.

In that case, the planes will likely be parted out. Wings and tail removed and likely installed on another A380 body.

Interesting, I haven't seen that information. Do you have a link for that? --For my own interest, not because I don't believe you.

> Singapore Air returning this plane already (and there's a second as well) means that the plane simply isn't profitable (or profitable enough) for them to keep flying.

They were leasing that A380, and now they'll lease a newer and more efficient A380. The new one will be for sure more profitable for them, but you can't deduce the old one wasn't profitable.

There is no way a new A380 is more efficient in total cost of ownership given it’s going to cost more than twice as much. They took the biggest depreciation hit up front. If this made sense, all airlines would lease for 10 years and replace with new leases.

The comparison isn't with the potential new price of the old one, but with the old price of the old one. Say they were paying X per year for #1. Adjusted for inflation, they're going to pay roughly the same X per year for #2, but #2 is more efficient, AND in line with Singapore's positioning as a top airline with a very young fleet.

I also expect that keeping #1 would have a lower lease cost, but a higher maintenance and insurance cost.

Does this still apply to carbon fiber body planes like the 787? I know aluminum has can only be flexed so many times before it cracks but if the plane is made from a different material, would this rule still apply?

Yes. Every material ultimately has a fatigue limit; there's nothing you can stress indefinitely without it eventually breaking. Now, other materials can move the number of possible cycles up and down, and potentially move the number up sufficiently that it becomes a non-concern (because other factors would drive airlines to sell and scrap the old aircraft), but it'll never be infinite.

> Every material ultimately has a fatigue limit; there's nothing you can stress indefinitely without it eventually breaking.

That's not entirely true, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_limit

"Ferrous alloys and titanium alloys have a distinct limit, an amplitude below which there appears to be no number of cycles that will cause failure."

Something I think is being missed here is that Singapore and Emirates both sell their A380s as "palace in the sky" sort of experiences, with lavish suites in first class. A ten year old plane starts to get a little beat up.

Singapore Airlines is a premium carrier that that is known for conisitently maintaing a young fleet, the take away is not that Singapore was getting rid of 10yo planes but that they did not buy more as replacements.

http://www.airfleets.net/ageflotte/Singapore%20Airlines.htm

One of the problems is that almost all A380 carriers are, as you say, "premium carrier[s] that that [are] known for consistently maintaining a young fleet" - but you need to be a pretty sophisticated operator to run an A380 safely. The operational sophistication you need to run one is really high - everything form maintaining the electronic systems to ensuring that all passengers have left the (very large) cabin can cause issues that require good solutions.

The problem is that just about every airline sophisticated to operate an A380 has either bought (at least) as many as they need (Qantas, Air France, etc.) or made a strategic decision that the A380 is not the plane for them (Cathay, the US big 3, etc.). There's a rumor that BA might pick of a few of the used frames, but that's it - and they only have (IIRC) 6, so it's not like that will make much of a dent in the market even if they double their fleet size.

They are getting more as 1 for 1 replacements, though.

Why are they sold if they are still usable? Put differently, why does the buyer see value in the used plane that Emirates doesn't?

The first ones off the production run aren't as fuel-efficient as the later ones. I read somewhere the first few A380s are several tons heavier than further down the line.

That doesn't explain why one wants to sell and another wants to buy the plane.

First tier airlines like to have new planes with all the latest features. Second tier cheap airlines will often buy a used plane: when that money is applied to the cost of a new plane is cheaper (or the same cost) as refurbishing the old one. From there third tier airlines exist that will buy planes past their safe service life and pray they don't crash.

What would be an example of a “third tier” airline?

Usually cargo or charter operators in Africa, or the like.

I wonder if any of these Airbuses will be decked out as a private airplane. Really curious to know how the extra room can be used.

Great news. That should keep the A380 alive long enough to clearly see how the airplane market is developing. Currently, its all about 2-engined airplanes, but I cannot believe, that there is no need for the large airplanes like 747 and the A380. The amount of air travel is still growing year over year and once the production is shut down, it would means a certain class of airplanes is just unavailable.

The problem is not technical. The problem is government.

You have 2 types of aircraft carriers: direct and hub-and-spoke. Direct means that they either have a direct flight between A and B, or have no way to get from A to B at all (in most cases, of course no carrier is 100% hub or 100% direct). Since A and B tend to be routes like Marseille to New York there aren't going to be enough passengers to fill an A380, so smaller more efficient airplanes are where it's at.

In short: Big, huge airplanes make sense for hub-and-spoke carriers and don't for direct carriers. Small airplanes, lots of them, make sense for direct carriers.

For consumers, the difference is twofold. Direct carriers are faster, and they will be more expensive, because a number of costs can't be shared between as many passengers as in the hub networks. Hub carriers are slower, but a (lot) cheaper.

But that doesn't even really matter. Governments have decided that most airports won't be upgraded to support more planes and/or more passengers. This has resulted in airports that would normally be hub airports, like London, Paris or New York aren't hubs, because they are incredibly oversubscribed. For the same reason they become very expensive, very slow, and generally bad for passengers. But there is no competition, because only the government can approve airports, and they don't.

This means that unless you're a carrier that happens to be in a location where such government concerns don't exist, like in the UAE where the government is the carrier and doesn't care about the local population at all, you can't have a hub network.

So superjumbo's are threatened. Despite, of course, the market clearly pointing out that the cheaper flight almost always wins, if it's up to the customers, and therefore hub networks should win. I would say that therefore it is pretty correct to say that customers want A380s. But governments are standing in the way. For no good reason.

But governments have decided that having everyone pay significantly more for every flight, and generally have an utterly awful experience flying is absolutely worth it. After all, the alternatives would mean slightly more work for them ...

Things aren't just black and white. London and Paris, also Frankfurt are partially hub airports. Many long-distance flights from Europe will relay via those airports. Additionally you have direct flights. And with the raising passenger counts, there is a need for large airplanes on point-to-point connections too. Of course only on the important ones, but there is a need. A shortage in runway capacity also limits the amount of flights you can have from an airport, so to raise the capacity, you have to go bigger too. Right now, there is obviously no large demand for the A380, but I could see how that changes again - especially once the 747s in use got retired.

It must be cool to be a Libertarian because you are an immediate expert at everything.

That was a detailed comment that didn't say "government is bad." It laid out a pretty reasonable interpretation of why that decision might have taken place, including quite clearly pointing out that some governments care less about the effects of airports on local populations, which could explain why some markets still have hub airports.

It definitely tallies with the impression I have – looking at London Heathrow, for example, where the controversy about expanding the airport has been rumbling on for an age, and governments are consistently jittery about taking an obvious view on it. I'd say there are pretty good reasons for avoiding expansion, but obviously this other comment disagrees.

There's nothing here that screams "libertarian," just a possibly inaccurate, but hardly unreasonable, point of view.

> that didn't say "government is bad."

Yet it did start with "The problem is government".

It turns out, shockingly enough, that there are many situations in which government creates problems.

If a poster lays out his/her reasoning as to WHY the government is the problem in a specific instance, simply yelling "libertarian" as a refutation doesn't look great.

> It turns out, shockingly enough, that there are many situations in which government creates problems.

True of course, but not in this case. Many governments want their airports to expand, but they simply can't, because there's no space for it, and they're not totalitarian enough to screw over the millions of people living in those areas. It's not a case of governments being unreasonably obstructive, it's a case of governments actually caring about the interests of the people for a change.

To be fair, there are lots of ideologies which provide "for all problems P, X is the answer". Capitalism, Marxism, many flavors of religion.

Fanatic behavior adds that "no problem Q can be as important as problem P (for which we know the answer is X), so we don't need to discuss it except to figure out how Q is related to P".

You get that with any ideology really. If you can reduce all the scope of all the problems in the world into a single variable, you can now blame everything on that single variable. Everything seems so easy and simple while in fact you are just being lazy.

Ideological flamewar isn't allowed here regardless of how wrong someone else is. Same for personal attacks. We ban accounts that do these things.

Fortunately, from your recent history it looks like you don't have a habit of doing this on HN, but would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart? The idea is something like this: If you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.

Sucks to see one liners with no info upvoted and detailed answers like this downvoted with little explanation. People calm down. This is a good answer

Perhaps governments might be considering the implications for more people than just the airlines and the airport owners? Like, for example, all the people who would lose their homes in the airport expansions or have their lives ruined by the increased airplane noise and pollution? But oh no, it's just them stupid lazy governments, of course.

Lives aren't ruined by airport noise. The housing price around major airports is lower than it otherwise would be, but still higher than housing even further away from the city requiring a longer commute.

From personal experience I know that hearing planes take off every couple of minutes while you are having a BBQ doesn't ruin your day either. I know quite a number of people, including close family members, who voluntarily moved close to the airport for financial reasons. It's not for everyone, especially when night starts and landings are allowed (hich luckily isn't the case at most airports in Germany), but many people really aren't affected negatively.

Also, modern windows etc. can eliminate the noise almost entirely when you are inside. Airports often even pay for these upgrades.

Life quality is about more than housing prices.

Of course, but the context here is GPs claim that people will have "their lives ruined" by the presence of an airport.

That's easily shown to be hyperbolic nonsense if you look at housing prices in the "worst" (some people like it) possible places near runways at busy international airports. There's a drop for sure, but it's marginal.

Now compare that marginal drop to the overall positive impact on the local economy from more tourism, better access to travel from people who live within hours driving distance of the city etc., and it becomes easy to make the case that the lack of airport expansion is more a case of NIMBY-ism than some optimization for the common good.

But there's more to happiness than housing prices. It could be the house they grew up in, invested a lot of personal work in to improve it, their friends and family may live in the vicinity, but they get stressed out or can't sleep because of the noise of aircraft taking off right over their house. If the airport is expanding, that runway might not have been there when they bought the house.

The tourism and extra revenue for other people does not help the people who suffer from the daily noise. The slight drop in house value isn't the problem, but the fact that they may have to move at all.

If your house has to be torn down to make place for a new runway, you hopefully get paid well over the market value for your house. But if your house can stay, but is suddenly right next to a runway, you may wish they'd bought your house, but airports usually don't reimburse those people the same way.

There's a good reason why airports have noise regulations. Unfortunately, it turns out those rules can be far too flexible. Around Schiphol, it turns out the measured noise doesn't count. They calculate how much noise you get, and if your experience is different, tough luck.

We can both come up with sob stories all day. So that old couple sells their house, then what about the young father entering the job market who could afford a cheaper house closer to Amsterdam to commute into work and see his kid more often? The kid loves airplanes and one of their favorite pastimes is watching them come in for landing.

Of course people who don't yet get any benefits from the airport construction aren't vocal about increased investment in its infrastructure, even though collectively they'll be the beneficiaries.

This is a classic example of concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, with the concentrated benefit being the NIMBYs who live near the airport and benefit from the status quo, and the greater diffuse cost being what society at large has to lose from it not being built out.

I'm not familiar with how airport noise regulations work in The Netherlands, but the situation you're describing with Schiphol doesn't sound unreasonable at all.

Unlike a club next door the amount of noise from an airport should be easily predicted based on available data, we know where the planes were at at any given time, and can construct very accurate models of what the noise at any given point on the ground will be.

Why would the council need to show up to do noise measurements only to find that yes, the noise is pretty much exactly the same as what your neighbor next door is experiencing?

If the noise is being systematically underestimated that's another matter, which the courts could presumably sort out, but that they're relying on estimations seems like good policy to me.

All I'm saying is that it's not just about housing prices. Hub airports tend to be in densely populated areas where there's simply not much room for a big airport. Schiphol has the advantage that it's in a fairly empty polder with mostly farms, but there are a lot of towns and cities around it.

The decision on whether to allow an airport to expand is a careful balance of a lot of different concerns. An honest government or regulator weighs those concerns honestly, but because of the financial concerns surrounding a big airport, there's always an incentive to game the system.

> The housing price around major airports is lower than it otherwise would be

It causes problems way further out than that. For example the expansion of Schiphol and now Lelystad airport will cause noise problems for people who live over 100 miles from the airport.

100 miles out, planes are descending out of flight level 300 or so. If you can hear a plane at 30,000 feet, I'm impressed, but that is not the norm.

Due to how crowded the airspace is here they have to descent very low to avoid other traffic. Same goes for the holding pattern. I just looked it up and the new routes are between 5000 and 6000 feet.

I'm sorry, but you are entirely wrong if you think that airplanes are going to be at 5000 or 6000 feet 100 miles away from their destination. That's not even remotely how modern jet airliners operate.

Source: am pilot

This has been a really hot topic in my country, lots of debates, protests, accusations flying back and forth over wether noise impact studies were done correctly or not. It's been on the news for months.

Basically, Schiphol is getting too crowded so they are opening a second location (actually, it already exist but it's a small airport now which mainly services small private planes) in Lelystad. As the new location is relatively close to Schiphol (about 32 miles) the new inbound routes and holding patterns have to be below the existing routes for Schiphol because there simply is no other place for them to go.

Plenty of information about it available online but most of it's in Dutch. This report has a couple of maps and charts which may be useful for you: http://hoogoverijssel.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/20170711...

Edit: and some more info: http://www.pbbo.info/documenten/Luchtruim%20Lelystad%20ACS.p...

I skimmed both of those and I don't see how you're getting the claim that 100 miles out an airliner is going to be at FL50-60.

The noise estimations in your first link show the estimated noise in Ens which is 18 miles out and directly below the approach path at 40 dB, and for a more pathological case in Wezep 20 miles out at 45 dB. For reference that's somewhere between "noise at the library" and "quiet suburb"[1].

If you search for "Projectie Route" you can see graphs showing that the estimated approach and departure paths, planes coming in for landing are at FL60 5-10 miles out, planes departing are climbing past FL30 10 miles out.

I'm not dismissing the fact that some people in close by bedroom communities are going to be hearing airplanes regularly, but this claim that it's going to be an issue for anyone even 20 miles out is nonsense, let alone 100 miles out.

Ghent in Belgium is around 100 miles from Amsterdam, planes just crossing the Dutch-Belgian border aren't at FL50 as if they were on their final approach to Schiphol.

1. http://www.industrialnoisecontrol.com/comparative-noise-exam...

have their lives ruined by the increased airplane noise and pollution

Oh please. Heathrow has been an airfield since the 1930s. There is no one living near there who didn’t know that, and chose to live there anyway.

> Heathrow has been an airfield since the 1930s.

A private airfield, owned by Richard Fairey for his use and that of his owner-pilot friends in the Royal Aeronautical Society, who had their annual picnic there.

The London hub airport in that era, and into the late 1940s, was Croydon.

Not everyone can afford to choose a better place to live, but they still deserve reasonable things like quiet at night, clean air and so on.

Homes that are cheap because there’s an airport nearby probably wouldn’t be so cheap if there weren’t an airport nearby.

If house prices are all that matter, then accept that increasing the number of flights at Heathrow will reduce the value. Should the owners be compensated?

It's about 3 million people.

So what you are saying is that it is reasonable to come to a place you know is currently used for X and demand it change for you, I including stopping doing X?

The argument in London is not to close Heathrow, but to stop expanding it.

But in any case, I think it's completely reasonable to demand that toxic fumes are no longer noisily spread over ones house, workplace or school.

You can look at it the other way round. The government know that Heathrow is a terrible place for a major airport. And despite being surrounded by villages, nature reserves and Windsor Park they still choose to expand it.

The problem you describe mostly exists for London. JFK is crowded but not as overcrowded as LHR. And FRA just (7 years ago) got a new runway, they're not close to runway capacity. Other hubs in Europe (e.g. AMS) are also below capacity.

AMS below capacity? Then why are they already eyeing the small (hobby/sports) airport Lelystad for expansion? I think the Dutch government is a bit too concerned with turning Schiphol into a major European hub.

I believe the main problem with AMS is terminal capacity. The runways can handle plenty of traffic, but they're constrained by terminal space. They're building, but the current plans are only increasing capacity by around 10%.

It sounds like the Dutch government is trying to reduce the need for AMS to grow further by making it possible for tour operators and maintenance operations to take place at Lelystad.

My experience with transferring at Heathrow is that they shove everybody into one insanely crowded terminal, and then about fifteen minutes before boarding you have to rush to another terminal.

I'm sure there's some weird justification for that, but it's incredibly bad design.

I assume you talk about terminal 5. I'm not a fan departing from 5B or 5C but in most cases that's announced at least 20 min before boarding and you can easily make it there in 5-10 min (most of which is spent waiting for the train). I experienced twice that the announcement came a bit later but then they kept the gate open later to ensure everyone makes it.

They will probably have certain contractual obligations regarding dwell times in the main terminal building for the shops and restaurants to extract maximum cash from passengers before they go out to the satellite buildings. Privately operated airports like T5 are massive shopping malls, the planes are an afterthought.

Schiphol terminals are bursting st the seams during the summer and fast approaching the 500,000 “air transport movements” allowed by law.

http://www.ttrweekly.com/site/2017/04/amsterdam-airport-over...

For no good reason

I take issue with this. Airport expansion has obvious effects on local populations, like you've pointed out the UAE doesn't care about. Expansion of hubs can itself be expensive, disruptive, and environmentally damaging.

I'd also dispute that "the cheapest flight always wins", otherwise every flight would be run by a low-cost carrier.

> I'd also dispute that "the cheapest flight always wins", otherwise every flight would be run by a low-cost carrier.

For many popular routes the low-cost carriers would love to participate but can't, as there are no slots available. The incumbents get a major advantage for the fact they've been there long enough.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_slot

I just did a bit search...

in 2009, there were roughly 40 airports worldwide could handle A380 [1]...until 2009, the number of accumulative A380 orders worldwide was 202 planes [3].

and in 2015 there were roughly 48 airports worldwide could handle A380 [2]...between 2010 and 2015, the number of accumulative A380 orders worldwide was 87 planes [3]...

there was a 20% increase of A380 capable airports between 2010 to 2015 and a 40% increase of A380 planes in the same period...apparently, so far for A380, the airport construction lagged far behind its production...

Note that almost all A380 flights are international flights (and usually covering long distance), with the exceptions of some less than 10 domestic flights which are all flying within China...

No Russian flight (international or domestic) uses A380; and no US domestic flight uses A380 either...

Given the current international travel climate, I just do not see there would be a lot of potential changes for the current A380 market within the next 5 or even 10 years...

source

[1] http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=339455

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20160402062354/http://www.a380fl...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Airbus_A380_orders_and...

there are more airports worldwide that could handle the a380.

I live in germany near freiburg and there is a small city called "lahr" it has a airport with a big enough runway. it also has a terminal and could handle most passenger flights. but it's not in use (except for europa park flights) because the city didn't wanted that a airline could fly from there (except some exceptions like europa park from/to + freight or political flights).

it currently was build by the canadians after the second world war. (http://airport-lahr.de/en/airport-lahr/)

I expect more airports like that were passenger flight is not allowed directly so they are not officially listed as airports that could handle it.

(Edit: Lahr actually bidded for the manufacturing process of the A380 (but never gotten it): http://www.airports-worldwide.com/germany/lahr_germany.htm)

Thanks for pointing that out...it seems that indeed there are a few types of military planes that are larger than A380, and there must be some existing airports that could handle them...

But for commercial flights, there might be certain specifications that an airport must meet before they could accommodate a certain type of passenger plane...I am not an expert in this field, but some googling yields the following results,

[Quora] What are the basic requirements for an A380 to land in a particular airport?

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-basic-requirements-for-an...

[Quora] Why won't an Airbus A380 land in IGI Airport New Delhi despite having the capable runway?

https://www.quora.com/Why-wont-an-Airbus-A380-land-in-IGI-Ai...

well I know that you need to also have a capable runway.. but as already said the airport I posted meet these requirements, that's why they also tried to get a license to do test flight & manufacturing of the A380, but failed in favor of other locations.

also the airport actually is expandable and his runway is actually trimmed down since the local governement put streets at both ends of the runway.

it's a 100FDWT PCN airport which means that it is more than capable for an a380 to land. to say it differently, it has better conditions than frankfurt. (the only official airport in germany that can handle a A380.) well but the only license the airport could get was a for dreamliner which came exlusivly for the 'europa park' (now defunct i guess). the local governement didn't supported any airline that wanted to fly there (basically FKB/Stuttgart was more important since they are subsidized).

I doubt that there will be any passenger flights not even A340/737-XXX since this airport will probably never get a passenger license, except for "special airport for passenger non-scheduled flights to the Europe Park Rust and return". but it's mostly used by a local company for some freight stuff.

Yes, your local government certainly has other concerns in mind when they need to decide whether or not to expand the local airport...For instance, the noise level would go up (from the airplanes as well as the passengers driving to/from the airports), and the natural environment might be affected...

Then there are all sorts of complications...I think that's why the parent thread poster (i.e. candiodari ) identifies government as a crucial factor in this A380 ordering issue...

Smaller commercial planes would have more advantages in such case, as they are more flexible for any existing airport with existing plane certification...

On the other hand, although I have never boarded an A380 so far, I believe it has its own merits in terms of comfort and stability as well as safety and fuel efficiency if the airline could always have it fully booked...But those are not the immediate concerns of the government -- that's a problem when you need to reach consensus on some meta-issue, which could be decomposed into smaller issues where each one of them is determined by different and relatively independent parties, in a parliament-like setting (as in that distributed system model).

"For no good reason"? I thought you just explained that for the hub model to work, airports need to grow in places where there's no space for them (near major cities). That sounds like a pretty good reason.

That said, Dutch governments seem determined to make Schiphol (Amsterdam airport) a hub, and from what I understand, they've succeeded in becoming a hub for not just Netherland, but also the UK, because Heathrow is unable to become a hub due to space constraints. Schiphol, on the other hand, has seen major expansion (a fifth take-off lane in the 1990s), and the Dutch government is considering turning a small airport in the vicinity (Lelystad) into an extension of Schiphol. Most people don't like that idea.

Frankfurt is also a major hub. There are plenty of hubs, but there isn't always space for them (like in London), and other concerns are often deemed more important than sacrificing all space to an airport.

Schiphol has really long taxi times. Like 20 minutes from touchdown to doors opening. If it's a hub then you can multiply taxi time by two which means the best part of an hour is spent just taxiing when many flights across Europe only take about an hour or two anyway.

The long taxi is really only from the Polderbaan, the far away runway to the NW of the terminal.

That's unavoidable with a big hub. Some runways are going to be further away from the terminal. In Frankfurt, I've actually had a bus take us from the terminal to the plane.

And for short trips, most time is wasted by having to check in two hours in advance. High speed trains are better for short trips in my opinion. But as far as I understand, the point of a hub is to concentrate traffic for the long trips. Those 20 minutes suddenly don't matter all that much anymore.

Well, most larger airports don't like you walking on the apron more than absolutely necessary, and if they don't have a jet bridge available they put you on a bus even if the plane is only a few yards away. But IIRC Frankfurt is the one where the bus actually goes out of the airport and down a public road?

Don't think so.

Though, you have a high change of crossing over the Autobahn with your plane if you arrive with a 2 engine model (the HEAVYs cannot use the northern runway, as the runway is too short for them)

And some planes are parked rather remotely, where the bus trip might take around 10-15 minutes and is not that much different from the official guided bus tour of the airport.

> In Frankfurt, I've actually had a bus take us from the terminal to the plane.

This is very common even in smaller airports when an airline doesn't want to pay for the more expensive placement at the tube, as far as I understand. Also some airports have a road for airport vehicles just between the building and plane parking position, and don't allow people to walk to the plane for security reasons.

Feels like most of my flights start with a bus to the plane.

Really? For me it was a first. At Schiphol, all planes park at the tube. I've been to other countries where they don't have a tube at all, and there we left the plane by a stair and walked across the tarmac to the (usually very small) arrivals building.

I don’t really like flying though schipol. I avoid it where I can.

I highly suspect that there are not enough direct connections that can't use one ~600 seat flight instead of several ~200 seat flights in the same day. When I look for big city to big city flight I usually see several different flights there (when spaced in 1-2 hours that's definitely different plans) - they can be served with one 380 easily, (ignoring other factors).

Surely in a hub and spoke model the hubs should be in places in the middle of nowhere that nobody actually wants to go to. Why does it makes sense to have the hubs in London, Paris or New York? They should be significantly far away from the city that they can grow easily (not really possible in the UK, though).

I thought so too at one point. However, airports need tens of thousands of employees, so middle of nowhere, nope. Doesn't work. Everything from "drag this box here" employees, waiters/waitresses to highly specialized engineers to accountants. Also, it is a big advantage for hubs to have a steady flow of traffic to the hub. Thirdly, most carriers don't just get a hub from the government, the government cheats further. So in practice most carriers have tax advantages in their hub, as well as preferential treatment.

Although getting governments to approve middle of nowhere airports also doesn't seem to work too well. Why ? No idea. Perhaps issue is that they too would need to get personnel into the middle of nowhere.

But the current situation means a number of things. One, aircraft carriers will buy lots of little planes and won't do well. Second, they won't be matching Emirates or Etihad on pricing or customer conditions any time soon. Emirates and Etihad and a few others will do well.

No, hubs need to be big cities. The cheapest flight is direct a to b when the flight is large and full. When one of A or B is a large city that means there are more people who want to take the flight. New York will have direct flights to everywhere in North America even without being a hub because it is large enough live there that direct flights make sense. Then it becomes a hub by accident as people who want to get from small city to small city without a direct flight discover they can make New York a hub and get there. They would prefer a direct flight, but not enough people live in either to make it worthwhile.

Surely Dubai works like this.

But how about routes between big cities with lots of travellers?

E.g. couldn't something like London-New York or New York-Los Angeles have enough passenger to fill A380s even for direct traffic?

Or are direct traffic numbers actually always too low even for such pairs?

I'm not in the airline business so I'm just spitballing, but I would suspect you capture more business along routes like London-LA if you have a variety of departure times throughout the day. While the total volume might make sense to fill an A380, you'd lose business to somebody with smaller planes but more scheduling options. Again, just spitballing, but I know I probably wouldn't delay or move up my departure for a few hours just to get on an A380 if there's an A320 that can get me there and leaves at a more convenient time.

While demand for air travel is growing, the demand is in the wrong places.

First of all, you have to remember that on long-haul, the front cabins pay for the flight; if you scale the plane up without also scaling up the number of people buying premium-cabin tickets, you lose money. Emirates runs around 50 premium seats in their 777s, and 60-80 in their A380s depending on configuration. That should tell you something about whether the premium demand scales up with the economy-class demand (it doesn't).

Second, there still just aren't enough places on earth that can fill a 500-seat (or even 600-seat as Emirates is experimenting with on their latest configuration) plane every day. It's a cliché to say it at this point, but: Airbus bet big on people flying mainly between megahubs, and that bet failed. Much of the expansion of commercial flying has been to secondary or tertiary destinations that aren't going to fill an A380-sized plane. Which means either flying the plane with a bunch of empty seats (which loses money) or not flying it every day (which loses money).

You may not like it, but the more reasonably-sized twinjets won. 250-350 seats is the sweet spot, and the future belongs to 777s, 787s, A350s and their descendants.

"First of all, you have to remember that on long-haul, the front cabins pay for the flight; if you scale the plane up without also scaling up the number of people buying premium-cabin tickets, you lose money."

Singapore airlines has a full upper deck business class configuration. More space just means you have more space for business and first class too.

"Second, there still just aren't enough places on earth that can fill a 500-seat (or even 600-seat as Emirates is experimenting with on their latest configuration)"

While I'd agree that there are not that many business cases for such a huge plane there definitely are. Especially in the case of mega connectors like Emirates.

Emirates offers two daily flights from Zurich, which is a European 2nd tier airport with just shy of 30M yearly passengers, while Singapore airlines compressed their two daily flights into one A380 flight a day.

"You may not like it, but the more reasonably-sized twinjets won. 250-350 seats is the sweet spot, and the future belongs to 777s, 787s, A350s and their descendants."

We'll see when Asian airports (especially in China) run out of runway capacity. There are only so many flights you can dispatch over a runway in any given time.

The number of flights a well designed airport can handle is insane, and since most airports in China are new, they'll likely avoid this problem for a long time.

The problem for awhile was that airports like Heathrow and JFK simply did not have the capability to handle being the major hubs that they were. New hubs, like Atlanta or Dallas Fort Worth, can more than handle their role as a major hub. The answer isn't building bigger planes, but building better airports.

> and 60-80 in their A380s depending on configuration. That should tell you something about whether the premium demand scales up with the economy-class demand (it doesn't).

The difference appears to be bigger. Most A380 appear to have 14 first class and 76 business class seats [1], the standard 777-300 config is only 8F42C[2]. That's nearly twice as many premium seats.

[1] https://www.flightera.net/planes/A6-EEK

[2] https://www.flightera.net/planes/A6-EGV

didn't Airbus took recently a stake in Bombardier for their latest twin-engine plane? So maybe they've came to the same conclusion too.

The C-Series? The largest C-Series, the CS300, is comparable in size to Airbus's smallest model, the A319neo (okay, I think theoretically the A318 is still available, but it's not had a single order in years).

This is about wide-body twins taking over from where quad jets (and a few trijets) have traditionally ruled.

The CS300 was what I was talking about. And apparently I was wrong, thank you for your correction.

The A318 is officially not available anymore. There is no NEO version and they are not even selling the CEO.

I knew there was no NEO version, but I hadn't realised they'd stopped selling the CEO (given, AFAIK, they're still taking CEO orders for the other family members).

They are selling the last remaining CEO production slots. They are mostly doing it by giving steep discounts on those planes for airlines that buy large numbers of NEOs. However they do not offer the 318ceo as an option to fill those slots, only the 319, 320 and 321.

As a passenger I'd choose 787 in a eye blink - comfort of higher pressure and better air is making a huge difference.

A380 and 787 both pressurise around 6000ft height equivalent as opposed to 8000ish on older planes.

Welp, didn't knew that. Air quality is still an issue tho.

Agreed. Humidity is higher on A380 than 777 though not as good as on A350 or 787. Some airlines use humidifiers on other aircraft (Lufthansa on the 747-8i in First/Biz only)

> Some airlines use humidifiers on other aircraft (Lufthansa on the 747-8i in First/Biz only)

Really? Won't this affect the airframe? (humidity is low for a reason)

If humidity in the cabin affects the airframe that much, Singapore Airlines is already screwed.

I recommend Joseph's answer here: https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-engineers-fix-the-low-level-o...

Have you flown on the A380? I've done multiple flights on both and the A380 was the far more comfortable experience hands down, even in economy class.

Yes I did both, haven’t done business in a380 tho.

Comfort largely depends on airline. No economy seat, even when you are at emergency exit row, suits my height.

Yes, a380 feels more like a huge building, maybe a bit quieter (ANC headphones), but more people make it more annoying.

Bluff called! That was one expensive game of poker

I'm with you. I think the correct poker metaphor, though, is that the bluff worked. The way I see this is that Airbus knew that Emirates was generally happy with the A380, but unwilling to agree to whatever terms Airbus had on the table for new planes. Airbus then puts out a press release that they may cancel the line if there are no forthcoming customers, effectively saying "it's now or never if you want an A380"--i.e. the bluff. At which point Emirates folded. (in all likelihood, it just brought them back to the negotiating table). If Emirates had called the bluff, they would have said "Ok, good luck then!" and waited for Airbus to admit that they weren't cancelling the line.

If Emirates wasn't buying, it was actually quite possible that they would've shut down the line, and try to focus more on getting A350 orders out the door. Whatever Emirates was offering, it was a pittance, because you don't go publicly on record threatening to shut down a flagship product unless it's your best course of action.

Maybe it was a "semi-bluff", then.

http://www.pokerlistings.com/10-essential-texas-hold-em-move...

16 Bi for edit: 20 planes + 16 options is around 440Mi ea. seems they didn't get as large as a discount as I was expecting

That's for additional optional 16 for a total of 36.

The 16 Bi$ figure is for 36 aircrafts (including the 16 options) and means a price per unit of 445 Mi$. This is exactly the unit cost listed on Wikipedia. So we can assume the real price for the contract is lower.

> So we can assume the real price for the contract is lower

Very much so. Common discounts for airframes can be 40-50%. Given the circumstances I'd assume Emirates got somewhere near 50; who knows. But both parties needed this deal and as other comments correctly point out the unusually public manoeuvring has been going on for months.

Of course, no-one in the media has any idea about this very closely guarded commercial information and so they simply go by the list price.

That's pretty much list price according to Airbus' recently published price adjustments for 2018.

The article clearly states that $16B is the list price, not the price emirates paid:

> signed an outline agreement for 20 of the double-deckers with an option to buy 16 more, worth a potential $16 billion at list prices

This is a tangent but I really love flying Emirates. Their economy feels like luxury in United or Delta.

To be fair, it's not hard to beat US airlines when it comes to comfort in economy class.

US airlines are a terrible measure of quality. United and Delta are easily the worst two airlines i've traveled with.

Have you never traveled on low-cost airlines, in any country? There's nothing quite like a transoceanic flight with extra-thin seats and no water, let alone snacks, provided.

(Of course, this is made clear to the customer, but my point is that United and Delta are better than many airlines in most countries.)

Here's a great video that explains partly the reason the A380's have struggled compared

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

Fascinating stuff.

Link goes to AMP page. Here's a link to the desktop one: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-18/emirates-...

Standard 80x24 terminal with elinks.

Number of times needed to hit page down to read article content of desktop page 13. Number of times to start reading content on amp page 0.

Don't really get the amp hate.

Yea because in 2018, using an 80x24 terminal is THE WAY to browse the web. Cool. Thanks.

HackerNews is often a fertile garden for Poe's Law-level satire.

Can you please not post snark or do flamewars on HN? It really wrecks the threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

On desktop you get the pie diagram and all other images blown up to full display resolution. I can't fathom how they continue to get this so ridiculously wrong. It's not difficult.

AMP page without JS: https://i.imgur.com/aktBoAh.png

Desktop page without JS: https://i.imgur.com/gGYrjej.png

AMP page with Google blocked: https://i.imgur.com/aktBoAh.png

Desktop page with Google blocked [EDIT: actually, the screenshot I used here was wrong – the desktop page works perfectly with Google blocked, everything works]

I get the AMP hate – several of my friends blackhole the entire IP ranges from Google/Facebook/Amazon in their router, and Bloomberg’s desktop site works without that. And those that don’t use uMatrix and block JS by default – and the Bloomberg Desktop site works there, too, while the AMP site fails there as well.

The third and fourth links are the same as the first and second.

Yes, because the images were identical so I didn’t bother uploading them again.

Lol, the terminal is for plebs. REAL programmers read it straight from the framebuffer.

Bah! Real engineers have their ethernet cable plugged straight into a logic analyzer, and read the raw packet data.

No, REAL engineers plug their Ethernet cables directly into butterflies.

(And for Emacs folks, that's C-u C-u C-x M-c M-butterfly.)

Pass me my ear trumpet.....

Half the time it doesn't work. The other half I want to open it in chrome anyway so that it's in my history of recent tabs, so that I can navigate away from it easily, so that I can open it in background and go back to doing whatever I was doing before.

Can somebody tell me how long does it take for then to make a plane and how long until the next "alarm"? I ask because I see 20 ordeals fulfilled per year on wiki and at his rate it seems like this is just for one year (without understanding their pipeline)

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A380#Production_and_del..., production in 2018 will be at 12 per year, so this would add 2-3 years (if the optioned 16 will also be produced).

How does this add 10 years in this case to the life?

It won't add ten years of production of new A380s. It could extend the period of time in which there are airlines flying A380s by ten years.

The earliest-delivered A380s are already starting to face retirement by airlines, and aren't being replaced with new ones -- they're being replaced with 777s and A350s.

The line in the article is based on Airbus being hopeful that if they can keep the production line open another couple years, more airlines will start ordering A380s. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

It doesn't add 10 years, it extends it to 10 years as there already is a backlog.

And in 10 years, we will see.

They made 15 in 2017 and will make 12 in 2018. Starting in 2019 they will go to 8 p.a., which means that the additional 20 planes will push the currently foreseeable end of production from 2023 to around 2025.

However Airbus have said that they could go to 6 p.a. and there are strong rumors regarding a big order from China being announced at Leahy's (head salesman at Airbus) last press conference in February. This plus Emirates supposed demand for Airbus guaranteeing production over a 10 year period starting in 2028 has lead people on the internet to speculate that 2028 is the year current and prospective orders will be delivered (going at a rate of at 6 p.a. instead of 8), barring any replacement orders by current users.

Overall, the whole story is murky at best. We simply don't know the details of Airbus' production costs and though they claim to be making a profit at 8 p.a., it's pretty unlikely that 6 p.a. can yield any profits. So that would be Airbus making a bet on significant demand materializing over the next 10 years. It would also be a huge bet on Emirates making use of the 10 years of production (i.e. at least 60 airplanes) starting in 2028 that Airbus is rumored to have guaranteed.

Thanks for the details, this should be somewhere near top.

And how much of their pipeline is completely bespoke and how much of that space/people/machinery could just produce A350 instead?

Facilities are part of the equation. But people have to be trained and measured and certified. Those processes have to be designed and documented. The population needed for any process varies with the task - it'd be a coincidence if it was the same for a different pipeline.

And the facility is full of jigs and benches and tools and doorways and props and a million things that are bespoke to a process too.

Making very complicated things isn't the same as making toasters.

I get its terrifying complexity here - and lots of it is bespoke (and international, but outsourced parts probably helps in this case as it becomes someone else’s problem). But when e.g a car manufacturer makes 2 new models they try to keep many components similar. Planes aren’t cars but you’d think at least some systems are common to both A350 and A380.

The pipeline is pretty much bespoke, but they could move machine tools, people and buildings over to a different project if this project ends. I suspect that's why they are pressuring Emirates into committing to furter orders several years out. Had those orders not materialized, Airbus would probably have planned other uses for their existing resources. They are increasing production of all of their other products after all.

Did anyone catch the Emirates videos put together by Casey Neistat? I often wonder if YouTube celebrities will usher in a new form of advertising, where content and marketing are blended into an entertainment experience. The videos were wildly popular and I wonder if this aided significantly in bookings for Emirates flights, thus leading to the $9B order.

> I often wonder if YouTube celebrities will usher in a new form of advertising, where content and marketing are blended into an entertainment experience.

This goes on all around you, and isn't really a new form of anything. Movies, TV, YouTube, even music all blend marketing and entertainment.

Seems like the bare minimum face saving order they could make. Still wouldn’t consider this anything but a token gesture to try to hold up the value of their existing purchase. A380 is headed to the graveyard soon rather than later

Airlines don't sink several billion dollars to 'save face'. It's not a high enough margin business.

The value of the 100+ they have already purchased will drop at least 20% if Airbus were to cease production. Hence this move to prop up their value

Reply on news.ycombinator.com