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Comment by jayalpha | Hacker News Reader

Your analysis is wrong from many points.

There is a huge market for the plane.

The plane came too early. Build now with lighter materials, better engines and in the long version (the wings are designed for a much longer version, this also makes it heavy for the short version).

Is there a demand for such flights from Chicago to NYC? No.

But Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Deli, Mumbai via hubs such as Moscow, Istanbul or Addis there is.

So unfortunately the truth is, that there is a market, but the plane come too early. In fact, the Airbus CEO said exactly this in an interview.

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There isn't a huge market for the plane. The primary customer is Emirates, who have 109 of them. The next closest, SA, have 24. If you exclude Emirates altogether, the global buy-in for the 380 is 125 units. The remainder of the production run will primarily be to Emirates.

If there was a huge market for the plane, then airlines would have been lining up to buy them. A huge market would be the 787, which started production in 2011 and has delivered 789 of them on 1421 orders.

You misunderstood my post. I said, there is market for this type of plane, but not for the A380. I was 10 years too early.

- Needs other engines

- Needs to be lighter

- Needs to be bigger. The wings are build for the long version.

The question is, how much does it cost to bring one (price sensitive) customer to the hub? The A380 was the right idea based on size, but too early and failed on price.

There is zero proof of what you are saying, also some down right things that are just plain wrong.

Longer body, I believe.

I think the responses above understand your post, you are just referring to a plane that does not exist, and does not exist in a viable roadmap. A more ideal A380 might work, but Emirates is stuck having to continue buying the current production line, and not the future development. If anything, it sounds like it was 30 years too early.

I strongly doubt it: larger planes simply don't sell, this is not specific to the A380. Let's look one size below:

On Airbus side the second biggest airliner is the A350-1000: very light, top notch engines -> 170 orders so far, very underwhelming, and the project of a bigger A350-2000 has been postponed due to a lack of interest. On Boeing side the 777-9 (not yet flying) has even more modern engines, a super light wing, and besides Emirates nobody is buying it...

For an aircraft that is not yet flying, the 777-9 has pretty healthy demand from multiple airlines. Lufthansa, Etihad, Qatar, All Nippon, and Singapore have all placed orders. Iran Airlines as well, although nullified by trade embargoes. The bigger 777-10x is also selling well.

777-8 has 53 sales, and 777-9 has 273 sales, so a total of 326 firm orders. The 777-10 is not for sale, so it's certainly not selling well... 326 firm orders is pretty good, don't get me wrong, but the order book doesn't look super healthy: only 8 airlines, and 46% of the orders for Emirates. With Etihad troubled finances, that might go down to 7 airlines.

The order book has depth, but lack breadth. I've often heard the critical size for a widebody is at least 400 sales to 20 airlines. 400 sales to achieve economy of scales, and 20 airlines to have a healthy secondary market. The 777X is not far from the 400 sales, but has some ways to go to find 20 customers. The A330NEO is in a similar but reversed situation: 278 orders for 15 customers (including a couple of lessors). The breadth is nearly there, but not the depth.

I think you mean SQ / SIA / Singapore Airlines. South African doesn't operate any A380s.

The A380 was planned for a world where people travel between big hubs before hopping to another flight to reach their destination. That world exists only for a small amount of destinations and for most other routes the A380 would be mostly empty and therefore widely uneconomical to use. Instead bireactor planes are now allowed to travel further and further away, making region to region traffic a lot more realistic than 20 years ago. And that is where the traffic is increasing the most.

Creating a commercial airline is one of the most complex business endeavors one can take one. Such a huge amount of variables, along with predictions about flight technology, supply/demand, customer service, and fuel costs are a necessary part of it.

I with there was a Sim-Airline game.

There are a bunch. This looks very low-tech, but is completely free and kinda fun for a while:

http://www.airline-empires.com/index.php?/page/home.html

This is much more slick:

http://www.airlinesim.aero/en

But none come close to the complexity of the real thing, and the models are unrealistic/can fairly easily be "hacked" (print money by giving away flights but charging $1000 for meals, etc).

I haven't found one with the right mix of fun and complexity. They're all either super fluffy with five minutes worth of gameplay, or spreadsheet managers like EVE (without even the pretty graphics to accompany it).

Same thing for airport simulators.

I can’t remember the name at all but there was a very interesting web-based airline sim we ran when I was in school for aviation. There weren’t any fancy graphics or anything though. You just bought airplanes, set routes and prices, and managed your finances. A fiscal quarter would run every few days. It was a lot of fun!

Sorry to be that guy, but further is typically used for figurative distances, while farther is preferred for literal distances. I always remember this because it was a plot point in a crappy movie with Sean Connery.

Thank you. I've been meaning to look that up for years.

That wouldn't be The Avengers, would it? That movie was so bad that I've blocked out all memory of it, other than to remember how bad it was. It does tend to confuse people though when I tell them the worst movie I've ever seen was The Avengers.

In case it wasn't clear, I was NOT talking of the Marvel movie with the same name.

OED says not so clear-cut:

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/farther-or-further

> typically used

Is it a cost vs convenience tradeoff? I'd rather travel point to point, but if the A380 is undercuts that because it's more cost-effective, many people would put up with it to save money.

That's an odd selection of cities you propose.. there's not even daily flights between some of those city pairs, let alone an a380

There are huge numbers of people in these cities flying international every day. I agree the hubs may not be right but between LHR, FRA, DXB, SIN and the supersize megacities it makes sense to fly 380 to maximize landing slot efficiency.

Nope. It is not an odd selection.

I named Asian centers. Shanghai has 20 Million people. The Yangtze Delta is an aggregation of probably around 200 Million people. So I named big population centers in Asia. The big airlines in Singapore and Hongkong have declined a lot. They are missing the hinterland, they can't serve as hubs for China anymore. The same will be happening in UAE. Etihad airlines has problems already.

So what are the future hubs for Asia<>Europe and Asia<> Africa?

1. Moscow. Aeroflot is most of the time the cheapest airline from China to Europe.

2. Istanbul and Turkish Airlines. I think no other airlines serves more countries, the new airport in Istanbul aims to be the biggest in the world in the final stage.

3. Addis Abeba and Ethiopian airlines. Addis will be the future hub of Africa (Ethiopia has more than 100MM People). At the same time they will hurt the UAE airlines a lot. Also see: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ethiopi...

Now, I never claimed that there are now A380 flights. But this would be the market, had the plane be build 10 years later and in the stretched version. Not for a flight Moscow to Frankfurt. Not for a flight Addis to Entebbe. But definitely for Shanghai to Moscow. Guangzhou to Addis. Etc. etc. Bring customers from big centers to the Hub. The Hub must have

- good geo-location

- government backing

- enough local customers (e.g. Moscow vs. Dubai)

I fly a lot between Asia, Africa and Europe (All three alliances Gold Elite :-) ). I think I know what I am talking about.

> So what are the future hubs [...]

I see a problem with your assesment right there in your assumption that large hubs will still be a thing in the future. It's becoming more and more obvious that this won't be the case.

It's an odd selection as population size isn't indicative of aircraft size. Congestion of airports and slot constraints is.

Which is why you find most A380s in Dubai, London and on long haul routes like LAX and SYD. EVA flies 2 77W back-to-back on LAX-TPE within half an hour.

Istanbul doesn't even have a single A380 gate. None of the airlines you mentioned ever flew an A380 either.

"It's an odd selection as population size isn't indicative of aircraft size. Congestion of airports and slot constraints is."

I disagree. Since it is the wrong solution for the problem.

> Which is why you find most A380s in Dubai, London

I am not surprised that it did not work for this airlines.

"Istanbul doesn't even have a single A380 gate." Not sure what you mean with this. I was talking about the new airport and the airport is prepared for the A380, see link. Again, the A380 is the right solutions in size, it is just wrong in cost performance because it came 10 years too early.

https://airlinerwatch.com/new-istanbul-airport-prepares-room...

With enough capacity, airlines would rather fly 10x A350/B787 between two major cities rather than 5x A380. Offers more choice to the customers (as already for JFK-LAX where you often have a flight every 30 min), saves fuel and makes airlines less vulnerable to idiosyncratic events (e.g. crew sickness or technical fault).

The reason why Moscow is cheap is partially geopolitical. Airlines are not particularly fond on their planes getting shot down by military.

Maybe flying a Russian airline is a good way to insure you won't get shot down flying over Russian / Ukrainian airspace (which is hard to avoid if you're flying Europe to Asia)

Majority of Europe-Asia (southwest, south, southeast) flights route via Turkey/Iraq/Gulf or Romainia/Black Sea/Georgia/Turkmenistan -- especially since MH17.

Those heading to East Asia tend to fly over northern Russia, well away from Ukraine

Here[0] are planes avoiding Ukraine

[0] http://imgur.com/EbNXLpXl.png

Ukraine is a small country, easy to avoid. The GP was talking about Russia in general though, which is much harder to avoid. The traffic to East Asia is far greater and more important than that to Southeast.

The last time a plane was shot down over Russian airspace was KE007 in 1983

International flight paths over Russia are a large source of money for the country, Russia isn't going to shoot down any airlines.

The fact that russian army shot down MH17 from occupied territory doesn't change much really.

Correct. That was over Ukraine, and airlines responded by not routing over an active warzone

If a plane were shot down over Siberia, planes would reroute away from Siberia, meaning Russia loses overfly money.

Unless the scenario is that Russia comes out and says "we'll shoot down non-Russian airlines", in which case Russian airlines are no longer allowed to fly to other countries, and Russia is cut off from the rest of the world, and we go back to routing via Iran or Alaska (perhaps non-stop). It's an extra 1300 miles from London to Tokyo via those routes, 1200 miles to Beijing, 1000 to Shanghai, and only 600 miles to Hong Kong / Chengdu

It'd be annoying, but not even as bad as when it was the USSR.

Russia meanwhile would collapse economically.

I'm actually interested in how much did that affect any flight plans in the long term. Do any airlines use another route of going over potential conflict territories is the most economic? I know there was a lot of rerouting immediately after the incident.

The avoided Ukrainian/Russian airspace after the incident.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/american-reroutes...

Some like Qantas avoided it before the incident

That's the "immediately after" part I meant. What I'd like to know is if the new routes were kept.

Aeroflot is cheap, and other Russian airlines. Flying through Moscow with anything but Russian airlines is not as cheap as one would expect. The reason is that Moscow has decided to limit the amount of permits that would allow an airline to operate within it's airspace to one per country. Flying over Russia would be the best choice when flying between Europe and Asia cost wise if not for the limited availability and cost of the permit.

And please, don't be allured to Aeroflot due to the cheap flights, it's not an experience worth having.

Aeroflot is one of the best airlines.

Good service

Fair bonus miles

Super cheap dog transportation

One of the most modern fleets

Very cheap tickets.

Not sure why your experience was so bad. By the way, the stock performance reflects my points. They must be doing something right and they pay dividends.

The problem with the A380 is not really it's size. You're right that there will always be big cities with slot-constrained hub airports where big aircraft make sense.

The real problem is that the A380 is falling behind other modern aircraft on its operating costs.

Being able to carry an extra 100-150 pax is nice, but when each seat costs 20-30% more per mile in fuel compared to a 777X or an A350, then most airlines will choose the more fuel-efficient models.

The 777X isn't even flying right now.

When airlines are looking to buy aircraft in 2021, they'll have a choice between A350, A380, and 77X.

Very few situations will call for a new A380.

And given A350-1000 and 777-8/9 order books, very few situations call for even these...

Most of the traffic growth is being eaten by the smaller planes that are getting quite a bit bigger: 50 regional seaters are being replaced by 100 seaters, A319/A320 are being replaced by A320/A321, etc. Meanwhile the bigger planes are getting smaller: 747 being downsized to 777-300ER, A350-900 or even 787-9.

It's not far away. The first aircraft have already been completed, and deliveries should start next year.

Is there something inherent in the A380 design that makes it less fuel-efficient, or is it just that the engines are of an older design than the newest planes?

(I'm guessing it may be as simple as there's 4 engines instead of 2?)

It's simple diminishing returns to size efficiency.

There's a saying in aviation that goes something like "it takes a lot of fuel to fly a lot of fuel". Even over the course of a single flight, the fuel consumption rate goes down significantly as that fuel gets consumed. You can fit more stuff in a bigger plane, but it takes more fuel to fly the 100,000th pound than it does to fly the 100th pound, so you only want the larger capacities if you know that you are going to consistently utilize them.

While the points you make are true, they don't address the parent's hypothesis about engines, which is true. Once you get into commercial jetliner engine sizes, the fewer the number of engines for a given thrust level, assuming equivalent internal technology, the lower your fuel burn will be. It's a matter of minimizing unavoidable per-engine losses, like bearing losses, cooling losses, endgap leaks in rotor tip regions, etc. These kinds of losses do amortize well with engine size.

That's certainly a factor, but there's more to it.

- A380 is heavier, per seat, than newer aircraft designs which are making use of advanced composites, new technologies that reduce the weight of wiring, etc.

- A380's engines are older models which are less efficient than the latest-generation engines fitted to the 777X and A350

- Aircraft with 4 engines have higher operating costs than 2. Additional fuel burn, maintenance expenses, etc.

Obviously some of this could be improved if Airbus were to have developed an upgraded version of the A380 (and Rolls-Royce it's engines). There was talk of both a new-engine A380neo and a stretched A380-900 at one point. But clearly, the market was judged to be too small to justify the substantial development costs.

Is there something inherent in the A380 design that makes it less fuel-efficient, or is it just that the engines are of an older design than the newest planes?

I have read that the Boeing 747 sits at some local maxima in design space, and to get larger, the Airbus A380 compromised by having a higher wing loading. This would reduce fuel efficiency a bit.

Not really. This was the argument Airbus previously gave to justify their continuing losses on the program. The reality is much simpler - smaller jets to more places (no matter if it's hub to hub or hub to spoke or point to point) fragments the market, and makes it impossible to concentrate enough demand to consistently fill a A380 at a specific price point.

This trend is really clear in the aviation business. The 757 and 767 really killed four or three engine engine trans-Atlantic (the single most important international route system), while the 787 killed four engines across the pacific.

The smallest plane, with the most reasonable CASM (cost per available seat mile) at the highest frequency wins.

Some of the highest passenger counts per year are between Osaka-Tokyo or Sapporo-Tokyo or Seoul-Jeju or Shanghai-Beijing. And yet I don't see 380s on those routes...

Japan is usually a Boeing backyard.

Case in point with JAL (not sure if they fly the routes you talked about but it's as good as an example): https://www.jal.com/en/outline/aircraft.html

231 aircrafts, not a single Airbus.

yes if you look at busiest routes you will find the top few dominated by short domestic routes less than 1000-1500 km. you run a short range plane like the a320 or the 737 and fly the route 100s of times a day. it's much cheaper than running a few a380s.

the a380s are almost only used for long range flights with 1 or 2 flights a day: sydney-dubai-heathrow, singapore-london, singapore-frankfurt-new york etc.

And smaller planes flying more frequently yield a better experience for the customer, too. There's more flight times to choose from, boarding doesn't take as long, and there's many more jetways available for smaller planes at airports.

ANA operates the 777 on those routes, hell I've even seen it flown on Tokyo-Hiroshima and it was full. A case could certainly be made for the A380 on Tokyo-Osaka.

There's a point at which the time spent boarding becomes too great considering the time in the air. The A380 is a large plane, and you really need 3 jetways to board it in any amount of reasonable time. The mentioned routes are mostly operated by 767s, 787s, 777s, or 330s. The 767 is the perfect plane for the route, and the 330 isn't half bad. TPE-HKG is another example of one of these super busy short routes.

You would need 15 doors to fill them fast enough.

I'd say it's more for big city to big city. NYC to London, Tokyo to Paris, SF to Hong Kong... There are already dozens of flights per days between those.

For that flights, a huge airplane makes sense.

Where capacity allows, serving a route multiple times with small planes is preferred by airlines and customers. And even if slots are restricted, offering less capacity than demand (driving up prices) can be more profitable than trying to offer service to anyone who's willing to book.

Long range versions of single-aisle planes also change the dynamics a bit, putting less focus on hubs.

> NYC to London

No A380s on this route. There are 32 flights each way, 28 from Heathrow.

BA/AA operate 12 daily flights LHR-JFK, pretty much one ever 90 minutes during the day, it's pretty much a turn up and go service. Virgin/Delta do another 8 flights, again turn-up and go.

That frequency attracts the people on flexible tickets. Those on the cheapest flights they find on skyscanner will probably take the norweigan 787s from Gatwick.

That market for flexibility doesn't exist between say London and Singapore (I suspect most are transferring at least at one end), but there's plenty of passengers looking to travel, and so you get 4 of the 7 flights over 3 carriers are on A380s.

Also I guess if you are running 12 flights you can adjust the number to demand and say do 10 or 8 in low season. It'd be less easy to do that with the A380.

If you have somewhere else for the planes to go, and the slots and agreements, yes.

BA ran an empty flight from Heathrow to Cardiff for a while to keep a slot at Heathrow.

> it's pretty much a turn up and go service

Assuming you have a flexible ticket, which the overwhelming majority of passengers don't.

Tried asking BA/AA to move to an earlier flight on a non-flex ticket? "Computer says no, unless you pay $lots"

On BA all business class tickets are changable for a nominal fee (about 5% of the cost of a return ticket). It's that flexibility that means people pay £6k return for the cheapest business class LON-NY ticket.

Sure, if you're flying on the "cheapest flight on skyscanner" then you don't get the flexibility, but that's why they don't fly 6 A380s rather than 12 smaller planes, they want the £6k tickets to choose BA/AA rather than VS/DL. The £600 return tickets at the back will fly whoever's cheapest.

>> BA all business class tickets are changable for a nominal fee

That's a sweeping claim.

Pick a highly-discounted business class fare LON-NYC-LON for dates well in advance which books into I fare bucket.

I close the ILX1C1S6 fare, out 25 Dec 2019, back 1 Jan 2020. (The base fare is GBP1271 r/t...)

Either do a dummy booking at BA.com, or go to ExpertFlyer[0] and the fare rules. Find the 'PENALTIES' section:

  CANCELLATIONS
   
     ANY TIME
       TICKET IS NON-REFUNDABLE.

[...]

  CHANGES

     ANY TIME
       CHANGES NOT PERMITTED.

[0] www.expertflyer.com

I looked at a selection of business class fares (including fares booking into I buckets) a couple of weeks in advance and all were changeable for £300.

"Almost all" then, especially when you factor in corporate deals

Which route(s)? Were you including a Sat night stay?

At BA.com I've just looked up LON-NYC-LON out 6 Mar back 13 Mar (so just over two weeks from now), and I'm seeing the same complete lack of flex:

Your ticket conditions

Changes to your ticket No changes permitted. No upgrades permitted

Refunds There are no refunds except for any government & airport taxes

This is kind of what I was thinking - or even that the plane is not just too early, but too small - there was talk of building a stretched A380.

> the wings are designed for a much longer version, this also makes it heavy for the short version

Make it even a bit longer, and takeoff performance will tank so much, that you will need even longer runways

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