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Comment by mcrae | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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.

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