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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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