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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

After the demise of the a380 project i doubt airbus will ever think again that the aircraft can sell themselves.

A380 is an amazing business case. Ask anyone who has flown on one what their favourite commercial plane is and I would bet the majority will say it's the A380. Despite that it was still a commercial failure.

My wife surely wouldn’t. The upper deck lav leaked on our heads for half the flight from Sydney to LA. What’s worse than a 16 hour flight? A 16 hour flight where you have to stand in the aisles.

I've frequently seen condensed water from the air conditioner leak in an A380 (sometimes quite voluminously during take-off), are you positive it was the lavatory?

(FWIW, I think the A380 has superb pax comfort.)

So it's ok to have water dripping on your head as long as it's vapour condensation?

Certainly better than hot piss.

Is that what happens on the lower decks? :-)

Just rename it steerage, and you're resurrecting fine old nautical tradition.

I generally spend most long haul flights standing in the aisle. It's much better for your back and butt.

Good luck when the turbulence comes. I've seen people suddenly up against the ceiling. It is rare, but extreme turbulence sometimes happens very suddenly.

I remember this on a flight to an airbase in Catania, Sicily. Overnight flight, we were given drinks, then turbulence hit with the hand of Thor.

I'm pretty sure we dropped about 500 feet straight down, but all I remember was being amazed how my cup of pepsi stayed on my tray and didn't fall over.

If the pepsi was still in your cup, you were still at some degree of positive "g". Anything below about 0.5 will cause people to start screaming. True falling is 0g. But things suddenly get very bad at even the slightest negative g. At -0.1g your pepsi is levitating out of the cup, the 100lb drink cart is now airborne, and a second later it all comes crashing down.

I remember having some sort of feeling "negative-g" at that time (and plenty of people were screaming!) but we probably did have some amount of positive G. Probably not much though.

It has crossed my mind on occasion.never been in truly violent turbulence yet but generally wary when flying over the Indian Ocean. Can be quite rough.

Have some empathy.

I think you’re confusing value proposition for business case. The value proposition for widebody is over Singhal I’ll is simple. The business case is nonexistent whenever they’re in competitive situations. The lower cost of unsold seats makes al the difference.

As for favorite plane, the lower pressurization and higher humidity of a 787 makes all the difference.

Exactly. A good airplane isnt enough. The manufacturer has to follow the market, not expect that thier new aircraft will create that market.

You can't just follow when R&D and production for a new aircraft take decades. First feasibility studies for a A380 type aircraft were done in the 1980s, expecting the market in the future. The first delivery to a customer was MSN 003 to Singapore Airlines in 2007.

You need to plan ahead.

The A380 might actually live the destiny of the 767 or 757.

Sure, it was a handful for the manufacturer, luckily pulled it off, kinda broke even after some time. But it will be long gone when it will be really needed, when large hubs become even more congested or certain P2P lines heavily overgrow on themselves.

Good riddance. Despite being so big, its fuel efficiency is unimpressive. Something must be wrong with the design.

It's engines are old, at least 1.5 generations behind the latest engines in production. Fuel efficiency only looks low when compared to aircraft using more modern engines. Unsurprisingly, Emirates canceled their order only after Rolls-Royce rescinded their plans for an engine upgrade. That's why there was the one year of waffling; Airbus and Emirates were trying secure a commitment from Rolls-Royce as everything turned on an upgraded engine.

Even with the engine handicap the A380 was still generally competitive if fully loaded. And if not fully loaded it could still be competitive, as described by a recent story about the outsized role of the Dallas-Sydney route to Quantas' bottom line: https://simpleflying.com/dallas-sydney-qantas/ (see also https://www.dallasnews.com/business/airlines/2019/10/28/this...)

Considering that engine efficiency is perhaps the biggest contributor to financial viability, that says something very positive about the A380 approach and design. But as engines continued to advance the A380 would have lost even that edge.

Yeah, the A380 designed for a longer fuselage so it's inefficient in the -800 variant.

Makes sense. It looks too bulky, and not slender enough.

Can you expand on that?

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