It’s a little sad that we’ve retired the 747, the Concorde, and (almost) the A380. And we haven’t introduced anything cool :(
Losing Concorde was unfortunate, but there were just too many limitations to make it viable. Flying supersonic means you produce a shockwave that breaks stuff on the ground, limiting it to flying supersonic over oceans. Flying supersonic means that you have to produce kinetic energy that goes up like the square of your speed, meaning you need more fuel, and you need more fuel to carry the fuel. It barely worked for JFK-LHR (relatively short distance, mostly over the ocean), and there just weren't other routes where it was viable. With no viable routes, it wasn't going to sell in any volume, and there is some critical amount of volume you need to justify the program (some fixed human overhead for every airframe project; if you sell 10000 of them, that rounds to zero, if you sell only 20 of them, that rounds to a lot).
Might be pessimistic but I don't think we'll ever see a supersonic airliner again. The sonic boom kills them. Those people that want to drill tunnels through the earth to get better-than-great-circle distances might be the future. But I'll probably be dead before anyone gets funding to do that.
Might also get a little warm and you'd fight a lot of pressure, since you'd need to dig down about 1/3rd of the distance you'd want to save (assuming my elementary geometry memories aren't failing me). So to save 600km distance, you'd have to go down to a max depth of almost 200km. For context, the deepest bore hole drilled to date seems to be about 12km deep. [0]
So technology would have to improve a lot before global warming or the next meteor get us all.
Air France has stopped flying the A380 [2].
[0] Airbus announces stopping production of A380 in 2021: https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/airbus-annonce-la...
[1] Coronavirus gives the final blow to the A380 https://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/le-coronavirus-donne-le-co...
[2] Air France flies the A380 for the last time https://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/air-france-fait-voler-l-a38...
With COVID-19 and an expecting reduction in travel lasting a number of years, all airlines are downsizing. An aircraft that's already marginal makes a lot of sense to drop, even it means letting it go while young. They're effectively getting replaced by the A350-900s Air France has on order which are _vastly_ more fuel efficient per passenger.
(I've flown once on an A350. Very nice plane)
The engines on the A380 aren't actually that modern with the two options being 15-20 year old designs. One of the reasons it was discontinued is that no engine manufacturer was willing to make new engines for it, so they weren't able to produce a modern fuel efficient variant.
And it also makes limited use of composites in its design, so it's heavier than it would be if designed today.
One can make a good case for turbine engines having better efficiency the larger they are (less losses due to boundary layer friction etc.), so yes, if you have two otherwise equivalent aircraft I'd assume fewer bigger engines would be better. But here we don't have equivalent aircraft, as the A380 is bigger than, well, pretty much any other passenger airliner out there.
The A380 engines produce around 350 kN, which is slightly bigger than, say, the B787 engines. Admittedly the A350 engines are a bit bigger than that, but not by a huge amount. But the data seems to suggest both the 787 and 350 are much more fuel efficient than the A380?
So to make an equivalent comparison, one would take an engine, make a twin engine plane and a quad engine plane with that exact same engine. Naively one could expect the quad version to take twice the number of passengers or cargo, and have roughly the same fuel economy/seat. If not, why not? Which scaling laws are non-linear here?
> The engines on the A380 aren't actually that modern with the two options being 15-20 year old designs. One of the reasons it was discontinued is that no engine manufacturer was willing to make new engines for it, so they weren't able to produce a modern fuel efficient variant.
> And it also makes limited use of composites in its design, so it's heavier than it would be if designed today.
This explanation I can certainly buy. Also that the biggest turbofans are nowadays so large that a twin engine plane is already so big there's a very small market for quads.
It's worthwhile looking at where Airbus proposed to improve the A380:
* Densifying the main deck (going to 11-across in economy, still with 18" wide seats). This _alone_ in a typical configuration gives a 9% fuel-per-passenger gain.
* They looked at new engines (derived from the A350, for example) which would provide a 5% fuel burn gain.
* Minor wing modifications (new winglets and slightly reduced wing twist) which would provide a 4% fuel burn gain.
* Longer maintenance intervals (so the aircraft spends more time in the air earning money rather).
Other differences include that it holds much less freight in its belly than a 777 (a much larger proportion of its hold is consumed with passenger luggage), so you lose freight revenue.
It's also worthwhile pointing out that engines are some of the most expensive parts to maintain on an aircraft, so by doubling the number of engines on an aircraft you make a very significant increase on maintenance costs.
At the same time, you have the 777X lengthening the 777 (and increasing capacity) while reducing fuel-burn per seat, a much more versatile aircraft (an A380 will never be profitable on the major of 777X routes!), and more fleet commonality.
Doesn't one of the Middle Eastern airlines (Emirates?) have good routes for it, so they can still use it heavily?
According to the Figaro article, 8 of their 125 planes are still to be delivered. Maybe they could turn a profit by gaining a bigger share on their routes from other companies?
And it's cool that Boeing figured out 20 yrs ago that point-to-point would kill hub-and-spoke (not least because it's a great way to fly) and very sad that Airbus wasted so much money and people's careers on an ego driven white elephant that Boeing already told them wasn't going to work, instead of using that money to push the real envelope.
The A380 was a boondoggle from the beginning, an attempt to outdo Boeing by having TEH BIGGEREST aircraft on the market. Having to rebuild airports to accommodate it wasn't a good idea.
The 747 is a 1960s design, for Pete's sake. How long were we planning on keeping it around?
The major issue with the jumbo planes' (passenger) variants is that twin-engines now have significantly increased range, and have half the fuel consumption to boot. It's a lot easier to sell premium direct tickets rather than convince people to transfer onto a large cattle-class jumbo jet. Even pre-point to point, actually filling up a jumbo jet could be quite difficult, so now the death knell has been a long time coming, unless you're a Middle Eastern carrier operating the super-long-haul hub model.
Cost per flying hour of a modern B52: $70,000 [1]
1. https://www.airforcemag.com/article/re-engining-the-b-52/
> "Also nobody should be sorry that elites have to sit on long overseas flights just like we do."
Anyone can fly as long as they can pay for the ticket. First-class passengers subsidize economy seats for most flights, and new tech generally starts with wealthier early-adopters before it becomes accessible for everyone.
By the way, if you live in the West then you're an "elite" compared to billions. Let's drop the classism.
I also got to do a walk through in the Air and Space Museum over a decade ago. It's deinitely a tight space amd the seats were tiny. I'm not terribly tall, about 6 feet, and I had to hunch over to avoid hitting my head.
Or we could all be flying supersonic because of the economies of scale.
Sometimes old designs are pretty good. The C-130 Hercules rolled out in 1956. It's still in service in the US and other air forces. [1]