Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert
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Boeing's 747 was incredibly profitable at the time, so it cross-subsidized other aircraft like the 737 (which competed with the A320). Launching the A380 countered that effect, and it made all segments more competitive.
It's unfortunate that the largest aircraft are going out at the time when demand for flying is higher than ever. On the upside, the A350 has many of the A380's technologies, and is a great competitor to the 777 series (and is also a very good competitor to the 787 series!)
I once landed in Johannesburg on a A380 Air France from Paris and the airport was in thick fog. You could not even tell we touched the ground. The captain made the announcement after landing that it was his very first time letting the plane land in itself... you could tell the excitement in his voice :)
A rough landing is actually considered a safe landing when the conditions are not ideal. A smooth landing means flying the plane close to stall speed. So close that it gently touches down with barely any vertical speed left. You don't do that when there's any risk of wind shear causing very sudden and extreme drops in air speed of tens of knots. If that happens you drop below stall speed and basically the plane drops out of the sky. If that happens low enough, you crash and die. It's extremely unsafe to do anything else than plonking it down decisively under such conditions. That means a larger vertical and horizontal speed and eliminating airspeed via the shock absorbers instead of floating over the runway. That's what shock absorbers are for. As long as the plane doesn't bounce off again, it's all good. Bouncing is dangerous though because now you are slow and stalling.
Is this another way of saying slow to accelerate?
I think the guy next to me panicked because he thought there was engine trouble and we were going to overrun.
But they have direct competitors for these types of routes too. A350, A321-XLR, the various neo planes. All of which are as good as Boeing’s options! (And even some which Boeing doesn’t have, like the A220.) As an outsider, it seems like Airbus is in a fantastic spot, at least until Boeing starts shipping the 777X and working on a new single-aisle plane.
What's hilarious is Boeing they almost killed the project.
Airbus was able to snag it for next to nothing, while Canadians were supposedly "hard at work" negotiating for NAFTA.
Though even a 737\757 replacement is 10 to 15 years away with airbus getting more and more of the order book.
Is that expected to provide a serious upgrade over the A350-1000?
Airlines line Turkish seem to do well, with their shinny new super hub in Istanbul.
There can only be so much pair to pair flight, so we will always have some hub airlines.
I took Nice to Manila last year. Friends of mines flew from random town in France to Abu Dhabi, through Istanbul. On my flight to Istanbul, I talked to passengers going to a random town in Egypt for diving & friends holiday.
And I also saw students (or at least young ppl) going to Japan on my flight. A stopover probably made the flight more fuel economic, hence cheaper, which is great for a lot of flyers.
I was also glad to stop midflight to wait at the warm water fountain with Chinese ppl (who were wondering why a gringo was having a warm glass of water), to stretch my legs, and to change and everything. More than 10 hours of a single flight is unbearable.
I have no doubt that city pairs flights are hotter atm, and you will always have flights between your home city and trendy destinations like the famous Montréal or the infamous USA from now on.
But for all of these reasons and more, I don't believe hub airlines are doomed.
tourists all want the earliest and last flights to arrive early and leave late, and not waste a day of vacation
ppl who go on a weekend want the last trip on sunday that arrives not so late so that they can sleep, or the earliest trip on monday
And when you're going on a journey in the middle of the day, you're sometimes feeling alone in there.
Beyond offering more trips, there will still be that slots issues where you have to propose capacity at popular schedules.
You would see the same fare on all the flights, if capacity wasn't an issue for airlines.
So it's not an open and shut debate. Both types of planes should still exist.
Also, IMO, "Increasing the frequency" "at varying times of the day" with 737s only is another sign of the airline industry not really caring about what users want, because of the economics. Most travellers really want that Friday evening flight.
It's the same as with the luggages that are a premium and a nightmare to checkin with most airlines.
But it's unfortunately the system we want. We choosed to have profitable businesses, instead of costly public services like trains in Europe.
They have unlimited capacity anytime of the day, lose money, but are convenient. That should be a model again for airlines.
A young single person, is different from a family with kids, which is different from a group of young people on a party trip. A young single person can often have a bag ready and depart directly from work; a family with kids may want to depart in the morning to be there super early; a group of young people hungover from last night's bender may want an afternoon flight.
Not to mention, often you are picking between an optimal departure time and an optimal arrival time. For instance, I know people who love redeye flights to fly across the continental US, but I hate them because they mess up my sleep.
The A380 is essentially a really big bet on a one-size-fits-all plane, for travel segments that rarely are.
Or maybe that's what you mean, and that Airbus has lost domestic US carrier sales by focusing on the A380? But they've presumably won long haul international sales- Emirates, Singpaore, etc
And if neither of those airports is a "mega hub" than I don't think LAX is either. They have the gate count, the passenger count, and the Delta/American hubs.
The 737 wasn’t particularly expensive to design or build. It shares a 41 section with the 707 and 727 for example.
And the public's opinion of the air travel industry was different so hand wringing over it wasn't so fashionable.
Then again the 737s with rudder issues were not brand spanking new planes.
Without Boeing's negligence and corner cutting this never would have happened.
For example, the front of the 737 does have 3 pitot tubes. However, these drive the air data computers for the pilot and the copilot positions. The 3rd one drives a small set of backup instruments. A fourth at the rear of the plane is an input to the hydraulic pitch and feel computer. The Airbus is closer to what some might imagine but the switch between the 3 data sources is still manual (AF447 might have reached Paris if this wasn't the case).
There is another argument that adding more AoA sensors would have had a negligible impact on safety given they are exposed to the same environmental conditions. The main outcome was limiting the authority of the system, it would have prevented both accidents.
No. Pilots weren’t even aware of MCAS’ existence until after the second fatal crash.
That’s a huge problem, compounded by
> Boeing cheaped out and made MCAS depend on a single AoA sensor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_...
https://christinenegroni.com/boeing-workers-warn-of-737-ng-s...
The 737-MAX, courtesy of Post McDonnel Douglas-Boeing merger [0], with code written by offshored 9$/h Indian coders was a complete disaster.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues
And speaking of safety records, A32* is better than B737* by any metric.
For other readers, if the monthly salary is 300,000 INR, that would be 3.6M INR per year, or about 45K USD @ 80 INR/USD.
So they can convert it to six figures USD?
> Boeing messed up. FAA not once in it's reports nor any aviation experts blamed the code, Boeing went cheap and removed a redundant device the MCAS system needs during a malfunction.
McDonnell Douglas-Boeing messed up indeed. The 9$/h coders are just one of the many symptoms of a culture that lead to this kind of reckless behavior.
The successful Indian Space Research Organization is probably paying $15/hr to it's engineers if you are to question their competency next, I'm not sure if you even understand anything.
I mean that's the reason they outsource, it's cheaper because they have to pay way less in USD, but can hire the same level of talent, if needed. Since in INR it's a lot.
And why should they convert to USD, that's completely foolish, they live in India LOL.
Why do you think a lot of people come to US, even if it means working low income jobs. They send their money to India where it's a lot. And hoard a lot of wealth there.
That's for mobile internet I can only use in India, getting an Indian IP address. It costs 43 dollars but it useless once I land in America.
> The mortgage payment on a decent 3BHK house I pay is 182 USD per month.
For a house in India, in an Indian school district, under Indian jurisdiction. It is not the same asset because there's more to it than the number of bedrooms. See how many Mainland Chinese purchase real estate in America specifically because the assets are now under US jurisdiction and can't be seized by the ruling party, only by a US court of law.
> but can hire the same level of talent
Can you? Last I checked, Silicon Valley talent was pretty expensive worldwide. Partly because it's easy to relocate to the valley.
What's more all american than "Post McDonnel Douglas-Boeing merger with code written by offshored 9$/h Indian coders"?
The 777 had already passed the 747 as the main breadwinner well before the A380 took to the sky. Boeing had tried to launch two different 747 stretches and both failed. Airbus with government aid decided to launch the A380, even though there was significant evidence that the A340 was getting crushed against the 777.
The A340-500 in particular had great range and was used on the longest nonstop routes for some time, but it was replaced by the A380, 777-200LR, 787-9, and the A350-900.
This goes for just about every largest of its kind piece of commercial cargo moving equipment.
> The A380's wings are sized for a maximum takeoff weight (MTOW) over 650 tonnes to accommodate these [larger] future versions, albeit with some internal strengthening required on the A380F freighter. The optimal wingspan for this weight is about 90 m (300 ft), but airport restrictions have limited it to less than 80 m (260 ft), thereby lowering the aspect ratio to 7.8 which reduces fuel efficiency by about 10% and increases operating costs a few percent, given that fuel costs constitute about 50% of the cost of long-haul aeroplane operation.
It all comes down to fuel prices. Lamenting for the age of the 747 is the same as missing those boat size finned Cadillacs. It was another era. The ETOPS ratings of modern engines and fuel efficiency of high bypass designs means we will never see a four engined passenger liner ever again.
The A380 itself was outdated by the time it flew its first passengers, as the 787 was in its final stages of testing at the time. They will live on as cargo planes for outsized loads, and possibly long haul first class configurations, but the economics are simply not there for mainline passenger use.
Yes. We all saw 380's loaded to the gunnels with PPE during covid. No, that doesn't mean they are all going to wind up doing freight. What I read suggests it will carry less, or only very close to a 747 in most cases.
It's working fine in long haul passenger roles and will continue to work well for state funded airlines like Singapore and Emirates as well as ANZ and Qantas and China Southern (they've pulled out now). BA and other European carriers are a bit half-pregnant on it. Singapore and Emirates alone probably have 1/2 of the entire fleet worldwide. QANTAS has 10, maybe options on 2 more. Its fleet looks to be moving all airbus with the recent purchases, Jetstar run the 787.
At one point Emirates flew their mostly empty 380s from Brisbane to Auckland to park: it was cheaper considering all the economics, and the opportunistic passenger load you can pick up there, than parking in Brisbane. I am sure it wasn't literally "parking fees" but I flew that segment a few times and it was less than 20% load both ways.
The lack of US market isn't impacting it's viability in other segments. Shutting down the line was a mistake in my opinion, but I'm not an economist. That said, the other lines (350, &c) are running fine.
The a350 is a better craft than the b777 for passengers. Engine noise and seat economics. I've done 7+ international (AU to USA and Europe) flights a year for the last 20 years and so as a passenger I think I can compare aircraft experience. I am told in engine burn its better too but the differences here would go to TCO and I can't comment, I don't run an airline. If you have to do the operations research on buy new, lease new, buy old, lease old, outsource, insource, end-of-life retained value, flight profiles, load, its all complicated.
It's too easy to claim "this aircraft is better" when you're an armchair planner.
All major aircraft are state subsidised in development no matter how hard Boeing or Airbus try to mask it.
For outsized loads, you need an articulated nose or tail, like a cargo 747, a C-17, C5, A400M, AN124, etc. It is generally economically unfeasible to modify an aircraft to add this kind of feature, although it has been done on a limited basis for specific missions, for example the Boeing 747 Large Cargo Freighter with an articulated tail, or the super guppies, or Airbus Beluga. Note that those modifications were all purpose built for a specific task, not general purpose cargo aircraft.
The A380 does not have a side cargo door, reinforced floorbeams, or a cabin fire extinguisher system, so currently it cannot even take on palletized freight, much less outsized loads. It is not uncommon for aftermarket companies to modify retired passenger aircraft to add reinforced floorbeams, a side cargo door, etc, so this could happen, if some company decides that it is a profitable mod. IAI is doing this with older 777s right now. https://aviationweek.com/mro/aircraft-propulsion/iai-open-bo...
Is it ? Trafic is close to prependemic but still below.
> The industry is now just about 15% below 2019 levels of demand [0]
[0]https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2023-releases/2023-04-04-0...
Airlines have opted and are opting to fly fewer planes with higher ticket prices. It's a price over volume optimisation that seems to be in fashion in many industry segments. [0]
I will note that some airlines have been affected very badly by issues with rebuilding staffing in ancillary services like luggage and airport security. That uncertainty I think leads to them being less ambitious with growth.
0 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/transcrip...
I can buy “prices are very hight” but how would you measure that ? Also did you took inflation into account in your estimation ? Flight “recovery” is largely due to Asian market booming, so prices may go up in the US while decreasing in the biggest market share.
Regarding prices obviously you can adjust for inflation and affordability changes but all statements like that have to be accepted as only being valid/pertinent for certain time periods. I think in this context only a few people are interested in a comparison to the 1920s, 1960s, etc
(And a bit of “everyone else is raising prices” and greed, naturally)
Anecdote: I just took a 50 min flight on a budget carrier: £230. Didn’t even include a checked bag.
You can’t just compare costs between now and the past either because you get much less for your money now, pretty much just a seat on a very cramped bus.
I’m not old enough to have flown pre deregulation but I did fly in the heyday of EasyJet and Ryanair etc.
The flying experience is significantly more stressful and cramped than 10-20 years ago.
I have no problem paying £200-300 for a flight but I want good leg room, good staffing levels, good service in face of disruption etc. Even flying business class in Europe is hardly worth it as you’re still flying the low-cost airlines/subsidiaries, so you’re just paying for a tiny bit of extra legroom and luggage, and some crap lounge access if you’re lucky. And some short flights in Europe are absurdly priced (eg £816 Manchester to Amsterdam in June/July)
Sorry for the highly technical terms but I agree it is unique to the A380.
Apart from this they comfortable to travel and sleep on.
The autopilot can definitely have an effect on how smooth the flying feels, depending on how autothrottle and altitude hold control loops are implemented.
There are parts of the flight where hand flying is allowed, but those are the parts closer to the ground (or on very short hops where the cruise altitude is significantly lower than usual).
Airline pilots routinely do takeoffs/departures/approaches/landings by hand to practice their skills, but not cruise. See this Airbus doc: https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/high-altitude-manual-flying/
Cyclists generally prefer carbon fiber over aluminum because the former is smoother than the latter. 787 is carbon fiber, A380 is a fiberglass/aluminum composite. I wonder if that's why the 787 is smooth.
I'm not an expert on planes but I'm not aware of another commercial airliner that's carbon fiber.
Apparently the slot limitations at major city airports are becoming a harder constraint to work with, especially as a larger swatch of Asia gain the ability to travel long haul.
Losing the A380 in 15-20 years is going to make flying between big city pairs more expensive.
I doubt airlines are actually interested in committing tens of billions of capital, today, to get a dozen % improvement in fuel efficiency a decade from now.
And why would a private investor take such a huge risk without guarantees of making it back several fold?
So it doesn't happen.
Putting my cynical cap on, my hot take is this: Everybody now realizes that Emirates and Clark are exactly right. As was Airbus.[1] Demand will blow past supply (i.e. runways and gates). Ticket prices will sky rocket. But from the perspective of the plane and engine manufacturers this translates to, "if everybody sits on their hands and does nothing, we're going to enjoy a windfall of profits". Clearly, IMO, Boeing, all the engine manufacturers, and now (somewhat despite themselves) Airbus, are going to passively collude[2] to bring about this windfall. All they need to do is sit tight and wait things out. The threat of competition isn't significant enough to break the collusion; there are too few players, the barriers to entry--regulation, technical and logistical expertise, etc--too steep, and like with housing little prospect that political reforms will make it easier to build enough new runways and airports to change the capacity trajectory.
Similar calculus applies to most of the established carriers. There's much more competition among them, but if the manufacturers are expected to continue to coast there's no angle to exploit in that regard and thus little incentive to agitate for disruption along this dimension, and so the carriers also get to look forward to windfall profits, notwithstanding that they'll be forking over much of it to the manufacturers. Clark just isn't cold-blooded enough to want to play that game; he's got too much of a fighting spirit. (Or perhaps more realistically it's also because if Emirates doesn't keep growing it won't be viable in this prospective future reality?)
[1] Boeing wasn't wrong, either, but point-to-point only bought a couple of decades of supply expansion.
[2] I think there's an economics term for this, but I don't remember it.
That said, watching the Comac C919 shitshow (14 years and still not in revenue service, and this is for a 737/A320 clone), I'm not holding my breath. The twin-aisle C929 is still a decade away at best, and it'll take a good long time until any Western airline trusts it; even Chinese turboprops (Xian MA-60/600/700) have so far only managed to find buyers in Africa and the poorer bits of Asia.
I agree that the C919/929 pose no threat as is, but the Chinese are clearly playing the long game here and their massive domestic market coupled with government arm-twisting lets them scale: the C919 has already racked up over 1000 orders.
That said, watching the Comac C919 shitshow (14 years and still not in revenue service, and this is for a 737/A320 clone), I'm not holding my breath.
Me: What's the official economics term for passive collusion, when players in a market avoid competing with each other without any explicit agreement not to?
GPT-4: The official economics term for passive collusion, when players in a market avoid competing with each other without any explicit agreement not to, is "tacit collusion." Tacit collusion occurs when firms in an industry indirectly coordinate their actions, such as price setting or output levels, without explicit communication or agreements. This behavior can lead to higher prices and reduced competition, similar to the outcomes of explicit collusion or cartels, but it can be harder to detect and regulate.
There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.
Commercial airlines have to deal with going over countries that have air forces which can intercept them. Intercepting satellites is quite a bit harder. And attempting to gets everyone mad at you because of how much garbage it creates. In fact people are STILL unhappy with China because of the fallout from their attempt to TEST their capacity to do that in 2007!
First you need to include price of the floating megaports at each destination in the world. The cost of a single such human rated platform divided by a number of physical rockets using it per year will be many orders of magnitude higher than a price of airport divided by the number of planes serviced per yer.
Second you will need a lot of highly expensive maintenance crew members at each location (more expensive per person than airplane maintenance crews). Plus much much bigger staff at the dispatcher tower in each location, compared to a handful of aircraft dispatchers in an airport servicing hundreds of planes simultaneously.
Third you will need a private (and thus unprofitable) public transportation lines/ships to each of the rocket starts.
4th - you will need a lot of training facilities for the prospective passengers. And staff for them.
5th - you will need low orbit rated space suits in a variety of the sizes at each location. And maintenance and repair facilities for them. Dragon low orbit suit clock at about 0.5 mil dollars today. 4 suits and that's more that entire fuel cost for the launch :) (theoretical cost, with best outcome). Even is economies of scale will help to lower costs 2-3 times (doubtful) it still doesn't scale to a global E2E operations.
I'm probably missing some other significant costs but you can get the picture. It will never be a first class ticket price because it is impossible.
And that's not even counting other blockers for this idea.
First, you're doing a ton of double counting. The estimated $2 million/launch already includes necessary infrastructure, servicing, and so on.
Second you're assuming a ton of totally unnecessary gold plating. For example you talk about "floating megaports". In actuality they've been taking barges (available for about $1 million) and retrofitting them. Starship needs a bigger and stronger ship, with infrastructure built on it. Suppose that it is about $10 million. (Which is roughly the cost of a basic containership.) You could put out a couple of hundred of these for the average cost of a new airport. It would only make sense to go to a megaport if the cost per passenger were less than it is now.
Third, you're ignoring the possibilities of automation. For example your "army of dispatchers" is solving a problem which will certainly be solved by computers. In fact it has to be - because most of the problems will be encountered in the possibility of collisions in space. And we're having to track the entire constellation of everything up there, ranging from rockets to pieces of space junk.
And fourth, you're ignoring costs that already exist for airplanes. For example airplanes have expensive pilots while rockets don't.
First of all - nobody including Elon himself can estimate eventual Starship launch cost. Second - Elon have said that maybe it can come down to 2 mil and that most of that price would be fuel. So he was wildly optimistic as for production and maintenance of the actual hardware. In that interview iirc he was going from an assumption that Starship is already at the high end of reusability (multiple tens of flights or more) and flying regularly.
No one including himself published any total esimations for the total costs of the E2E system as whole and I'm pretty sure that 2 mil does not include any costs for platforms, transit to them, spacesuits, training facilities and dispatchers (new ones, outside of the existing in USA). Maybe he included start gantry, and some preflight checks. Maybe not even that.
Regarding platform cost, I think your estimate is way off. You are forgetting that unlike Elon's barges it need to be a) human rated, b) civilian human rated, c) internationally civilian human rated. It would need a lot of facilities for human on board, it will need some elaborate start rescue systems for 100 space suited passengers. Platform would need extensive protections from them the launch of this insanely powerful rocket (repeated and low on maintenance). Platform would need some kind of armored bunkers for the cryogenic fuels or an extra powered platform which can come for fueling and go away (x2 costs for two platforms). Some kind of evacuation facilities for hundreds of humans in case of a platform fire. A billion of things really. Each one platform will go to hundreds of millions, definitely not a mere 10 mil.
Fortunately I work in IT, so nope, any amount of automation added will simply require the same amount of even more experienced humans supervising them PLUS new people manufacturing, debugging and maintaining said automation.
Starship pilot would cost much more than an airline pilot. Maybe on par in the best case.
And I have to repeat myself - that's ONLY cost considerations. There a lot of other problems.
International permissions for airspace
Total time for the end to end trip (platforms will be VERY far from the cities, exponentially depending from the city size). As soon as that time exceeds 10-12 hours this whole idea is junk.
Total time to train civilian passenger. Total time to train old aged civilian passenger. Tha includes both for rocket, for escaping it, for using a spacesuit etc.
G forces. Why would older billionaires suffer that, potentially risking some aneurism or trombosis or worse?
100 passengers together. So you think 100 billionaires would voluntarily be packed liked sardines in the same confined space with one another? Lol, high society doesn't work like a lowly public bus to the factory.
100 billionaire passengers planning the same trip weeks/months in advance to the same city at the same time? Business does not work like that. They need to go anywhere at the moments notice, when they want, without waiting for a bus... erm.. Starship to fill up. And doing this not as a stunt once a year, but many times a day? Forget about it :) .
Things missing from the regular flight - comfortable private seat in the 1st or a jet (remember price would be so high that a even a big jet price would be cheaper, with all the seats together still cheaper). Comfortable talking and working conditions. Comfortable transit on land, not on a choppy sea. Comfortable suit instead of spacesuit. Gourmet food and alcohol. Chosen company. A lot of things.
First, the specs for Starship mean it can hold about $1 million in fuel in its tanks. So we can externally estimate fuel costs. His aspirational goal is $2 million for a launch. His stated initial target is $10 million. There is room in his aspirational target for lots of things other than fuel.
Second, you keep insisting on a ton of people doing unnecessary things. SpaceX already has a tracking system in place to keep track of everything in space and make sure that none of their about 4000 StarLink satellites hit anything. Adding a few hundred Starship rockets to this system does not require an army of dispatchers. You're now talking about rocket pilots despite the fact that essentially nobody bothers with rocket pilots, and they can't be used in SpaceX flights because human reaction time is too slow to do anything useful.
Third, you've talked over and over again about packing billionaires in like sardines. But the target passenger is NOT billionaires. It is executives in companies who currently fly first class, but would rather avoid a 20 hour flight from Los Angeles to Dubai. Every day, literally tens of thousands of people fly first class over an ocean. The Concorde demonstrated that a sufficient volume of them are willing to pay more for a shorter ride in a less comfortable plane to enable regular commercial flights.
Fourth, your set of requirements for civilian rating should be seen as negotiable. Elon's position is that Starship IS a rescue system. He has a point. For example external analysis has found that if the Space Shuttle had simply put the shuttle on top of the rocket, nobody would have been hurt in either accident. If he provides a compelling service, but only offers it where local authorities allow, authorities are likely to figure it out. Just look back on the history of how the Concorde was allowed to land in the USA despite our laws against sonic booms.
And fifth, I DO NOT AGREE that I should accept, on your authority as an IT person, that automation cannot reduce the cost of people for a given task. History is full of counterexamples that represent far better evidence than your claim to authority. Granted, Jevon's paradox is common. We reduce the cost, which increases the demand, which leads to more overall usage. But on the per unit economics, the cost really does go down. Were it otherwise, nobody would be particularly interested in automation.
The problem they have is that there is a large fixed cost to flying the plane from A to B, and a small marginal cost of adding you and your luggage to the plane. All airline tickets cover that marginal cost, but they vary in how much of the fixed cost they cover. The minority of expensive first class tickets carry a very large fraction of the fixed cost. Effectively they subsidize the rest of us.
If those people go elsewhere, then you aren't covering the fixed cost of the flight. And now everyone else has to pay a lot more. Which makes the pool of people less.
If Boeing begins the design of a new plane now, they would be planning on finding customers in 10 years who expect to use the planes for the following 20.
But in 5 years we should have a good sense of whether Starship is viable. If it is, then 10 years from now Boeing won't have a market.
Even if you give Elon only a modest chance of success, it makes sense to stretch out the sales cycle for existing planes and delay starting new development for 5 years.
Also it will not be 30 minutes from actual city to actual city and it will not be a first class price ticket (10-20k) for that, but actually more like x10 times higher. And that IF Elon's fantasy Starship price of 2mil/launch happens. If actual launch price will be 20 mil, then this theoretical E2E ticket will be x100 times more expensive than fist class ticket.
And that not even mentioning several dozen independently blocker issues to this zany idea. How come people still repeat it on the tech site?
Then Elon made an insane sounding suicide slam burn. And he made that reuse routine.
Now to your claim. Elon's "fantasy" is that a rocket launch and turnaround can be made on relatively similar economics to airplane launches. If so, the cost of launch is $1 million, not $2 million. And so charging $2 million is adding headroom for things like accidents, depreciation and profit margins. It is ambitious to be sure. But based on the materials cost, this doesn't look like a fantasy.
not that far from the theoretical thermodynamic efficiency limit
No. Even if an engine got to the Carnot efficiency, you can still improve it. Massively. You can push a certain quantity of air with a velocity v or 4 times that quantity with half the velocity. The second option produces twice the thrust, for the same fuel consumption. That's the reason engines are getting larger and larger, and going for higher and higher bypass ratios.
Separately, the maximum theoretical (Carnot) efficiency depends on how hot the engine runs. GE has introduced turbines made of silicon carbide, which can withstand absurdly high temperatures. Silicon carbide melts at more than 2800 Celsius, but they don't push it to such limits. But they push it to more than 1300 Celsius [1]. Military jet engines run much hotter though. Exact numbers are classified, but according to [2] the temperature inside F35's engine might reach 2000 Celsius (the actual number is obviously classified). Of course, military jet engines are many times more expensive than civilian ones, with higher maintenance costs, and lifespan about 2 orders of magnitude shorter.
Still the fact that they can run this hot means improvements for the civilian jet engines are possible. And they will happen.
[1] https://www.ornl.gov/news/ceramic-matrix-composites-take-fli... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285727346_Fahrenhei...
These planes might not make much sense for many routes, but for trans-Pacific routes and other very long-haul routes, a huge plane like this is great.
This is why a 4-engined plane like the A380 isn't necessarily less economical for having 4 engines instead of 2. Airbus and Emirates have always argued, and arguably Emirates has demonstrated, that all things considered the A380's 4 engine configuration is still cost competitive. However, long-term these factors cannot overcome the aged engine technology. When the A380 debuted, its engines were already half a generation behind the latest, greatest wide body engines, and now they're even further behind. Moreover, IIRC, even older 777 models have received engine upgrades so now the A380's engines are technologically behind aircraft that preceded it.
Airbus and Emirates weren't asking Rolls Royce to deliver anything fancy; just a replacement engine sporting updated blade designs, increased bypass, and other ubiquitous advancements since the mid 1990s; but nothing bleeding edge, like new gearing technology. Rolls Royce agreed, but then decided to pull out because they were "scaling back" (IIRC), not because costs ballooned or any other aspect specific to the project changed.
EDIT (wiki links)
Isn't SpaceX going to use Starship for international travel. That might motivate these engine makers.
The A380 is too heavy to get off the ground with freight packed to the gills.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/sea-t...
The engines on the existing A380s will be replaced multiple times during their lifetimes and certainly those replacement engines will have some efficiency improvements. But I doubt it's possible to change the efficiency significantly without changing the diameter and or length of the engines. And that seems pretty unlikely given how many things you'd have to change and how much it would cost to re-certify, etc.
[0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/wjkmpacv7yvpur5/PXL_20230411_00382...
[1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/2pgdlmn7z9ej0rc/PXL_20230411_00433...
[2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/f65qu80wlcb5wma/PXL_20230411_21410...
[0] - https://theloadstar.com/cost-cutting-fedex-express-to-retire...
I stopped there on the way to the Grand Canyon, and I honestly enjoyed the Boneyard more than the Grand Canyon.
Plus, the Mexican food nearby is great :)
There’s a video on their home page but it doesn’t really do the plane section justice - https://youtu.be/ms9Plfn_2mI
Pick up a couple of bottles of the Red Wine too if you ever visit!
[1] Except that real-estate seems to use it to mean "inadequate space for intended purpose" (-:
I flew MEL DXB LON KEF a couple of weeks ago. First 2 flights were A380, and the last was 757. I got better sleep on that 4 hour flight than either the other 2 legs (13 and 8 hours).
I guess this article is about them finishing bringing back the last A380s
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/qantas-returns-flagship-...
“ Qantas stored 12 of its A380s in Victorville. There are now seven servicing the airline’s London, Los Angeles and Hong Kong routes, with another three expected to return next year following the completion of an extensive maintenance check and cabin reconfiguration process. The remaining two jumbos were left in Victorville to be broken up into parts.”
I won't stand for A380 slander. They are very fuel efficient per passenger provided that you fill up the plane. Unfortunately many airlines had issues filling up the entire plane with passengers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Long-...
Thanks United for getting me out of Australia!
There was a lot of “you are a bad person for leaving” during Covid, as if getting out of the locked down country wasn’t a logical move.
Qantas basically ceased all international operations except when underwritten by the government.
(I regret not getting a photo from the air)
Alice is more fun because you can find snakes on your planes when you go to get them
Singapore Airlines stored several A380s at Alice Springs: https://simpleflying.com/singapore-airlines-alice-springs-a3...
I was a member of the gliding club flying at the airstrip north of town and a member told me that they were up when one of the A380s came in. They got a call from the tower that their danger zone in the airport's class C airspace was revoked and they had to vacate. This was a bit strange not only because they usually had no trouble routing around it, but also, which airliners were flying at the moment? When it turned out to be an A380 following a different approach with far greater separation requirements it made a lot more sense.
I fly Sydney to LAX on Qantas usually once a year and somehow I always get swapped from an A380 to a 787 :/
I understand that this plane isn't the most fuel efficient, and that the A350, 787, and 777X are replacing it, but the A380 just feels a little "golden age of flying". The multiple decks, the bars on some planes and the crazy first class suites (and their showers) really made it a cool plane. It was the first plane that flew on that had enhanced pressurization (Qantas economy LAX to MEL back in 2010), as I mostly flew AA's old 737s back then.
I do acknowledge, that a lot of the things I'm lamenting are premium products, I really do. The cost for first and business class tickets on most A380 flights are ridiculous, and frankly the only time I've flown business is either via upgrades or award tickets (thank you credit card bonuses). Still, you've got to admit they are cool planes. What other plane could you actually take a shower on?
I also flew the SFO<>SYD leg at least twice (generally 3+) times a year in my last job. Qantas was my preferred airline but never got to fly an A380. I flew it from SFO<>DXB for many years and you can’t beat that shower and leg space..
Let’s make a petition that all airlines start flying A380’s :)
From that page: “ In 2023, the Emirates A380 is at this point scheduled to operate flights to 44 destinations in almost 30 countries. While a handful of the routes are seasonal, the vast majority are year-round. The countries with the most Emirates A380 routes in 2023 include the United States (5 destinations) and Australia (4 destinations).”
https://weatherspark.com/compare/y/1757~2591/Comparison-of-t...
Basically asking, "if we can put this anywhere else, where would be other good candidates?" Besides Redwood City, Climate Best by Government Test.
So 20 or so years ago it was believed we needed a new 747. Boeing had their own variant (based on the 747) that failed to attract interest from airlines. Boeing didn't make a smart machine here. They just lost the competition. But some bad assumptions went into it:
1. We needed 4 engines. Engines now are so reliable that many of them will never be replaced over the lifetime of the airframe (decades);
2. The A380 often required infrastructure upgrades. This could include runways (for the larger weight) and the air terminals;
4. There are very few airports (and the routes attached to them) where landing slots became such an issue that a higher capacity plane was justified;
5. The A380 is praticularly ill-suited for the (massive) North American market. People not from NA might not understand just how many airports there are and people prefer direct connections rather than hub-and-spoke for obvious reasons. This favors smaller planes which is why you have airlines that exclusively operate on smaller planes (eg Southwest is 100% 737s of various generations);
6. The A380 failed to solve the range problem. Or rather there was still a need for planes that could go further than the A380 could;
7. Hug and spoke models only favored certain kinds of airlines. It's why the A380 was relatively popular with the ME3 airlines (Emierates in particular). Mos tpeople aren't flying to the Middle East. They're flying between Asia and Europe. Also, European and Asian airlines would operate the A380 between Europe and Asia.
Australia like Europe has relatively few airports, particularly international airports. So it somewhat suits the A380. The most important routes for Qantas in particular are transpacific, particularly Sydney to LA. There's a lot of politics around transpacific flights such that relatively few airlines could fly them and they were hugely profitable as a result.
Qantas has long wanted longer range planes to directly fly to London and New York without a stopover. Several years ago they added direct flights between Perth and London, which has been a huge success. Sydney to London or NYC is still beyond current ranges but that'll change in 2025 or so with ULR (ultra long range) variants of the A350 and 777. Less seats, more fuel, basically. Possibly a longer fuselage too.
So Qantas still has a reasonable demand for the A380 flying from Sydney and Melbourne to Dubai (to connect to Europe). Note: this has only been the case for 10 years or so. Prior to that Qantas's stepping stone to Europe was Singapore and Qantas had a strong partnership with BA (ie codeshared flights, coordinated schedules).
So this un-mothballing of the A380s is really temporary until Qantas can fly directly form Sydney to Europe.
This is one of the most destructive frauds otherwise intelligent people are suckered into. It's based on the idiotic notion that a C atom from a biofuel results in "green" CO2 emissions.
The CO2 emitted is exactly the same, and in the same amounts.
Biofuels are destructive in that they cost double, and if done in mass quantity will require an enormous amount of agricultural land to produce.
[1] https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/publications/bio-aviati...
Each emits the same CO2 when burned. Where is the net decrease in CO2? What difference does it make being fossilized?
Throwing the log in a landfill (or building a house with it) would accomplish the same thing, and is a heluva lot cheaper.
The fact is, there is ample demand for high density energy storage. People want to go places, people want stuff brought to them. Until battery technology makes a massive leap into the realm of eating roses and shitting rainbows, combustible fuels are the only economically feasible option.
In that realm, our options are A) keep digging up fossil fuels, then burning producing a bunch of C02, or B) capturing a bunch of C02, turning it into biofuel, then burning it to release the same amount of C02.
Put in simple math terms:
Fossil fuels: net CO2 = CO2 from energy to extract + CO2 from burning
Biofuels: net C02 = CO2 from energy to extract + (CO2 from burning - CO2 from growing)
= CO2 from energy to extractAre you saying biofuels are not only ineffective at reducing CO2 emissions, but impractical as well?
Really burning the tree would have the same problem if you were burning them far faster than new trees were growing, but the idea is that you don't do that. The problem with fossil fuels is have no way of restoring it remotely as fast as we're burning it, so the net amount of carbon in the air has to go up.
There's no difference between burning the tree you grew and burning the tree you dug up in the coal bed.
In contrast, digging up coal has no carbon recapture stage. I dig up coal, it gets burned, releasing C02, I dig up more coal.
No one's saying biofuel is carbon negative. But it's pretty close to carbon neutral.
But you can grow trees and capture carbon anyway, and not burn them.
A) is objectively the superior option, because buying said biofuel puts an economic incentive on the guy making the biofuel to keep capturing more CO2 to make more biofuel, resulting in ~about carbon neutrality. B) releases a bunch of CO2 that has been sequestered since long before you or I ever existed.
If you want to pay purely to sequester carbon, go for it, buddy. Nobody's stopping you from going to your local tree farm, buying a tree, and burying it. That's your perogative. But your buried tree doesn't get me to my Jack the Ripper street tour or whatever.
Maybe this will help you think about it:
If I drove over to the supermarket and back, and then planted a tree that would sequester an equal amount of carbon to the amount I released driving to the supermarket, would you agree that I am offsetting/reducing my emissions?
Do you know the reason why England set up the Jamestown settlement? Because they wanted to make glass. Why set up a glassmaking operation in America? Because they ran out of trees in England for fuel for the glass furnaces.
A lot of places in the world have been deforested for fuel - and this was before coal. Do you really think biofuels from wood, cow fat, and algae ponds are going to make any difference? It's just a fantasy.
None of this means that biofuels are actually an effective method to reduce the carbon impact of aviation. Life-cycle analysis is pretty hard. We can broadly say that most biofuels are carbon neutral in the gross sense, but the carbon cost of their production could mean that they have an equivalent or even greater overall carbon impact than fossil fuels. It requires energy to transport and process biomass, and changes in land use can have second-order effects – like impacts on food production.
It is, in fact, pretty darned complicated. Reducing this to "everyone except me is an idiot sucker" is not even slightly helpful.
How does it result in less CO2 in the atmosphere?
Carbon neutral.
Standard fuel: I dig up one carbon. I burn this carbon. One carbon is now in atmosphere.
Biofuel: I grow one carbon. one carbon is now taken from the atmosphere. We are at minus one carbon. I burn this carbon. We are back to net zero carbon taken or added.
Unless you build a house with the wood. Wood is a great building material. Unlike concrete, which releases CO2 in its production, wood construction reduces CO2.
Besides, you'll never ever create enough biomass to fuel the economy, and you'll wreck the environment trying.
You've fallen for the fraud. It is the same. Think about it.