Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?

I think parking at Sydney is about $15/tonne MTOW - the 380's MTOW is 575 tonnes, so that's a cool $8700/day just to sit there doing nothing.

Even if they lose a few thousand on a half-full flight, it evidently still makes sense.

In a nutshell, ETOPS says how far away a twin-engine plane can be from an airport at any time (for emergency landing purposes). Historically, ETOPS limited twin-engine planes to being within 120 minutes flight time of an airport. More recently, due to experience and engineering improvements, ETOPS regulations now allow many twin-engine planes to be up to 240 minutes from an airport.

For the 787, Boeing is even targeting 330 minute ETOPS. Once they achieve that, there will essentially be no routes outside the range of a 787, leaving passenger capacity as the only reason to consider a super-jumbo. Given fuel costs, and improved route planning, there just isn't enough financial incentive to run a super-jumbo when a modern twin-engine wide-body with ETOPS240 or ETOPS330 will do.

Edit: As a side note, ETOPS improvements are also why all the good ol' 3-engine birds (727, L-1011, DC-10, MD-11) have been put to pasture.

I just flew a 12.5 hour from Vancouver to Guangzhou, China then a 9.5 hour from there to Melbourne. Then I did the whole thing in reverse 2.5 weeks later.

On those flights, a video screen makes a huge difference!

As an airline you don't get a superjumbo to save fuel or provide more amenities. You get one because you have only so many landing slots in a particular airport and the only way to increase passenger volume is to increase the number of passengers per landing.

And... yes, if you're mostly flying domestically within the contiguous 48 US states, you're going to be almost exclusively on planes seating up to 180 passengers, and often smaller. There are some larger planes on major hub-to-hub routes, and sometimes larger planes on major vacation routes at the right time of year, but for the most part you just don't see them unless you're flying long-haul international.

Really it just comes down to economics. Those 737-sized planes hit a good balancing point in terms of passenger capacity, fuel efficiency, cost to acquire, etc. This makes more sense when you remember that even the non-"jumbo" widebody jets are still freakin' huge; for perspective, here's a photo of an Airbus A320 (one of those 737-sized planes) parked next to a 777:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Virgin-America/Airbus-A320-21...

767s, 787s and A330s are all a bit smaller than the 777, but still not exactly small craft. Flying those big monsters around domestically just isn't viable outside of a few select routes, and even then it doesn't always happen. Domestic widebody flying tends to be to/from Hawaii, and otherwise you need to go to another continent to be on a bigger plane (as will be the case with my upcoming travel -- the only two segments on widebodies are to/from London).

On the plus side, the terrible economics of tiny regional jets are finally catching up to the airlines, and they're being used less or in some cases even retired in favor of the larger/more comfortable Embraer E-Jet series and the smaller end of the A320 family.

737's are increasingly becoming used for transcons (USA + South America/Carribean/Hawaii), while the 752's that are still in operation are used for Transatlantic flights.

Next week I'm flying Vienna to Sydney. There are only a few one stop options. I wasn't prepared to consider two stops. e.g. Vienna - London - Bangkok - Sydney. This limited my choices somewhat, as only a few airlines fly from Vienna to Sydney, one stop.

Having flown Emirates previously, I thought they provided very good service, the meals were better than average, the in flight entertainment provided a good selection, the seats comfortable etc etc. The stopover time in Dubai is less than three hours. And I know Dubai airport provides complimentary baby strollers, which is a nice touch when traveling with a small child.

I could have flown cheaper, but was happy to pay an extra EUR300 total cost (two adults, one infant) to fly with an airline I'm hoping will provide better than average service.

For short haul, I don't even choose the cheapest option all the time, as I'd rather pay an extra EUR100 to not have to deal with the crap of Ryanair.

For long haul, it's definitely worth paying a little extra for a premium airline.

People don't count the fact that one of the reasons why smaller jets are more successful these days is that airports became much better at air traffic control, planes land and take off much faster on average than even few decades ago, combine it with more airports being built or expanded into multi-runway airports and you got much more landing/takeoff slots than before.

Big planes take quite a bit of space in the airport, they need special taxi considerations, and special terminals (especially the A380 with it's full double deck design), all of which comes with a premium in airport taxes when operating such aircraft. It would not surprise me if landing a single A380 costs more than double what landing a A330/787/777 costs these days.

And since It's not only cheaper to fly more smaller planes to the same destination, but also more commercially appealing to customers I highly doubt that companies will continue to run big ass planes for much longer, yes the A380 won't go away, neither will the 747-800 but i really doubt they'll get much more beyond the original orders, and even most of those I'll suspect will be converted into cargo within the next 10-15 years.

I flew on the A380 and the 787-800 to HK (Lufthansa and BA), and on a 777/787 on the same route, and I have to say the smaller aircraft are much nicer to fly on, fewer people, quieter, you get more personal service from the staff, bathrooms don't look (nor smell) like a porta potti at a Kiss reunion concert after the first 3-4 hours of the flight.