The A380 program was almost terminated this year, and only a lifeline order by Emirates (which is incredibly exposed, as they have almost half of the A380s that have been delivered or ordered) kept the line alive. Lessors won't touch the plane due to a lack of a secondary market (as reflected in this order).
The problem with the A380 was that it was a prestige project formed around a core concept that never materialized, and was directly opposite of the trend over the last 30 years. Namely routes were becoming more fragmented, not less. The a380 required huge amounts of centralization for it to be effective. Places where that is true - Dubai primarily - it's worked well. Everyone else it simply is way to big. None of the passenger or cargo carriers in the United States, which has half of world wide lift, have received a A380.
Several studies have concluded that the only reason the A380 was feasible was because of Government launch aide. When you looked at it logically and with non-pollyannaish analysis, you do the same thing that Boeing did with the 747-600/700 and cancel it. (Boeing eventually built a scaled down 747-8i, which was also a failure, but it only cost them a few billion instead of tens of billions).
These particular aircraft that are being scrapped were very early-production A380s which were delivered significantly overweight (rumoured to be >5 tonnes!) Singapore Airlines planned to return them years ago and is, in fact, replacing them with new A380s. Other airlines don't want them because they are the worst A380s flying: their extra weight means they burn too much fuel.
Certainly the A380 program hasn't been quite as successful as Airbus would have hoped, but I'm not sure it was ever in any real danger of being scrapped. Those rumours may have just been put out by Airbus in order to pressure Emirates into moving ahead with their order.
There are still airlines like British Airways who have a lot of old B747s in service that are approaching their EOL. It seems likely that BA will order more A380s to replace at least some of these.
And in any case, there are still more than 100 unfulfilled A380 orders on Airbus's books, meaning there's enough demand to keep production running for quite a few years to come, even if there were no additional orders.
Maybe the A380 program will continue for many years, but it seems unlikely the program as a whole, including development costs, will ever earn a profit.
Why has it not caught on for cargo? Too inefficient? Too much investment in support facilities, tooling, staff required -- and/or too insecure? (Regarding the latter, no one's going to buy a couple of bargain basement priced planes, in the face of support requirements.)
IIRC the cargo doors are too small and the space is broken up by a structural component (the second floor). The 747 was designed from the outset to be converted to a cargo hauler (hence the cockpit mounted on top) so it's much easier for a heavy lifter to work with.
Both UPS and FedEX canceled their A380 orders decade ago because A380 was late and used 767's and 747s are cheap.
There will be another opportunity when existing fleets are used up and fuel costs continue to increase. Converting stripped A380s into freight might be a good option.
Couriers use spoke and hub model that A380 is well suited for.
The problem with the A380 for freight is that it has a lower cargo density. That is, it has a much greater interior volume than other planes, but not as proportionately greater maximum cargo mass. This is great for passengers (more legroom, etc), but not so much for cargo. Unless it's a shipment of guitars.
To be fair, the A380F was delayed indefinitely before UPS and Fedex canceled their order. It was a bit of a "I broke up with you before you could break up with me" thing.
The current A380s are not a good fit for freight (lack of nose loading and crappy density), and ironically the freight logistics actually make the A380 harder to use. This is because the most efficient way to do overnight and freight traffic between Europe, Asia and America is to centralize traffic in places like anchorage with a fleet of smaller planes that go to smaller cities. (IE, traffic can go directly from Denver to Shenzhen via a 767 to Anchorage, and another 767 from Anchorage to Shenzhen). You can't put a A380 on each leg of that.
It's not popular on the used market because of the $40 million reconfiguration bill. This plane really only works well for Emirates flying people to a few airports.
A380 comfort level beats 787 and others. You will never feel the take off or landing and no turbulence either. I have flown with Emirates and I am hesitant to fly anything else. The business class experience was amazing with full recline seats. Fly them and try it out yourselves.
I respectfully vehemently disagree. I like EK and their A380s, but give me a 787, even on a budget carrier like Norwegian. Lower atmospheric pressure and higher humidity, plus a non-stop makes all the difference in the world.I'm fine, even on a old 777 from the US to Asia, but US to Europe wrecks me on anything but a 787.
I haven't flown a A350 yet, but my understanding is that the humidity is lower (due to the fact it's not a true composite frame) so I am more likely to get jet-lag.
I don't think you can really compare EK A380 with any 787, especially in Economy.
The problem with the 787 is that pretty much every operator has decided to cram as many seats in as possible. It's probably the worst plane to fly long haul in currently. The A380 is by far the quietest and smoothest plane operating at the moment. EK's A380 in particular have ample legroom and seat width.
I've flown on numerous 787, A350 and A380 flights on various operators and although I can definitely tell the difference between an A330/777/747 flight and the planes above in terms of jet-lagginess after a flight, I can not tell the difference between these newer planes. All three of them are much more comfortable and have better air.
I've flown both Singapore's A380's and more 787's than I can count. You're right, the A380 is very comfortable, but that's not 100% about the plane. It's about how the airline outfits the cabin.
I will grant you that the A380 is super duper crazy quiet compared with most other large jets. But legroom and lie-flat seats are available on all kinds of jumbo jets.
Except the Concorde. I had the privilege of flying that once. It was significantly smaller and less comfortable than I'd imagined it would be. But it made up for it in flight time.
Short flight with less comfort > Long flight with more comfort.
I can't imagine anything even approaching as small and uncomfortable as the Concorde. If anyone doesn't believe me, there's one at the Intrepid Museum.
I could barely board the thing and walk down an aisle, let alone try sitting in a seat. I can't imagine it being comfortable for anyone over 5'5".
>Early copies of a new plane tend to be less efficient and Singapore Airlines recently ordered some new A380s. However, overall demand is thinner than Airbus expected, forcing it to slow production to a trickle while looking for more business.
Boeing had sales difficulties with 787 aircraft early in the production run due to excess weight among other issues. [0] The rest of the article makes it seem this does not apply to the A380s in question, so it's more a reflection of weak market demand. The problem of reselling customized planes is an interesting issue--so far as I know Boeing 747s did not have the problem. This seems unique to the A380.
Boeing did go out of their way to make sure those "change incorporation" frames ended up in working condition and flying with customers. This spreadsheet shows what happened: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FH3Y2-vRUgojntPkCSJI... - look at the dates in the "Load"/"Delivered" columns up to LN 19. LN 10 spent almost 8 years before entering revenue service.
In Airbus's case, the equivalent might be to buy back the frames and place them with customers at a subsidy. There's definitely a marketing hit that they take when a 10 year old flagship airframe is scrapped.
The A380 did have weight and other issues early on. The A380s that are being broken up were replaced with new ones (Singapore Airlines leased five early A380s for ten years, when the lease was ended they didn't renew, but instead bought five new ones from Airbus).
The top 5 are NZ and Australia - this possibly explains my hatred of airports and dislike for flying. I’m trying the longest one next week, with a child.
As others have said, these 2 airframes are the first two delivered, significantly overweight and a nightmare to maintain. The frames were essentially wired by hand, after the pre-made wiring harnesses were the wrong length (French/German Airbus facilities used different versions of CATIA, the lengths didn't match, 2 year delay costing billions)
It's sad, but such are economic realities. I've seen an A380 flying directly over my head at low altitude at a show a couple years ago. I was super-impressed at how agile, almost sports plane-like it was behaving.
It’s less impressive when it’s over your backyard. They have been trialing a more aggressive landing approach here in Auckland. It’s lower, faster and shorter and it’s very irritating. It’s been handled aggressively by the airport but I sort of admire their handling. They started with the more annoying option as a test, so any future route will seem like a concession to public pressure.
They have been encouraging people to complain, then producing stats showing that a high percentage of complaints relate to old flight paths.
A major problem for the A380 is that it is too large for the gates at most airports and the airports have little incentive to build up for just a few flights.
Readit News
The problem with the A380 was that it was a prestige project formed around a core concept that never materialized, and was directly opposite of the trend over the last 30 years. Namely routes were becoming more fragmented, not less. The a380 required huge amounts of centralization for it to be effective. Places where that is true - Dubai primarily - it's worked well. Everyone else it simply is way to big. None of the passenger or cargo carriers in the United States, which has half of world wide lift, have received a A380.
Several studies have concluded that the only reason the A380 was feasible was because of Government launch aide. When you looked at it logically and with non-pollyannaish analysis, you do the same thing that Boeing did with the 747-600/700 and cancel it. (Boeing eventually built a scaled down 747-8i, which was also a failure, but it only cost them a few billion instead of tens of billions).
Certainly the A380 program hasn't been quite as successful as Airbus would have hoped, but I'm not sure it was ever in any real danger of being scrapped. Those rumours may have just been put out by Airbus in order to pressure Emirates into moving ahead with their order.
There are still airlines like British Airways who have a lot of old B747s in service that are approaching their EOL. It seems likely that BA will order more A380s to replace at least some of these.
And in any case, there are still more than 100 unfulfilled A380 orders on Airbus's books, meaning there's enough demand to keep production running for quite a few years to come, even if there were no additional orders.
They already bought their A380s. They're not buying any more. The 747 will most likely be replaced by A350-1000s or 777-9s.
And that's why the government assistance in the form of launch aide might have been worth it.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17266194
There will be another opportunity when existing fleets are used up and fuel costs continue to increase. Converting stripped A380s into freight might be a good option.
Couriers use spoke and hub model that A380 is well suited for.
The current A380s are not a good fit for freight (lack of nose loading and crappy density), and ironically the freight logistics actually make the A380 harder to use. This is because the most efficient way to do overnight and freight traffic between Europe, Asia and America is to centralize traffic in places like anchorage with a fleet of smaller planes that go to smaller cities. (IE, traffic can go directly from Denver to Shenzhen via a 767 to Anchorage, and another 767 from Anchorage to Shenzhen). You can't put a A380 on each leg of that.
I haven't flown a A350 yet, but my understanding is that the humidity is lower (due to the fact it's not a true composite frame) so I am more likely to get jet-lag.
The problem with the 787 is that pretty much every operator has decided to cram as many seats in as possible. It's probably the worst plane to fly long haul in currently. The A380 is by far the quietest and smoothest plane operating at the moment. EK's A380 in particular have ample legroom and seat width.
I've flown on numerous 787, A350 and A380 flights on various operators and although I can definitely tell the difference between an A330/777/747 flight and the planes above in terms of jet-lagginess after a flight, I can not tell the difference between these newer planes. All three of them are much more comfortable and have better air.
That gave me a pained laugh. I’m doing a 17 hour flight next week and expect to be feeling pretty bad.
The from/to really matters here.
NYC-London is about 7 hours. LA-Rome is about 12 hours.
I will grant you that the A380 is super duper crazy quiet compared with most other large jets. But legroom and lie-flat seats are available on all kinds of jumbo jets.
Except the Concorde. I had the privilege of flying that once. It was significantly smaller and less comfortable than I'd imagined it would be. But it made up for it in flight time.
Short flight with less comfort > Long flight with more comfort.
I could barely board the thing and walk down an aisle, let alone try sitting in a seat. I can't imagine it being comfortable for anyone over 5'5".
Boeing had sales difficulties with 787 aircraft early in the production run due to excess weight among other issues. [0] The rest of the article makes it seem this does not apply to the A380s in question, so it's more a reflection of weak market demand. The problem of reselling customized planes is an interesting issue--so far as I know Boeing 747s did not have the problem. This seems unique to the A380.
[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/internati...
In Airbus's case, the equivalent might be to buy back the frames and place them with customers at a subsidy. There's definitely a marketing hit that they take when a 10 year old flagship airframe is scrapped.
It's awesome you can see details like the distribution of RR vs. GE engines, just to pick one bit of interesting data out of that sheet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_flights
https://www.smithsonianchannel.com/shows/mighty-planes/airbu...
They have been encouraging people to complain, then producing stats showing that a high percentage of complaints relate to old flight paths.
https://corporate.aucklandairport.co.nz/smart-approaches