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Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

reuters.com

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Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#251

Post by funnelsgun »

FireBeyond wrote: post #192
funnelsgun wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing could have chosen to compete with the A380 and built their own Superjumbo, but they chose not to, instead working on the Dreamliner. The 744, which was the last update to the 747 to see large market penetration, wasn't all that cost effective either: > with 70 percent of its seats occupied, used more than 95 percent of the fuel needed by a fully occupied 747 Yes, the A380 is more fuel efficient, and cost per s…

> Quantas Just as an FYI, it's Qantas, originally QANTAS - Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.

Sorry, I know this, should have got that right the first time!

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#252

Post by notahacker »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #7
dfine wrote: post #3

Can't help but think that this vindicates Boeing's bet on the smaller 787.

I think that was obvious from at least 10 years ago. Airbus’s bet at the time raised a lot of eye brows, while boeing’s didn’t. The only thing Boeing screwed up on was outsourcing too much of the assembly.

International supply chains are the rule rather than the exception. The 787 pushed the novelty envelope further than it needed to with the amount of composite materials used (it's possible that in time, this will look like a smarter bet as it'll be easier to reengineer if competing with future generations of aircraft where composites are commonplace) which as one of the factors delaying launch, and also had major issues with engines and batteries which were always going to be supplied by third parties.

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#253

Post by _ph_ »

While it is easy to see how airlines like the 2 engined airplanes on most routes, and flying directly instead of the spoke and the hub model, the question is, how easy is it to grow? I just flew MUC-SFO and back. A nice direct flight operated by LHA once per day with an A 340. And both flights were booked to the last seat. While arriving at SFO on the way back I could see the LHA A380 leaving for FRA.

So, with them operating a flight to Frankfurth with the A 380 already and the flight to Munich filled completely, what is the most economic way of growing? Is it to have two flights per day, or take a larger airplane? And probably, there are only so many more open slots at the airports for additional flights. Once they are saturated, having a much bigger airplane available could be a business perspective for Airbus. If global air travel continues to grow, we need either many more flights, or bigger airplanes. Especialls with the 747 going away, if Airbus can keep the A 380 alive, there might be quite a future.

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#254

Post by badosu »

samfisher83 wrote: post #175
myrandomcomment wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for the tinting is really simple - weight. You have to be able to shade the windows and doing this way is less weight then have pull down screens. Everything in aircraft design here comes down to weight reduction.

Lets say there are 52 windows and each shade weight 2 pounds which I don't think they do. That is 104 pounds on a 380,000lb aircraft. That is .02% of the weight of the aircraft.

I guess the better calculation would be:

Cost of a typical trip w/ shades x Cost of a typical trip w/out shades

Then account for the average number of trips in a year.

May seem like an exaggeration but the impact of some decisions, even though seemingly tiny, may be bigger than expected.

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#255

Post by simpleigh »

mdasen wrote: post #240
mpweiher wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent points, and I agree that the switch in the market certainly was a large component, and probably the larger component. I still think that Airbus simply could not not do the A380, just as a defensive move and hedge, and that it may have served a commercial purpose even if it didn't manage to be profitable on its own. > constrained slots [..] certainly money [..] Are slots primarily a money problem? My underst…

Non-availability is what makes them expensive. It's kind of two sides of the same coin. If the slots were widely available, they wouldn't be a valuable asset. They are a valuable asset only because they aren't available. The point of looking at the monetary value is that it's a way to quantify how unavailable they are. Land costs money. Where land is scarce, it becomes expensive. Where land is abundant, it's cheap. I…

> The point of looking at the monetary value is that it's a way to quantify how unavailable they are. Land costs money. Where land is scarce, it becomes expensive. Where land is abundant, it's cheap. If landing slots can be acquired cheaply, it means there is availability.

Sure, but I think you're missing the point about the "non-availability." I don't think the cost shows everything.

When there's lots of slots available then the price will be low. When there's few slots available then the price will be high. When there's _very few_ slots available then prices are harder to compare. There's an upper limit on what a company will pay (a slot can only provide so much profit, after all, even if you expect to own it for many years). Prices will presumably start to depend more on who's bidding for them and what deals can be struck.

Free market economics only works if the market is able to respond (i.e. it's relatively liquid).

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#256

Post by inferiorhuman »

valuearb wrote: post #70
dghughes wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing plays a lot of games like getting 40% of its revenue from the US government but crying unfair when other countries get any subsidies at all. Look at the nearly 300% duty it demanded added on to the parts made by their competitor Canadian aircraft manufacturer Bombardier.

This is a lie. Bombardiers planes don’t compete with any Boeing planes. Yet still Boeing flexed their lobbyists.

The risk isn't that Boeing competes with Bombardier right now. The risk is that the Bombardier will stretch the C-series and create a CS500 that will compete directly with the 737. You can't do that with the Embraer.

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#257

Post by l8again »

namdnay wrote: post #2

I fly Emirates A380 from time to time, I have to say the business class is better than the first class of most carriers. Very quiet, masses of space, and the bar is not bad at all when you want to stretch your legs. And when you get bumped up to first... having a shower on a flight is very nice :) The only problem is the godawful stopover in Dubai - If there is one advantage that the non-gulf carriers have, it's that…

>> If there is one advantage that the non-gulf carriers have, it's that they can offer short+long haul to get from Europe to Asia, as opposed to medium+medium/long.

The only place it would be medium + medium/long going to Asia on a gulf airlines is if you are going to far east. In which case, european airlines wouldn't fare any better, and the best route would be to go pacific with Singapore Airlines.

For me, gulf carriers always seem better route going to India as it translates to one long and one short (4 hours at most) flight.

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#258

Post by panabee »

mdasen wrote: post #240
mpweiher wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent points, and I agree that the switch in the market certainly was a large component, and probably the larger component. I still think that Airbus simply could not not do the A380, just as a defensive move and hedge, and that it may have served a commercial purpose even if it didn't manage to be profitable on its own. > constrained slots [..] certainly money [..] Are slots primarily a money problem? My underst…

Non-availability is what makes them expensive. It's kind of two sides of the same coin. If the slots were widely available, they wouldn't be a valuable asset. They are a valuable asset only because they aren't available. The point of looking at the monetary value is that it's a way to quantify how unavailable they are. Land costs money. Where land is scarce, it becomes expensive. Where land is abundant, it's cheap. I…

this debate is extremely informative; thanks for sharing and engaging so clearly and politely! since you felt a smaller plane would be more desirable for most routes, could you elaborate why you felt airbus was going to win at the time? thanks!

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#259

Post by valuearb »

notahacker wrote: post #236
valuearb wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can investing 20-30 billion euros into a massively unprofitable project serve a commercial purpose? How did it here?

Speculatively, by (i) having a more negative effect on the profitability of their major competitor in a duopoly and (ii) by having indirect positive effects on their sales of other aircraft. As unsuccessful airliner programs go, the A380 wasn't that bad, with over 200 actually delivered. Though it would have looked a lot worse if it wasn't for Emirates There are also likely technologies developed for the A380 which w…

i) 747 sales were already declining and it required expensive investment to continue. ii) How would A380 sales help sell other Airbus aircraft? It's such a low volume plane that it offers virtually zero benefits to purchasing other Airbus models.

200 deliveries for a $30B+ development costs is a disaster. Airbus has already admitted the development costs will never be recouped, they'd have to sell over 400 planes to ever have a shot.

And any technology you want to develop for other planes would have been far cheaper to just develop for the other, presumably profitable, planes.

Boeings brilliance was sucking Airbus into this market. Instead of canceling the 747, they kept the 747 production line open with a low cost update (the 747-8) allowed them to crater A380 pricing. That cost Airbus a huge amount of capital, and delayed/hamstrung their efforts to compete with the 777 and 787.

Airbus has lost at least 10x as much on the A380 as Boeing lost on the 747 since 2000.

Re: Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

#260

Post by ghaff »

valuearb wrote: post #211
ghaff wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have noted, it was hardly flawless though arguably just par for the course troubled except for the baggage system. And that was for an airport basically built in the middle of nowhere.

One can argue that Denvers airport was one of the most successful government infrastructure projects in the US over the last 30 years.

It's not a bad airport. Its downside is that it was popped down in empty land to the northeast of the city so it's significantly farther from downtown and farther from many of the mountain destinations to the west than the old airport was.

But obviously there was nowhere else to put it.

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