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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

#271

Post by ant6n »

geezerjay wrote: post #212
andy_ppp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, there is so much space around Berlin I don’t even know where to start with this, there’s even an airstrip in town still. I know it’s a park now but seriously of all the major cities I’ve lived in building a new airport should be relatively easy... unless it’s a conscious decision to prefer the train? Tegel is horrible but it’s also really quick - you can and I have arrived 30mins before a flight and make it just…

> Wow, there is so much space around Berlin And how do you expect to move people from that empty space into Berlin? People aren't happy to be flown 50 miles outside the city. When that happens, all those flights coming and going into that enpty space end up addin an extra couple of hours to the travel time. To make matters worse, that empty space tends to be connected with city centers by.... Train.

Fun fact: there's a single train that serves the already completed train station under the not completed BER airport -- the tunnels were designed with the assumption of some air flow coming from the trains. Now that single empty run ensures the tunnels don't mold.

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

#272

Post by yardie »

tolien wrote: post #79
code4tee wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, there’s 5 787s flying around for every A350. On the future book Boeing also has around 50% more 787 orders than Airbus has A350. So yeah, I’d call that being a bit behind in that market segment.

The 787 first flew 4 years earlier too, cost 3x as much to develop and aren’t selling for three times the price. To the end of last month there were 858 orders (133 delivered) for the A350 versus 1287 (625 delivered) for the Dreamliner. Considering the 787 had a head start (787 introduced in 2011, A350 XWB in 2015), the pressure’s on Airbus to keep ramping up deliveries (the last few years it looks like Boeing’s stab…

The A350XWB was their second attempt. The original A350 and 787 were introduced around the same time. But the all aluminum A350 was DOA compared to the flashy new carbon fiber 787. It showed in the order books as well, no one wanted their warmed over A350.

TL;DR the 787 didn't have a 4 year head start. The A350 arrived 4 years late after a complete redesign.

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

#273

Post by notahacker »

valuearb wrote: post #259
notahacker wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nobody is saying Airbus has made a profit on the A380, but absorbing development costs over 250 aircraft delivered leads to much lower losses than absorbing them over 14 aircraft delivered like a certain innovative indirect ancestor of Airbus...

And much as program costs are accounting fiction, Boeing's written down far more than a 10th of the A380 program costs as 747-8 development programme specific losses, never mind the bigger issue of losing a natural monopoly cash cow - even a declining one - and the tag of being the undisputed best at large widebodies which has wider ramifications. Not sure the 747-8 was ever really a significant factor in A380 pricing, because Emirates were even less likely to buy something only fit for freighters as their flagship passenger aircraft than they were to take any notice of what the actual sticker price for the A380 was when negotiating deals.

It's an open question whether the A350 would have done much better if Airbus had doubled down on launching at the same time as the 787, or whether it will do better in the long run for being the more recent aircraft model for its first couple of generations.

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

#274

Post by aj7 »

mpweiher wrote: post #33

I think coverage of the A380 often misses the point that at the time, Boeing's 747 simply had no competition, whereas all of Airbus's planes did. So Airbus pretty much had to create the A380 in order to protect its other lines from cross-subsidy by this unopposed cash-cow. And, also missing from almost all the coverage is the fact that this worked: if the A380 is struggling, the 747 is moribund or dead. Official back…

Ans. 777X

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

#275

Post by tolien »

yardie wrote: post #272
tolien wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 787 first flew 4 years earlier too, cost 3x as much to develop and aren’t selling for three times the price. To the end of last month there were 858 orders (133 delivered) for the A350 versus 1287 (625 delivered) for the Dreamliner. Considering the 787 had a head start (787 introduced in 2011, A350 XWB in 2015), the pressure’s on Airbus to keep ramping up deliveries (the last few years it looks like Boeing’s stab…

The A350XWB was their second attempt. The original A350 and 787 were introduced around the same time. But the all aluminum A350 was DOA compared to the flashy new carbon fiber 787. It showed in the order books as well, no one wanted their warmed over A350. TL;DR the 787 didn't have a 4 year head start. The A350 arrived 4 years late after a complete redesign.

That's all true but I don't see how it refutes what I said.

The 787's been in production and delivering aircraft for 4 years longer than the A350 XWB, which is still ramping up [1]. If that's not a head start when we're comparing delivered aircraft between the two then I don't know what is; the fact that Airbus let Boeing have that lead by wasting their time trying to hawk an A330 with revised wings and engines is neither here nor there.

> Airbus plans to increase its production rate from 10 monthly in 2018 to 13 monthly from 2019, while the Boeing 787 production will increase from 12 to 14 per month in 2019, and six A330 are produced monthly.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350_XWB#Production

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

#276

Post by mpweiher »

simpleigh wrote: post #255
mdasen wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 avail…

Thanks for explaining my point better than I did :)

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

#277

Post by aj7 »

mpweiher wrote: post #234
valuearb wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a money losing investment isn't a "tough spot". You are only damned if you choose to do it. Not only did they know that 747 sales were falling, they knew point to point was becoming more popular. It was a really easy decision and they blew it. Engineering the world's greatest aircraft is an addictive endeavor, but the numbers have to work and they never did.

> 747 sales were falling A380 was officially started in 1993. 747 orders per year, starting 1993 2, 16, 32, 56, 36, 15, 35, 26, 16, 17, 4, 10, 43, 72 I don't see "falling". At best, I see cycles.

And you see low numbers. All throughout the discussion here, I see mostly references to the 787 and 747. No. It was the 777 all along that constrained the A380. And the 777X was the coup de grace.

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

#278

Post by aj7 »

Xixi wrote: post #237
mdasen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing made a bet on the 787. However, as you note, that's an easier bet to make when you already have the 747. Boeing already had a jumbo. It's easy to make a bet on twin-engines getting certified for longer ocean crossings when you already have the 747. There's a lot of things that Boeing bet on with the 787 and you're totally right that it's way easier to make those bets when you already have the 747. However, the…

"Boeing made a bet on the 787. However, as you note, that's an easier bet to make when you already have the 747. Boeing already had a jumbo." It's also easier to make this bet when the passenger version of the 767 is struggling for new orders because of the A330. Boeing had the 747 against nothing, the 777 winning and killing the A340, and the 767 losing to the A330. So Boeing made a better A330. That's why I don't s…

777 unopposed.

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

#280

Post by rconti »

saosebastiao wrote: post #207

I find it interesting that people claim that the hub and spoke model is being phased out. It's not...it's being expanded. There are more hubs, and hubs are expanding the reach of their spokes, and that means more cities where you can find direct flights to or from. The expansion of the number of cities in the US that fly direct to London is because the London hubs have expanded its reach to US cities. In the absence…

I don't see how you can reach this conclusion. At the very least, it goes against conventional wisdom. And, of course, it depends on where you sit. With my home airport as SFO, I can be happy about the diversity of point-to-point options I have, but you might argue I'm just flying from one hub to another.

If it's true that there are more "hubs", that means that there are also more point-to-point flights for more people. And conversely, the more point-to-point flights there are, the more you could argue some of those points are hubs.

Ultimately the issue comes down to how airlines see themselves and market their routes. Low-cost carriers like Southwest are invested in point-to-point, but in the international market, nationality regulations mean that flights are necessarily hub-and-spoke, at least in small countries. If I take a nonstop Icelandair flight from the US to Iceland, is that a point-to-point route? Or would you argue it's hub-and-spoke because Icelandair uses KEF as their hub?

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