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Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

nytimes.com

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Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#31

Post by zerkten »

bsaul wrote: post #21

Not sure airplane not selling is really the core issue. Someone working closely with airbus management once told me the real problem with that plane was that they allowed way too much customization of the interiors. No two planes would end up being the same, and so the costs of building the plane weren’t easily going down after some time. The end result was that airbus is actually loosing money on each plane they sel…

I'm not sure I buy that reason, unless the customization cost extends to the equipment and process for building out the interior. Surely this cost would be identified and then the options available reduced? But much harder, if your need to retool for a cheaper interior.

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#32

Post by icebraining »

paulmd wrote: post #13
0xB31B1B wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the smaller planes are more efficient and scale better.

Airport capacity scales with number of planes. Major airports are often running at capacity already and can't handle more planes. Increasing airport capacity is a very non-trivial problem. It's a tragedy-of-the-commons situation, like traffic congestion on a roadway.

There's no tragedy of the commons; airport fees can and are raised, leading some companies to switch to nearby airports, like Ryanair is doing in Brussels (moving some flights to Charleroi). And as fees increase, so does the profit potential of building a new low-fees airport farther away.

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#33

Post by deanCommie »

Can someone with a better understanding of economics than me explain something:

How is the "point to point" (direct short flights via Ryanair and the like) beating "hub and spoke"(hubs like London and Frankfurt)?

I don't mean for convenience - obviously it's nicer to not have layovers.

But I mean economically. In the last 10 years, fuel prices have only gone up, as has environmental awareness, and the A380 is surely cheaper per passenger than a plane half it's size. So shouldn't flights via hubs be significantly cheaper and be the most popular?

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#34

Post by spookyuser »

rdtsc wrote: post #3

I like to use A380 as an analogy when a team works to perfect a product, adds lots of features, rewrites it a few times with the latest most buzzword-compliant technology, tests it until it is absolutely perfect, and ships it. ... Only to find out by that time the market has moved on and nobody wants to buy that kind of a thing anymore. Pretty sure that's a common theme for companies which end up on https://ourincred…

I know this is slightly off topic, but this just happened to me recently. I wanted to make a stupid website that let you make those Ajit Pai memes where he was eating popcorn in front of a green screen.

I managed to get the basics working in less than a day somewhere during mid december, but only ended up publishing it nine days ago. The meme was totally dead and the only actual function of the site was in teaching me to (hopefully) not make this mistake again!

In that time there was no absolutely necessary functionality I had added, it was all just polish, yet I wouldn't let myself make it public without adding it. I don't know how to stop doing this, but I feel like it's becoming a serious problem with anything I do.

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#35

Post by saryant »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #23
matt4077 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a limit to scalability at airports, especially the big & busy ones in western metropolis: JFK, LHR, FRA. It's easy to build a new runway, or a new airport, in the desert, or when you can evict anyone in the way. But try doing in a country ruled by law, when the city has long engulfed the airport build in the 60s.

The scalability of airports is really only an issue at a select few airports, though. JFK and LHR are the big ones that come to mind. FRA and ORD are pretty congested as well. SFO might become extremely congested in the future as they don't have much room to expand. However, that's still only The A380 is important to JFK and LHR slots, but I think it's much more likely that we see a the growth of alternate airports a…

Denver's airport was built with ATL scale in mind. It's already the largest airport in the US by land size, nearly twice as large as the next airport on the list, which gives them tons of room to expand without needing to buy up neighboring plots.

The airport already has six runways and the master plan calls for six more. Two of the three existing concourses can be lengthened to add more gates and the plan allows for four more concourses without needing to reconfigure runways. Last year the city approved a plan for 39 new gates.

(In case you've ever wondered why taxiing at DEN takes forever, this is why)

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#36

Post by usefulcat »

mschuster91 wrote: post #18
rdtsc wrote: post #3

I like to use A380 as an analogy when a team works to perfect a product, adds lots of features, rewrites it a few times with the latest most buzzword-compliant technology, tests it until it is absolutely perfect, and ships it. ... Only to find out by that time the market has moved on and nobody wants to buy that kind of a thing anymore. Pretty sure that's a common theme for companies which end up on https://ourincred…

The problem is that you cannot simply ship a not "absolutely perfect" plane. Or, actually, it's not a problem but a blessing given that there were no commercial flight related fatalities in the USA in 2017 (per http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aviation-safety-201801... ). No doubt: Without the drastic levels of regulation the FAA (and JAA) impose on civilian flight, fatalities would be orders of magnitude higher…

Reliability is one measure of 'perfection' for an aircraft (and certainly a very important one), but it's hardly the only one that matters, especially when viewing said aircraft as a product that is competing with other similar products.

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#37

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pkaye wrote: post #20
double0jimb0 wrote: post #15

Interning at Boeing in 2005, when the Dreamliner was still 2-3 years away from production, I asked a BD manager if Boeing was worried about A380 (the burning question at the time was "Who is going to win, A380/Airbus or Dreamliner/Boeing"). Without pause, he said "Not worried at all, A380 serves the hub and spoke model, which is dying. People hate layovers, they want more direct flights." Not a hard insight to grasp,…

It is not a obvious insight to grasp since airlines take a strategy that makes them the most money and passengers are cost sensitive. Wasn't this the driving force behind the hum and spoke model?

> Wasn't this the driving force behind the hum and spoke model?

No, the range of small jets (which were constrained by relatively unreliable, inefficient engines) was. Small jets can safely go further today than they could before. Boeing saw this. To be fair, Airbus also saw this. Political factors, similar to those behind NASA’s Space Shuttle debacle, constrained them to making a giant ass plane.

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#38

Post by civilitty »

theGimp wrote: post #29
mschuster91 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that you cannot simply ship a not "absolutely perfect" plane. Or, actually, it's not a problem but a blessing given that there were no commercial flight related fatalities in the USA in 2017 (per http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aviation-safety-201801... ). No doubt: Without the drastic levels of regulation the FAA (and JAA) impose on civilian flight, fatalities would be orders of magnitude higher…

Cheap shot, but I'll take it. All 14 days of 2018? :)

It's actually been six years of no fatalities.

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#39

Post by SkyMarshal »

deanCommie wrote: post #33

Can someone with a better understanding of economics than me explain something: How is the "point to point" (direct short flights via Ryanair and the like) beating "hub and spoke"(hubs like London and Frankfurt)? I don't mean for convenience - obviously it's nicer to not have layovers. But I mean economically. In the last 10 years, fuel prices have only gone up, as has environmental awareness, and the A380 is surely…

Not an economist, but it may b/c point-to-point can be made cheap enough (vis-a-vis Ryan Air, EasyJet, etc) that customers will choose that service over hub-and-spoke any time their itinerary allows it.

Re: Airbus A380, Once the Future of Aviation, May Cease Production

#40

Post by aceinaday »

double0jimb0 wrote: post #15

Interning at Boeing in 2005, when the Dreamliner was still 2-3 years away from production, I asked a BD manager if Boeing was worried about A380 (the burning question at the time was "Who is going to win, A380/Airbus or Dreamliner/Boeing"). Without pause, he said "Not worried at all, A380 serves the hub and spoke model, which is dying. People hate layovers, they want more direct flights." Not a hard insight to grasp,…

Listened to the American Airlines CEO talk about the hub and spoke a couple months ago and they seem pretty committed to it. He was saying that if there was an obvious market for a direct flight, they would break the hub and spoke, but otherwise, it was there to say.
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