Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 247 posts

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

#51

Post by saryant »

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…

Jet fuel prices are half what they were ten years ago:

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pri_refoth_dcu_nus_a.htm

Prices peaked in 2008, dropped during the recession, reached that peak again in 2011 and are now even lower than they were during the worst days of the GFC.

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

#52

Post by AGoodName »

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…

Point to point is more efficient if you can fill the plane.

Hub and spoke - an indirect flight where you perform extra inefficient landings/takeoffs.

Direct flight - shortest possible distance. Maximum time in the most efficient configuration.

The only issue is that you have to fill the plane to 100% and that might be harder with direct flights between certain destinations. Although i'm sure modern booking systems (automatic pricing to fill all planes) help a lot with this.

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

#53

Post by garmaine »

jedberg wrote: post #25

What a shame. The best flying experience I've ever had was coach on an A380 from SFO to Frankfurt. It was the only time I arrived feeling awake and fresh. The air felt cleaner, the lighting was great, and it was so smooth . I get why it isn't popular, but it's just too bad. I really liked flying on one.

Try a 787 sometime, you'll have a similar experience.

It has everything to do with being a new plane with new technologies (higher air pressure, better lighting, newer seats, etc.). Nothing specific to the A380.

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

#54

Post by notatoad »

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…

The 787s had a bad habit of catching on fire in midair shortly after they first launched, and they seem to have been fairly successful since then. Like any other industry, airlines have a wide gulf between "absolutely perfect" and "good enough".

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

#55

Post by srinivasan »

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…

The A380's engines were developed in the early 2000's.

Newer twin-engine planes (B737-MAX, A320neo, A330neo, A350, B787, the upcoming 777-X) have improvements in engine efficiency that have not been ported over to the A380. Airlines operate on wafer-thin margins, so even a percentage point increase in engine efficiency is huge.

Granted, the engines themselves are not made by Airbus, but there are integration costs involved.

There are other economic issues: (1) It's just hard to fill an A380 year-round. Not an issue on trunk routes like SFO-LHR, but there are only so many of those. (2) If slots at airports were auctioned out, you'd arguably see more demand for larger planes - maybe not the A380, but 777 or 787 sized.

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

#56

Post by ghaff »

aceinaday wrote: post #40
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.

It's probably more accurate to say that airlines have tended to move toward more and often smaller hubs augmented by some point to point flights than that they're abandoning hub and spoke entirely.

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

#57

Post by seanmcdirmid »

raz32dust wrote: post #49
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,…

Isn't A350 the competitor to Dreamliner? I think A380 was aimed at replacing B747, which it did. Also I feel (no data) that hub and spoke is alive and well. It's just that it is using more efficient, lower capacity flights (B787, A350) which are easier to fill up and maintain.

The 787 replaced the 767 in Boeing's lineup, which in turn was competitor of the 350. The 747 is still incredibly successful for cargo, so the 380 didn't replace it; it is absolutely nuts that AirBus didn't come up with a cargo version of the 380 yet.

Next up is the 777, which has higher capacity than the 787/350. However, it is modern enough that it can probably just be upgraded, no new plane is needed.

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

#58

Post by disordinary »

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…

The big airports cost more to land at than the small ones, Ryan air might say it's landing at a city but actually be at a rural airport an hour or more away.

If the plane loads are good enough and the plane is scheduled in such a way that it always returns to a home airport for maintenance then I can see how it makes economic sense even if logistically it's tougher.

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

#59

Post by rwmj »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #57
raz32dust wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't A350 the competitor to Dreamliner? I think A380 was aimed at replacing B747, which it did. Also I feel (no data) that hub and spoke is alive and well. It's just that it is using more efficient, lower capacity flights (B787, A350) which are easier to fill up and maintain.

The 787 replaced the 767 in Boeing's lineup, which in turn was competitor of the 350. The 747 is still incredibly successful for cargo, so the 380 didn't replace it; it is absolutely nuts that AirBus didn't come up with a cargo version of the 380 yet. Next up is the 777, which has higher capacity than the 787/350. However, it is modern enough that it can probably just be upgraded, no new plane is needed.

You can't just take the seats out and fill it with boxes? What else is needed for a cargo plane?

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

#60

Post by jrs235 »

aceinaday wrote: post #40
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.

Hub and spoke allows the airlines to keep costs down by using smaller airplanes for the spoke routes which can be contracted out to smaller regional airlines that pay their pilots peanuts.
Post reply on HN