Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert • Hacker News Board

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#201

Post by badcppdev » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 1:02 PM UTC

aziaziazi wrote: post #45

badcppdev wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tell demand is high because ticket prices are very high. Airlines have opted and are opting to fly fewer planes with higher ticket prices. It's a price over volume optimisation that seems to be in fashion in many industry segments. [0] I will note that some airlines have been affected very badly by issues with rebuilding staffing in ancillary services like luggage and airport security. That uncertainty I thin…

The causes you propose may be true but don’t respond to “higher than never”. I’ll add to your note the not-totaly-solved risk of petroleum not being infinite and while the industry is not freaking out, it has started to questioning itself. I can buy “prices are very hight” but how would you measure that ? Also did you took inflation into account in your estimation ? Flight “recovery” is largely due to Asian market bo…

You are absolutely correct. Demand exists but is it "higher than ever"? I don't know. I don't even know what units are used to describe demand. I don't even know enough economics to be able to tell you how you measure demand. For instance I would like to buy some long haul flights but will have to delay due to being outside my budget. Is that demand?

Regarding prices obviously you can adjust for inflation and affordability changes but all statements like that have to be accepted as only being valid/pertinent for certain time periods. I think in this context only a few people are interested in a comparison to the 1920s, 1960s, etc

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#202

Post by badcppdev » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

Affric wrote: post #196

speedgoose wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More efficient engines fitting the A380 requirements do not exist.

Could you outline the requirements and how such engines cannot be created?

Just guessing but the amount of space available for the engines is probably the key limiting factor.

The engines on the existing A380s will be replaced multiple times during their lifetimes and certainly those replacement engines will have some efficiency improvements. But I doubt it's possible to change the efficiency significantly without changing the diameter and or length of the engines. And that seems pretty unlikely given how many things you'd have to change and how much it would cost to re-certify, etc.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#203

Post by ghiculescu » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 1:34 PM UTC

testrun wrote: post #193

6nf wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I'm in Sydney and it's one of the most disappointing things about Australians. The inability or unwillingness to understand things like this.

What is there to understand? Person A does not like Australia, and leave. Good for him/her and good for Australia. If you don't like , you don't like.

Haha I remember bumper stickers that said that.

There was a lot of “you are a bad person for leaving” during Covid, as if getting out of the locked down country wasn’t a logical move.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#204

Post by btilly » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 2:17 PM UTC

Yizahi wrote: post #198

btilly wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.

E2E rocket travel is absolutely not realistic and will never happen in the next century or so. Also it will not be 30 minutes from actual city to actual city and it will not be a first class price ticket (10-20k) for that, but actually more like x10 times higher. And that IF Elon's fantasy Starship price of 2mil/launch happens. If actual launch price will be 20 mil, then this theoretical E2E ticket will be x100 times…

You're stating an absolute impossibility for point to point rockets, but offer no reasons for your claim. I well remember rocket experts explaining why reuse of first stage boosters couldn't work. That it had been tried a bunch of times and you wound up reusing but without being able to contribute to the payload.

Then Elon made an insane sounding suicide slam burn. And he made that reuse routine.

Now to your claim. Elon's "fantasy" is that a rocket launch and turnaround can be made on relatively similar economics to airplane launches. If so, the cost of launch is $1 million, not $2 million. And so charging $2 million is adding headroom for things like accidents, depreciation and profit margins. It is ambitious to be sure. But based on the materials cost, this doesn't look like a fantasy.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#205

Post by btilly » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 2:26 PM UTC

throwaway2037 wrote: post #173

btilly wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.

This is an interesting comment. I am a bit disappointed it was so heavily downvoted. My main concern: "first class ticket" -- that is roughly 5% of the market. Way too expensive for most. If your comment (and reality) were "cattle class ticket", then yes, there is great potential for "half globe" flights. Even 2x to 4x faster would be a game changer.

The reason why it is a problem for the airline industry is that first class tickets are essential to their business model.

The problem they have is that there is a large fixed cost to flying the plane from A to B, and a small marginal cost of adding you and your luggage to the plane. All airline tickets cover that marginal cost, but they vary in how much of the fixed cost they cover. The minority of expensive first class tickets carry a very large fraction of the fixed cost. Effectively they subsidize the rest of us.

If those people go elsewhere, then you aren't covering the fixed cost of the flight. And now everyone else has to pay a lot more. Which makes the pool of people less.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#206

Post by local_crmdgeon » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 2:51 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #107

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is a common complaint. The size is too big to lean on and too small to do anything useful with. I've flown First on AF and it's no better up there.

Why would you need to lean against the wall in 1st class?

To look out the window. I realize it's the definition of a first world problem, but the gap is weird. They can't put shelves or something because the window is obviously there

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#207

Post by btilly » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 3:01 PM UTC

Yizahi wrote: post #199

throwaway2037 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting comment. I am a bit disappointed it was so heavily downvoted. My main concern: "first class ticket" -- that is roughly 5% of the market. Way too expensive for most. If your comment (and reality) were "cattle class ticket", then yes, there is great potential for "half globe" flights. Even 2x to 4x faster would be a game changer.

It absolutely can't be a price of first class ticket (10-20k$). Let's take for example Elon's completely fantasy figure of eventual 2 mil dollars per launch. That's 20k$ per seat, so it looks like comparison checks out? Well no. First you need to include price of the floating megaports at each destination in the world. The cost of a single such human rated platform divided by a number of physical rockets using it per…

Well, you're consistently negative about this.

First, you're doing a ton of double counting. The estimated $2 million/launch already includes necessary infrastructure, servicing, and so on.

Second you're assuming a ton of totally unnecessary gold plating. For example you talk about "floating megaports". In actuality they've been taking barges (available for about $1 million) and retrofitting them. Starship needs a bigger and stronger ship, with infrastructure built on it. Suppose that it is about $10 million. (Which is roughly the cost of a basic containership.) You could put out a couple of hundred of these for the average cost of a new airport. It would only make sense to go to a megaport if the cost per passenger were less than it is now.

Third, you're ignoring the possibilities of automation. For example your "army of dispatchers" is solving a problem which will certainly be solved by computers. In fact it has to be - because most of the problems will be encountered in the possibility of collisions in space. And we're having to track the entire constellation of everything up there, ranging from rockets to pieces of space junk.

And fourth, you're ignoring costs that already exist for airplanes. For example airplanes have expensive pilots while rockets don't.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#208

Post by johnwalkr » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 3:03 PM UTC

Flying in an A380 is nice but it has one annoyance, at least in economy. It can take well over an hour between meal service starting and getting your meal tray picked up and being able to put your seat back again.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#209

Post by btilly » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 3:08 PM UTC

klipt wrote: post #152

btilly wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starship launches tomorrow. There is a non-trivial chance that point to point suborbital flights totally disrupt the airline industry. Hong Kong to Los Angeles in 30 minutes for the price of a first class ticket is pretty hard to argue with.

Surely the fuel costs massively more?

The cost per person is indeed much more. That's why he's talking about charging everyone the cost of a first class ticket rather than offering the usual economy etc prices.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#210

Post by 908B64B197 » Thu, Apr 20, 2023, 3:14 PM UTC

anaganisk wrote: post #140

908B64B197 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original 737s by Boeing were all-American masterpieces that had pretty great safety records considering the sheer number of miles flown and delivered airframes. The 737-MAX, courtesy of Post McDonnel Douglas-Boeing merger [0], with code written by offshored 9$/h Indian coders was a complete disaster. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...

$9 converted to Indian currency is Rs720 with a conversion rate of 80Rs per dollar which is around 3 lakhs a month, which is a lot in India, equates to a mid six figure salary here based on what you can afford. I'm not sure how you are trying to make a point here. Also it's unfortunate that you retort to blaming the coders and mild racism, instead of accepting Boeing messed up. FAA not once in it's reports nor any av…

> equates to a mid six figure salary here based on what you can afford.

So they can convert it to six figures USD?

> Boeing messed up. FAA not once in it's reports nor any aviation experts blamed the code, Boeing went cheap and removed a redundant device the MCAS system needs during a malfunction.

McDonnell Douglas-Boeing messed up indeed. The 9$/h coders are just one of the many symptoms of a culture that lead to this kind of reckless behavior.