Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#2Maybe I'm not the usual passenger, but I realized recently that it's been many years since I've been on a plane larger than a 737 -- and I fly at least once a month. Most of my flights are to/from reasonable sized but not megacities (SF, St Louis, Kansas City, Nashville, Charleston, Phoenix, etc), and since I try for direct flights, I almost always end up on Embraer 145 or 175 or similar small planes.
I think at long as gas prices aren't too high, far more passengers are going to pay a small premium for direct flights on smaller economy planes, and stay away from the 380s and 747s. I couldn't care less if I'm on a fancy plane with a video screen etc -- having to make a connection is 100x worse.
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#3Curious that the article didn't mention the 787, which is what Boeing bet on rather than an even bigger plane like the A380. Seems like that was a good move.
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#4"Air travel is set to more than double from today's 3.3 billion passengers a year to 7.3 billion by 2034, says the International Air Transport Association"
Even with more efficient planes, that's a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#5Maybe I'm not the usual passenger, but I realized recently that it's been many years since I've been on a plane larger than a 737 -- and I fly at least once a month. Most of my flights are to/from reasonable sized but not megacities (SF, St Louis, Kansas City, Nashville, Charleston, Phoenix, etc), and since I try for direct flights, I almost always end up on Embraer 145 or 175 or similar small planes. I think at long…
What length of flight are you taking?
I just flew a 12.5 hour from Vancouver to Guangzhou, China then a 9.5 hour from there to Melbourne. Then I did the whole thing in reverse 2.5 weeks later.
On those flights, a video screen makes a huge difference!
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#6Maybe I'm not the usual passenger, but I realized recently that it's been many years since I've been on a plane larger than a 737 -- and I fly at least once a month. Most of my flights are to/from reasonable sized but not megacities (SF, St Louis, Kansas City, Nashville, Charleston, Phoenix, etc), and since I try for direct flights, I almost always end up on Embraer 145 or 175 or similar small planes. I think at long…
>I think at long as gas prices aren't too high, far more passengers are going to pay a small premium for direct flights on smaller economy planes, and stay away from the 380s and 747s.
As an airline you don't get a superjumbo to save fuel or provide more amenities. You get one because you have only so many landing slots in a particular airport and the only way to increase passenger volume is to increase the number of passengers per landing.
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#7They surely have their niche - Europe to East Asia, USA to UAE.
I think they'll survive.
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#8"Air travel is set to more than double from today's 3.3 billion passengers a year to 7.3 billion by 2034, says the International Air Transport Association" Even with more efficient planes, that's a lot of greenhouse gas emissions.
You can easily take your part off by not flying and not owning a car.
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#9Curious that the article didn't mention the 787, which is what Boeing bet on rather than an even bigger plane like the A380. Seems like that was a good move.
What the article really missed on mentioning is ETOPS (which is part of the success story of the 787). If you look at the total distance, there are very few routes that can only be serviced by a 747 or A380. Historically, though, many more routes were services by these 4-engine behemoths because of ETOPS rules (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS).
In a nutshell, ETOPS says how far away a twin-engine plane can be from an airport at any time (for emergency landing purposes). Historically, ETOPS limited twin-engine planes to being within 120 minutes flight time of an airport. More recently, due to experience and engineering improvements, ETOPS regulations now allow many twin-engine planes to be up to 240 minutes from an airport.
For the 787, Boeing is even targeting 330 minute ETOPS. Once they achieve that, there will essentially be no routes outside the range of a 787, leaving passenger capacity as the only reason to consider a super-jumbo. Given fuel costs, and improved route planning, there just isn't enough financial incentive to run a super-jumbo when a modern twin-engine wide-body with ETOPS240 or ETOPS330 will do.
Edit: As a side note, ETOPS improvements are also why all the good ol' 3-engine birds (727, L-1011, DC-10, MD-11) have been put to pasture.
Re: Are we seeing the end of the era for the 'super-jumbo'?
#10Maybe I'm not the usual passenger, but I realized recently that it's been many years since I've been on a plane larger than a 737 -- and I fly at least once a month. Most of my flights are to/from reasonable sized but not megacities (SF, St Louis, Kansas City, Nashville, Charleston, Phoenix, etc), and since I try for direct flights, I almost always end up on Embraer 145 or 175 or similar small planes. I think at long…
What length of flight are you taking? I just flew a 12.5 hour from Vancouver to Guangzhou, China then a 9.5 hour from there to Melbourne. Then I did the whole thing in reverse 2.5 weeks later. On those flights, a video screen makes a huge difference!
He says in the post that he's flying to/from SF, St Louis, Kansas City, Nashville, Charleston, Phoenix, etc. These flights are anywhere from about an hour to 4/5 hours on the top end. STL to SFO, for example, is about 4 hours or so.