111–120 of 251 posts
Having escaped Australia during the middle of the pandemic, I'd like to correct this article: Australia's only long-haul carrier during the pandemic was United. Thanks United for getting me out of Australia!
I am glad you escaped. I am an Australian.
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The latest and greatest engines are not that far from the theoretical thermodynamic efficiency limit. So future designs are running into the hard part of the asymptote. I doubt airlines are actually interested in committing tens of billions of capital, today, to get a dozen % improvement in fuel efficiency a decade from now. And why would a private investor take such a huge risk without guarantees of making it back s…
Sure, it's obviously a matter of diminishing returns and opportunity cost. But the re-engine for the A380 was basically a rote, low-risk, B-team exercise for Rolls Royce. All they had to do was tweak their existing generation stuff. The program was already well underway, and they still dropped it; they all but explicitly said the reason was, "meh, we lost interest". Something seems to have changed. Putting my cynical…
That said, watching the Comac C919 shitshow (14 years and still not in revenue service, and this is for a 737/A320 clone), I'm not holding my breath. The twin-aisle C929 is still a decade away at best, and it'll take a good long time until any Western airline trusts it; even Chinese turboprops (Xian MA-60/600/700) have so far only managed to find buyers in Africa and the poorer bits of Asia.
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Let's not get too carried away, shall we? At least the 346 people that died in the two 737-MAX crashes would probably question your "unqualified success" statement. But yes, no one can deny that the 737 has been a cash cow for Boeing (for far too long, some would say).
737 MAX MCAS issue pale in comparison to 737 classic rudder issues (two crashes confirmed because of the issue, three crashes suspected, and a few more cases where pilots were able to overcome the plane). Yet it happened in the era without social networks and Internet news, so few people remember about it.
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This was a bad misreading of Boeing's financial state - which I think John Leahy eventually fessed up to. The 737 never needed any subsidizing. It is, to this day the most popular delivered jet plan (although the 320 now has more orders). If you count by airframe, the 707 + 737 family still dominates. JL simply never could understand why the A320 wasn't beating the 737 and placed the blame for the A320 not selling be…
The A340 was badly timed. ETOPS restrictions were loosened, making the 777 the better product for the vast majority of routes. The A340-500 in particular had great range and was used on the longest nonstop routes for some time, but it was replaced by the A380, 777-200LR, 787-9, and the A350-900.
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Sure, it's obviously a matter of diminishing returns and opportunity cost. But the re-engine for the A380 was basically a rote, low-risk, B-team exercise for Rolls Royce. All they had to do was tweak their existing generation stuff. The program was already well underway, and they still dropped it; they all but explicitly said the reason was, "meh, we lost interest". Something seems to have changed. Putting my cynical…
Boeing, Airbus, and Rolls-Royce are going to be in for a rude awakening if/when the Chinese aircraft industry ever gets their shit together, and/or if batteries ever become light/dense enough to support electric passenger flight. That said, watching the Comac C919 shitshow (14 years and still not in revenue service, and this is for a 737/A320 clone), I'm not holding my breath. The twin-aisle C929 is still a decade aw…
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Do pilots need a different type rating to fly the 737 Max? No? Then it's a bit strange to say that it has nothing to do with the 737...
IANAP, but a lot of the root cause analysis around the 737 max crashes was that they were sufficiently different and so should have required re-certification of pilots before being allowed to fly them. Due to the costs involved, Boeing made the ultimately fatal mistake of minimising these changes to airlines so that pilots didnt know what they were flying (insofar as some of the subsystems).
Why were they parked in the USA? During Covid a number of asian airlines parked their planes in Australian deserts.
Singapore Airlines stored several A380s at Alice Springs: https://simpleflying.com/singapore-airlines-alice-springs-a3...
Why were they parked in the USA? During Covid a number of asian airlines parked their planes in Australian deserts.
Victorville preferable due to lower humidity then alice, for longer term storage its desirable Alice is more fun because you can find snakes on your planes when you go to get them
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Emirates, the largest owner of A380s, is asking for a bigger one https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/emirates-boss-tim-clark-o... Apparently the slot limitations at major city airports are becoming a harder constraint to work with, especially as a larger swatch of Asia gain the ability to travel long haul. Losing the A380 in 15-20 years is going to make flying between big city pairs more expensive.
None of the engine manufacturers are interested. That's what killed the A380--Rolls Royce pulled out of a re-engine deal that would've brought A380 engines into the 21st century. "Green" concept showcases notwithstanding, all the engine manufactures seem to have decided to cut back on investment and coast for awhile. Something will need to change to spur competition in the engine space, and then we might see hungrier…
These planes might not make much sense for many routes, but for trans-Pacific routes and other very long-haul routes, a huge plane like this is great.
So 20 or so years ago it was believed we needed a new 747. Boeing had their own variant (based on the 747) that failed to attract interest from airlines. Boeing didn't make a smart machine here. They just lost the competition. But some bad assumptions went into it:
1. We needed 4 engines. Engines now are so reliable that many of them will never be replaced over the lifetime of the airframe (decades);
2. The A380 often required infrastructure upgrades. This could include runways (for the larger weight) and the air terminals;
4. There are very few airports (and the routes attached to them) where landing slots became such an issue that a higher capacity plane was justified;
5. The A380 is praticularly ill-suited for the (massive) North American market. People not from NA might not understand just how many airports there are and people prefer direct connections rather than hub-and-spoke for obvious reasons. This favors smaller planes which is why you have airlines that exclusively operate on smaller planes (eg Southwest is 100% 737s of various generations);
6. The A380 failed to solve the range problem. Or rather there was still a need for planes that could go further than the A380 could;
7. Hug and spoke models only favored certain kinds of airlines. It's why the A380 was relatively popular with the ME3 airlines (Emierates in particular). Mos tpeople aren't flying to the Middle East. They're flying between Asia and Europe. Also, European and Asian airlines would operate the A380 between Europe and Asia.
Australia like Europe has relatively few airports, particularly international airports. So it somewhat suits the A380. The most important routes for Qantas in particular are transpacific, particularly Sydney to LA. There's a lot of politics around transpacific flights such that relatively few airlines could fly them and they were hugely profitable as a result.
Qantas has long wanted longer range planes to directly fly to London and New York without a stopover. Several years ago they added direct flights between Perth and London, which has been a huge success. Sydney to London or NYC is still beyond current ranges but that'll change in 2025 or so with ULR (ultra long range) variants of the A350 and 777. Less seats, more fuel, basically. Possibly a longer fuselage too.
So Qantas still has a reasonable demand for the A380 flying from Sydney and Melbourne to Dubai (to connect to Europe). Note: this has only been the case for 10 years or so. Prior to that Qantas's stepping stone to Europe was Singapore and Qantas had a strong partnership with BA (ie codeshared flights, coordinated schedules).
So this un-mothballing of the A380s is really temporary until Qantas can fly directly form Sydney to Europe.