191–200 of 355 posts
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At a lower $/passenger/mile. Why fly one 747 from NY to London and make people connect to it, when you can fly one 787 from Denver and one 787 from Chicago?
I resent that. Chicago gets 747s and 777s from British Airways and is about to get an A380 :)
I think coverage of the A380 often misses the point that at the time, Boeing's 747 simply had no competition, whereas all of Airbus's planes did. So Airbus pretty much had to create the A380 in order to protect its other lines from cross-subsidy by this unopposed cash-cow. And, also missing from almost all the coverage is the fact that this worked: if the A380 is struggling, the 747 is moribund or dead. Official back…
Boeing could have chosen to compete with the A380 and built their own Superjumbo, but they chose not to, instead working on the Dreamliner. The 744, which was the last update to the 747 to see large market penetration, wasn't all that cost effective either: > with 70 percent of its seats occupied, used more than 95 percent of the fuel needed by a fully occupied 747 Yes, the A380 is more fuel efficient, and cost per s…
Just as an FYI, it's Qantas, originally QANTAS - Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.
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Also the new Boom supersonic jet is intended to be all business class seats (around 60, IIRC).
I'm not holding my breath for any of these supersonic jet projects to come to market. But, if they do, I expect the nominally "business" or "first" class seating will be more like domestic business today than typical international business class--as was the case with the Concorde.
I hate that plane, I flew it from Melbourne to LAX and won't do it again. Weirdly noisy and almost hits the end of the runway on takeoff. No thanks.
The 747 struggled initially as well. If the A380 is completely full it is almost 30% cheaper per passenger per mile to fly compared to 787. Maybe some new company will come up with a way to make money like southwest or spirit.
While the focus is on the original business case for building Mega planes like the A380 the knock-on/hidden impact of closing the A380 line has detrimental impact on Airports that invested millions into being 'A380 ready'. Airports around the world spent millions of dollars building out A380 capable terminal gates, wider taxi-ways and bigger baggage handling systems to deal with A380 arrivals and departures. Food cat…
Why not let the market decide ? Supersonic flight wasn’t cost effective . Maybe the A380 will have the same outcome ? It seems like ORD knew this .
Supersonic flight was mostly killed by US political decisions, not by economics.
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>And as far as airport congestion goes, building new airports is far easier than new rail lines. Might tell Berlin that :-) It may be true in general if there's undeveloped space within an hour or so drive of a major city center but major airport construction, at least in Western countries, usually hasn't gone smoothly.
"It may be true in general if there's undeveloped space within an hour or so drive of a major city center but major airport construction, at least in Western countries, usually hasn't gone smoothly." I remember DIA (Denver) being built relatively quickly and without trouble - is my memory faulty ? (genuinely curious)
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But quality of life has nothing to do with richness. The quality of life for Joe Schmoe making 26k a year beats that of some of the ancient pharaohs with his AC, fridge, microwave, running water, indoor plumbing, instant hot water, and beat up 12 year old Camry. They were still “richer” than him. (Some Roman rulers did have “AC” though: Attempts to control indoor temperatures began in ancient Rome, where wealthy citi…
The typical person in a developed country (especially) or even a developing country can marshall more resources now than a typical Egyptian thousands of years ago. Travel farther and faster. That's what I'm referring to.
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Does the comparison not work if the smaller city is in Europe and he major hub is one of the ones in the US? Or even two US cities? I think perhaps using London as an example is overshadowing the point being made. If you aren't aggregating passengers at hubs which you then use larger planes for the common leg of the journey, you don't need as many larger planes.
Direct flights to more destinations from any hub still means a superlinear increase in the number of slot pairs required. Are you suggesting that that wouldn't also be problematic at hubs in North America?