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A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

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231–240 of 254 posts

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#231
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always kind of secretly hoping large blimps would return. And we'd get to choose between 7 hours in a tiny metal tube with the seat-back of the person in front resting on your knees, or 24 hours on a slow blimp with a bed, the ability to walk around, and social areas. At the price you'd have to pay for day or two blimp ride, you'd probably be able to fly first or business class. Would you rather sit in a 500mph…

The planes of the day were not capable enough for the trips and the planes which could in the years after had beds and many staff as well and were not cheaper by any means. You are comparing apples and oranges by comparing a modern blimp to an old one. I do not say it will be cheap (probably not) but the comparison is wrong.

The OP was describing Hindenburg-era travel:

...or 24 hours on a slow blimp with a bed, the ability to walk around, and social areas. Kind of like a cruise ship in the sky.

So I compared to the Hindenburg. He can already get the "cruise ship in the sky" experience in an A380 in business class where he can find spacious seats that lay into a bed, private suites, a bar, showers, etc. But it's not cheap in an airplane, and won't be cheap in an airship.

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#232
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a result of its size, passengers were asked to crowd together on one side or the other to help make turns." That's amazing

Somewhat unrelated, I’ve been wondering for a while whether all pax in concert moving to the front/back of the cabin could bring a jet out of its flight envelope. There’s one or two related aviation stack exchange questions (that I’ve contributed to, IIRC), but I’ve never seen an informative authoritative account.

On the ATR-72 [0] there is an extra leg that folds down at the back of the plane to stop it tipping over, and passengers at the front half must remain seated until the rear pax have left, so there must be some danger of unbalancing. These are weird planes in that the cargo is stored at the front, behind the pilots, and the only door is at the rear. They are prop planes, the 72 being a stretched 42, I believe.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATR_72

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#233
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you take countries like Japan or China with their high speed railways, it takes also less time to check-in, board, the most basic security checks; moreover, often train stations are located in the city, as opposed to airports outside. So it is not a clear cut.

Even for fairly long distances, the train can be time competitive. A couple months ago I took a train from Tokyo to Fukuoka (around 600 miles driving distance). The train took 5 hours station to station -- I was staying near Shinagawa station so walked into the station 15 minutes before departure, and walked out of Hakata station in downtown Fukuoka 5 hours after departure. If I flew from Haneda, it would have been a…

600 miles is not long distance. Trains still work well at that distance. New York to LA is 2400 miles. New York to London is 3400 miles. New York City to India is 7000 miles.

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does! You hike up to visit the inside of the plane and go out on the wing, then ride a burlap sack back down. It’s a super fun museum, the only counterpart I’ve seen here in the states is the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit.

> Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit Well, now you've convinced me to go to the Technik Museum. The Henry Ford Museum was an institution of my childhood and one of the things everyone we knew enjoyed when they visited the area.

Close to Speyer is the Sinnsheim museum: https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/

They have both the Concorde and the Concordski -- the Russian Tupolev 144.

In between those two is the Hockenheimring, with F1 will be in July this year, and the very pretty university town of Heidelberg.

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for fairly long distances, the train can be time competitive. A couple months ago I took a train from Tokyo to Fukuoka (around 600 miles driving distance). The train took 5 hours station to station -- I was staying near Shinagawa station so walked into the station 15 minutes before departure, and walked out of Hakata station in downtown Fukuoka 5 hours after departure. If I flew from Haneda, it would have been a…

600 miles is not long distance. Trains still work well at that distance. New York to LA is 2400 miles. New York to London is 3400 miles. New York City to India is 7000 miles.

That's what I meant by "fairly long haul" (I thought the distance I was talking about was clear from the context).. It'd be hard for a 200 or even 300mph train to compete with a 550mph plane on a 2400 mile journey.

NYC to India makes no sense in this context since a train is never going to feasible for trans ocean transport. You may as well mention the 250,000 mile route to the moon.

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#236
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I totally understand why big aircraft (A380, 747, etc) are disappearing commercially but I will miss them. Just curious, why do you think they are disappearing? I thought they still have lower cost/passenger, especially for long haul?

The dagger in the heart of the big 4-engine aircraft are the changes in the ETOPS allowances¹ by the regulatory bodies. Used to be you needed the redundancy of four power plants to provide the needed nines to cross the ocean and still ensure (well, meet the statistic standard) that you could make land with one engine out. The reliability of the modern turbofans allow the big twins to take almost the same transoceanic…

(I hope that comment wasn't a dupe; I was on mobile and didn't see anyone else yet go over that aspect of the sitch.)

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#237
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I totally understand why big aircraft (A380, 747, etc) are disappearing commercially but I will miss them. Just curious, why do you think they are disappearing? I thought they still have lower cost/passenger, especially for long haul?

You might enjoy watching [1]. TLDR: There's a ~20 year lead time on a radical new plane design. The A380 is designed for an airline industry dominated by 'hub-and-spoke' airlines (where a large plane can make efficient use of expensive landing slots at busy airports), while the 787 Dreamliner is designed for an airline industry dominated by 'point-to-point' airlines (where a small plane can avoid the busy airport and…

I watched that video a while ago, and although it presents a lot of facts, I would carefully weigh and consider the conclusion.

Bear in mind also that the author of that video is a 21-year-old college student who is an enthusiast -- not that that should lessen the weight of the facts presented, but merely that its conclusion may not be the authoritative airline industry view from a grizzled veteran that some might perceive it to be. There's plenty of room for debate there.

Point-to-point was actually the past, and hub-and-spoke became dominant for many reasons, and now fuel-efficient long-range aircraft makes it possible to shift some routes back to point-to-point, so it does appear to be on an uptrend. What's old is new again.

Any categorical claim that point-to-point is the future has to be examined critically. My belief is that neither will be the exclusive routing model -- it will all be determined by the economics and constraints of flying in the future, and no one can predict that. There are operations research people at airlines that tune models for optimal routing based on various conditions, and when the environment changes, the optimum shifts as well and the airline will have to shift with it.

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#238
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit Well, now you've convinced me to go to the Technik Museum. The Henry Ford Museum was an institution of my childhood and one of the things everyone we knew enjoyed when they visited the area.

Close to Speyer is the Sinnsheim museum: https://sinsheim.technik-museum.de/en/ They have both the Concorde and the Concordski -- the Russian Tupolev 144. In between those two is the Hockenheimring, with F1 will be in July this year, and the very pretty university town of Heidelberg.

Yeah, I forgot to mention the Concorde across the street. (Sinsheim is literally on the other side of the autobahn from Speyer) They really have a unique collection of amazing stuff, each museum can take you 2-3 days to fully explore.

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#239

Not an aviation nerd, but had a local one explain a particular A380 issue to me. About once a month the main daily SYD/MEL to LAX routes had to turn around and it was pretty much always the Rolls Royce engine (one of two engine manufacturers for redundancy). And then it started happening on the other engine as well. Can't confirm the frequency, but when I was talking to a Qantas crew member about this over a year ago…

That doesn't sound right (well, Qantas did have RR engine trouble, as did all RR engined A380s) as all A380 fleets have four of the same type/manufacturer of engine (RR or GE, depending on the airline) and it will be common across all the planes in the fleet. It doesn't make sense to have to double up on maintenance costs, equipment and engineering staff with two types, plus the added risk of a GE bolt/whatever accidentally fitted to a RR engine causing an accident...

Re: A380 cancellations by Qantas raise new questions about the superjumbo's future

#240

I totally understand why big aircraft (A380, 747, etc) are disappearing commercially but I will miss them. Flying in a larger aircraft makes one feel less like cargo, in particularly for airlines that offer places to stretch your legs (e.g. "bar" seating, showers, staircases, etc). I was always kind of secretly hoping large blimps would return. And we'd get to choose between 7 hours in a tiny metal tube with the seat…

Blimps were never like that. The modern understanding of blimp travel is based on a handful of hollywood movies, the filming of which came nowhere near any real blimp. The amount of helium/hydrogen necessary to lift a small apartment is immense. Then, if you are going to spend day in the air, all the water. It would almost certainly easier/cheaper/cleaner to provide a similar service inside a jet for a few hours than…

Airships are also less energy efficient, as was pointed out by von Karmen and Gabrielli in 1950.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/helium-hokum...

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