Airbus ready to axe A380 if fails to win Emirates deal

Post by mpweiher » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 6:27 AM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #315

mpweiher wrote: post #33

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…

Piling on another point (mdasen is absolutely right about the route-model aspects, and the fact that megahub approaches "lost" to smaller planes flying routes to non-megahubs): Airbus made one more big, big blunder with the A380: they deliberately and knowingly designed a jumbo that could never have a cargo variant or a cargo conversion. Although the 747's cargo conversion famously is due to Boeing thinking supersoni…

Post by tim333 » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 7:38 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #33

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…

Post by ubernostrum » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 10:05 AM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #331

ubernostrum wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piling on another point (mdasen is absolutely right about the route-model aspects, and the fact that megahub approaches "lost" to smaller planes flying routes to non-megahubs): Airbus made one more big, big blunder with the A380: they deliberately and knowingly designed a jumbo that could never have a cargo variant or a cargo conversion. Although the 747's cargo conversion famously is due to Boeing thinking supersoni…

Hmm...the 747 was the loser of the US Air Force’s heavy lift competition, to the C-5 Galaxy.

Post by jsjohnst » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 1:18 PM UTC

samfisher83 wrote: post #325

jsjohnst wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lets say there are 52 windows The actual number is almost double that, but that doesn’t negate your point. More than weight, I think it was seen as a “nicety”. I think with the new Gen 2 (and soon Gen 3) Windows, people won’t mind them as much as the newer generations are MUCH darker.

If there were a 100 windows lets assume there are 1 on each side so that is 50 rows. lets say first 10 rows are first class. That would leave 40 rows. Its 9 seats across that is 360 people. There 1st class rows have 4 across 787 does not hold 360+40 people. Also it doesn't get all the way dark. I just feel it was a piece of engineering that doesn't need to be there in my opinion.

Post by saosebastiao » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 2:30 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #280

saosebastiao wrote: post #207

I find it interesting that people claim that the hub and spoke model is being phased out. It's not...it's being expanded. There are more hubs, and hubs are expanding the reach of their spokes, and that means more cities where you can find direct flights to or from. The expansion of the number of cities in the US that fly direct to London is because the London hubs have expanded its reach to US cities. In the absence…

I don't see how you can reach this conclusion. At the very least, it goes against conventional wisdom. And, of course, it depends on where you sit. With my home airport as SFO, I can be happy about the diversity of point-to-point options I have, but you might argue I'm just flying from one hub to another. If it's true that there are more "hubs", that means that there are also more point-to-point flights for more peop…