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A380 Cancellations by Qantas Raise new Questions About the Superjumbo's Future:
Australia's Qantas (QABSY) said Thursday that it had scrapped longstanding plans to buy eight more of the double-decker planes
The A380 has been a major disappointmentfor Airbus ( EADSF) , racking up less than a quarter of the sales the European company forecast when it first introduced the giant jetliner more than a decade ago. The underwhelming demand has fueled questions about how long the manufacturer can justify continuing production of the iconic aircraft.
[...] Other airlines including Virgin Atlantic have ditched plans to buy the aircraft in the past year. Airbus now has only 79 firm orders for it, according to FlightGlobal data.
The program's future could hinge on Dubai-based Emirates, the largest A380 operator with more than 100 of the aircraft in service. The Gulf carrier last year ordered a further 20 of the superjumbo jets, with the option to buy an additional 16 on top of that.
But Airbus said last month that it was renegotiating the deal with Emirates following reports that the airline was looking to switch its orders to the smaller and newer A350.
According to Wikipedia, an A380 has seating for 575-853 depending on variant and configuration.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by eravnrekaree on Monday February 11 2019, @01:37PM (1 child)
I think its a general lack of demand for huge airplanes. The 747 is also being discontinued. It seems the airlines prefer smaller aircraft. Perhaps its because they can more easily add and remove capacity from a route and are not stuck with huge aircraft they cannot fill, and with smaller craft you can provide more flexible and convenient scheduling since you can run smaller aircraft more often rather than having to wait for one of these huge aircraft to fill.
Boeing did the market analysis and moved away from huge mega-aircraft years ago.
A good question is can they produce just a few A380s each year by building the planes with the same assembly lines and manufacturing equipment as smaller planes, or is it a thing where you have to have economies of scale in building lots of the particular design. Perhaps if they use the same line and most of the same equipement to build the A380 and smaller aircraft they can still build a few each year.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday February 11 2019, @05:45PM
They can't easily reuse the 380 line for other planes, because it's so huge, it takes the space of two 320s.
The other problem with the 380 is the stupid "let's make everyone happy" arrangement, which brings to the south of France giants part made all over Europe, requiring special convoys and Belugas. While not as dysfunctional as the early 787 supplier issues, it's still a significant cost, which the customer sees on the final bill, and a significant logistical nightmare to scale when demand fluctuates.