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On its 15th birthday, the Airbus A380 is facing retirement:
Big, burly and a bit bulbous, the Airbus A380 has never been the sleekest airliner in the skies. I'm not disputing that it's an engineering achievement, because it certainly is. The largest commercial aircraft ever to fly, it delivers a supremely smooth and quiet ride for passengers. On my first A380 flight, five years ago, it felt like we were hovering noiselessly as the British Airways giant descended over San Francisco Bay. It took the San Mateo Bridge flashing by my window to remind me that, yes, we were actually moving.
It's just that from the outside, the double-decker Airbus A380 looks like, well... a bus. Enormous? Yes, Powerful? Absolutely. Elegant? Not so much. One snarkier nickname for it is "the flying forehead." But even so, I respect what the superjumbo represents and I'll eagerly wish it a happy birthday. Fifteen years ago today, April 27, the A380 flew for the first time. Since then, it's been a hit with passengers, even if its commercial success hasn't been what Airbus originally hoped. There's nothing like it in the sky today, and as Airbus winds down production completely by 2021, hastened by the coronavirus pandemic, there never will be again.
[...] The coronavirus pandemic has now grounded almost all A380s in service, but the end of the program came in February 2019 when Airbus announced it would stop A380 production and deliver the last aircraft by 2021. "Today's announcement is painful for us and the A380 communities worldwide," Airbus CEO Tom Enders said in a release at the time. "But, keep in mind that A380s will still roam the skies for many years to come and Airbus will of course continue to fully support the A380 operators." Around the same time, the first two A380s were scrapped for parts after flying for only a decade. Ten years is an incredibly short life for an aircraft -- it's not unusual to fly on planes more than twice that age.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:57PM (3 children)
I've never gotten to fly in one of these, and I hope I can before they're gone. It's too bad they didn't have more success; not only are they reputed to be a fantastic experience for passengers, but even though they're not known for fantastic fuel economy, it seems like they should have excellent per-passenger fuel economy if they're fully loaded, simply due to economy of scale. I guess there's just not enough people flying between particular hubs any more, now that airlines don't really follow the hub-and-spoke model so much.
Instead, we're getting garbage planes like the 737MAX forced down our throats because these smaller planes better fit the current model. Hopefully some other players will get involved and put out some competitive planes in this class, since Airbus just isn't big enough to satisfy all the demand, and the 737MAX is a disaster.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:36PM (1 child)
The main reason these are not good at fuel efficiency has to do with wings. The wings are TOO SHORT. And the problem is they can't make the wings longer because then the plane would not fit on world's runways.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-A380-so-fuel-inefficient [quora.com]
Boeing wants to have folding wings so they can still fit on airport and improve efficiency.
https://www.boeing.com/777x/reveal/video-777x-Folding-Wingtip/ [boeing.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:33AM
Why don't they make them biplanes?
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Wednesday April 29 2020, @11:40AM
It's interesting and definitely worth doing if you can manage it, more like a flying passenger ferry than a conventional aircraft in terms of what you experience.