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: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:29PM (1 child)
If it weren't for you and your pals at Airbus, the Wuhan Flu would have stayed in China. #GroundThePlanes #SailEverywhere #StGretaForPope
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:52PM
#MAGA fans from one extreme to another?
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:43PM (1 child)
Some years back I heard this story -- Boeing did a little preliminary design work on a super jumbo even larger than the 747, but concluded that the market was going the other way with more/smaller planes doing more point-to-point flights (and less hub-hub). However, Boeing kept their real plans extremely secret...while "leaking" the super jumbo plans carefully.
When the leak/rumor got to Airbus that Boeing was doing a super jumbo they took the bait and it started Airbus down the road to the A380. Which, as we see now, was a dead end.
Boeing may look awful technically with all the 737MAX problems, but, if this story is true, then ~20 years ago they were pretty clever competitors.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Wednesday April 29 2020, @03:55AM
I've also heard the story that it was Boeing that actually made Airbus into what it is today.
The story goes that Airbus released the A300, a widebody, twin engine airliner in the early 1970's. Back when it came out, due to regulations you couldn't fly a twin engine plane for long routes, routes over water, etc. So at the time, the A300 was a bigger plane that could only do limited, short flights. There was little need for such a large plane for short hops, so sales were pretty weak. A bit later, Boeing had the idea that twin engine planes could fly longer routes, and by doing some lobbying they managed to create ETOPS which allowed for this. Happy with this result, Boeing went to work on creating a new widebody, twin engine plane for this new market which eventually became the 767. However, for those that were skeptical about the reliability of a larger twin engine aircraft flying routes like this, all you had to do was look at the Airbus A300, a plane that had been out for several years and was a proven design. And there was really no reason why it couldn't fly these longer routes pretty much immediately. So for several years until the 767 actually came out, Airbus was the only player in a totally new market that Boeing played a big part in creating, and thus sales of the A300 suddenly took off in the early 1980's, basically turning Airbus from a small player into a major competitor.
Oops.
(Score: 2) by aliks on Tuesday April 28 2020, @08:23PM (4 children)
I have flown on a few A380s across a couple of airlines, and I was always impressed. As a passenger the layout, the smooth takeoff and landing and the low noise levels were just fanatastic.
I'm not an expert, but it felt much better than the bigger Boeings.
In addition, in London, my tennis club is under the approach path to Heathrow, so very many evenings, these beasts would fly overhead and I would just look up and stare.
I really hope I get one last chance to fly A380
To err is human, to comment divine
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:03PM (3 children)
》I really hope I get one last chance to fly A380
Something you don't want to say about the Boeing 737 Max, because odds are you'll be right.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @03:49AM (2 children)
Actually, odds are you are wrong. 737MAX had been in service quite awhile before the low-bucks/rote-pilot-training airlines got in trouble with them. US and Euro pilots didn't have any major problems because they understood run-away trim and how to deal with it as a nuisance.
Not defending Boeing, the software design sure seems to have sucked, but the manual system worked fine...as long as the pilots knew where the switches were to shut off the auto system.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:11AM (1 child)
Please, now go fuck yourself and then kill yourself with a stupid hammer, elitist fuck. Just like now COVID can't kill American's too??? You always need fucking cluebat to hit your stupid head? All that happened was that they were fucking lucky not to get a broken sensor.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/how-much-was-pilot-error-a-factor-in-the-boeing-737-max-crashes/ [seattletimes.com]
And here's a VIDEO from a fucking simulator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNOVlxJmow&feature=youtu.be [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:44PM
Whoa cowboy. From your link:
> Starting from the point where the Ethiopian pilots hit the cut-off switches and stopped MCAS from operating, the U.S. MAX crew tried in the simulator to recover.
I claim that a more seasoned crew would have hit the cut-off switches much sooner, at the first sign of runaway trim. And I recall reading (but haven't got time to find a ref) that this had been done many times already, in actual flight.
I've got no skin in the game (no Boeing stock), save your clue hammer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by progo on Tuesday April 28 2020, @08:27PM
From the summary itself, they are going to stop producing NEW A380s next year, but the existing planes will remain in service for a long time. This just means the market can't support any more A380 than it already has.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday April 28 2020, @09:45PM (3 children)
The biggest question it helped answer was "What is the optimal size for a passenger jet?", and it's plainly "less than this". Aside from the fact that many airports couldn't handle it, and some had to be expanded, most airlines just couldn't fill the seats often enough.
I hate to fly, but a ride on this monster might persuade me to hop on board one more time. I've watched some videos where it's so quiet that you hear background noises. I'm given to understand that some people actually found it to be *too* quiet.
What the Concorde was for speed, the A380 seems to be for comfort--a masterpiece that was destined to fail due to economics.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @09:52PM
> I've watched some videos where it's so quiet that you hear background noises.
I hate to fly too, the noise (or something) always used to cause a couple of days of fatigue. Then I started using ear plugs--made a huge difference for me, I arrive feeling fairly normal.
Now, if there was something that blocked out the security theater, I'd be all set!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:20AM (1 child)
>...destined to fail due to economics...
This is why we can't have nice things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:48PM
Anything good goes out of the market -- saying of a wise old friend. If you see something you like that is well done, well made, well designed...then *buy* *it* *now*. Soon it will be copied and the lower price copies will drive the original out of the market, because the mass of people buy on price not quality.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:39PM (1 child)
to accommodate your plane, you might have issues. I remember probably 20-30 years ago when this thing was announced, along with "airports will need upgrades to handle this plane". Combined with the hub and spoke topologies airlines seemed to be adopting I always wondered if this plane had a future.
From what I hear it's a great plane with great engineering, but between requiring airports to spend $$$ to handle it, and it's need to be close to full for every flight, I always wondered about it's viability.
/ I bought Boeing stock in the 80s
// sold with middling profit to buy a house in the 90s
/// missed the huge stock runup that happened after I bought the house.
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @03:31PM
Why would you tell us your boring ass tale about buying some shares. Bullet pointed no less. Rethink your existence.