We have a lot of them ahead of UAE. China, Japan, USA coasts, you name it. Why so little demand else where?

Because you do not need an A380 as the local airline. The local hub carrier can easily shuffle flights around to free up some slots. It isn't hard to find a couple of extra slots when you already have 200+. The foreign carrier, on the other hand, only has a few slots each day. They need to maximise their use. Thus, you see many A380s in LHR but comparatively few are from BA (or other British airlines). Similarly, all major US airports see A380 service but none were bought by US airlines.

The A380 is ahead of its time. China and Japan will need some sooner or later, as high congestion at airports is only going to get worse, and VLA's are the solution.

First, is it just me, or is all these A380 threads just plain annoying.

And I don't really understand the original point - what does the density of the country has to do with whether they got A380 or not? A380 is a terrible short-haul plane, period.

Why not India as well? They're going to pass China in population by 2025-ish anyway.

Because moving people around in a densely populated country is better served by investing more into high speed rail, not abusing VLAs for shuttle hops.

zakuivcustom wrote:

First, is it just me, or is all these A380 threads just plain annoying.

And I don't really understand the original point - what does the density of the country has to do with whether they got A380 or not? A380 is a terrible short-haul plane, period.

Why not India as well? They're going to pass China in population by 2025-ish anyway.

Yes, all the A380 threads are annoying.

ElroyJetson wrote:

zakuivcustom wrote:

First, is it just me, or is all these A380 threads just plain annoying.

And I don't really understand the original point - what does the density of the country has to do with whether they got A380 or not? A380 is a terrible short-haul plane, period.

Why not India as well? They're going to pass China in population by 2025-ish anyway.

Yes, all the A380 threads are annoying.

Yes, very annoying - especially those weekly "A380 death" threads. Now that we know that the A380 should be still in production till at least 2030, we should hopefully have more meaningful discussions.

It’s such a beautiful bird. I want it to last as long as possible!

The A380 was envisioned as a solution not to population density per se, but to slot-constrained "megahub" airports that couldn't expand and thus required airlines to upgauge.

The thing is that there are multiple solutions to this problem; competing transportation methods, using alternative airports, expanding megahubs, and point-to-point flying (bypassing megahubs).

All of these separate alternate solutions have occurred (or will occur) to some degree. High speed rail is a big thing in many densely populated, modestly sized nations. LCCs began aggressively using alternative airports to megahubs and more airlines have been willing to use these alternative airports over time. Heathrow and Hong Kong are getting additional runways and I think the only thing stopping Haneda from being able to receive more traffic is politics. Finally, planes like the 787-8 and 787-9 have made much more point-to-point travel economically feasible.

Indeed, the biggest user of the A380 used it to create their own megahub. This was not what Airbus envisioned.

The A380 is a fantastic jet to fly in, very quiet and comfortable. But the future problem it was designed to address simply hasn't materialized nearly to the degree Airbus hoped.

Is the A380 "DOOOOOOOOOMED!!!!"? That's an exaggeration and the jet will be around for at least some time. But its a niche aircraft for a niche which probably isn't that huge. I doubt Airbus will make a profit on it.

zakuivcustom wrote:

First, is it just me, or is all these A380 threads just plain annoying.

And I don't really understand the original point - what does the density of the country has to do with whether they got A380 or not? A380 is a terrible short-haul plane, period.

Why not India as well? They're going to pass China in population by 2025-ish anyway.

i
I've read somewhere India has already passed China... But they are very poor and you can't transport paxx on the roof of a plane like they do on their trains. Sure Chinese will buy them and India too when their aviation will develop.

Here we go another "why the A380 ......?
How many of these threads do we need. If you want info re the 380 read one of the hundreds of threads out there . These are getting so repetitive and boring

An767

There´s just a single reason why:
The A380 is a terrible aircraft for short haul operations
In particular for the fact that its over all structure is too heavy for short hauls (basically the same applied even to the special 747´s that were used on Japanese domestic flights).
The structure is optimized for a very high MTOW (think of all the fuel to be carried on long hauls) and a relatively limited number of cycles.
You can´t simply trade in one advantage for another. The airframe of the A380 is ill-suited for short haul ops.

An767 wrote:

Here we go another "why the A380 ......?
How many of these threads do we need. If you want info re the 380 read one of the hundreds of threads out there . These are getting so repetitive and boring

An767

Do you know you're allowed to not read them?

Densely populated countries aren’t necessarily as economically active today/ yet on a global scale with sufficient business and leisure travel opportunities for residents to justify use of large and long range transport of any kind.

Indeed it’s almost a Anetter fixation with inter continental travel for what ever reason.

The VAST majority of business transactions are local and leisure travel requires a certain level of wealth and middle class before it can be sustained.

Today those countries and economic regions meeting these criteria remain the G7 nations.

Much and most of the Chinese market remains domestic in nature as more of the billions of people are allowed indeed encouraged to move to the cities from the land however this migration is already slowing and this working class won’t be traveling international on a regular and mass basis any time soon on the earnings they make let alone the continued travel restrictions that the PRC imposes on citizens.

Similarly for India indeed in many ways Indian political micro management is seriously holding back that economy imho

As for West Africa when the thieves of the elite stop steeling the nations wealth perhaps the middle classes might have an opportunity to grow to meet the potential at some point in the future.

The thing is that where there's lots of people there's also lots of airports all within a relatively small distance from each other. Passengers will spread out over all these airports. If you could consolidate all passenger demand from a densely populated region to one airport, an A380 would make sense. But you can't, and that's why an A380 doesn't make sense. The same destination is served from multiple airports on smaller aircraft, which contributes to the convenience of the passengers. They got the freedom to choose what airport to fly from.

neomax wrote:

The A380 is ahead of its time. China and Japan will need some sooner or later, as high congestion at airports is only going to get worse, and VLA's are the solution.

The Japanese population is shrinking.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

The thing is that where there's lots of people there's also lots of airports all within a relatively small distance from each other. Passengers will spread out over all these airports. If you could consolidate all passenger demand from a densely populated region to one airport, an A380 would make sense. But you can't, and that's why an A380 doesn't make sense. The same destination is served from multiple airports on smaller aircraft, which contributes to the convenience of the passengers. They got the freedom to choose what airport to fly from.

First world view . West Africa , Brazil, China and India aren’t actually burgeoning with airports every 30 miles !

And Indonesia is an atoll of a million islands !

rutankrd wrote:

First world view . West Africa , Brazil, China and India aren’t actually burgeoning with airports every 30 miles !

And Indonesia is an atoll of a million islands !

True, but most people in those countries are poor so they'll most likely never fly or at most only short haul. They don't contribute to long haul demand. The first world (Europe, USA, etc) is where it happens, that's where the demand is and that's also where the airports are. The third world, sure, they're destinations. But as I said earlier, destinations served from multiple airports within relatively short distances from each other.

Take Lagos (Nigeria) for example. That's a destination. From western Europe it is served from Amsterdam, Frankfurt, London Gatwick, London Heathrow, Milan Malpensa and Paris Charles de Gaulle. All of them are relatively close to each other and none of these flights is operated on an A380. They're all on smaller aircraft. If you could consolidate all of those destinations in western Europe to one airport you might have enough demand to fill an A380. But you can't, so the A380 will never be there.

For China and Japan, historically the large planes (such as 747SR and 744D for JAL and ANA) were used in short domestic routes (e.g. HND-CTS, FUK-HND, SHA-PEK, etc.). Those demands are now quickly displaced by the continued expansion of high speed rail. Now high speed rail between Beijing and Shanghai are running at a frequency of once every 10-15 min. Japan's bullet train will reach Sapporo in 2021. The second high-speed line between Tokyo and Nagoya will be completed in 2023, and then extended to Osaka by 2030, which will reduce travel time between Tokyo and Osaka to less than 2hrs by train, which will devastate the air traffic demand between HND and ITM.

The demand of A380 in China and Japan are really dented by rail. The airlines are actually using smaller planes in domestic routes now than before. International demand from those countries are only high enough to support A380 in selective routes, or the high demand on international routes (such as holiday traffic to Thailand, etc.) are highly seasonal.

flee wrote:

Yes, very annoying - especially those weekly "A380 death" threads. Now that we know that the A380 should be still in production till at least 2030, we should hopefully have more meaningful discussions.

Some people have to write for a living.

So if the A380 was created as a people mover for congested airports why are the bulk of them not configured as people movers, they should all be configured for over 500+ seats.

Par13del it’s economics and yield potential across the basket of classes just as any aircraft.

Only Emirates has the scale to operate a handful of dense two class frames within their network and they are deployed of some secondary and even thirshary routes rather than hubs.

Emirates already have plenty of frequencies and capacity into the London market in particular with multiple 388s at LHR and LGW.

par13del wrote:

So if the A380 was created as a people mover for congested airports why are the bulk of them not configured as people movers, they should all be configured for over 500+ seats.

This doesn't matter, the problem is that the aircraft can only be in one place at one time. Instead of one aircraft having 500 seats you can have two aircraft having 250 seats and be more flexible. Offer multiple flights on different times of the day or to/from different airports.

There are very little routes on this planet where an A380 could be filled strictly on O/D passengers, by far most of them need a transfer flight at either end to get them to their final destination. But what if you can skip the transfer and have a direct flight to your final destination on a smaller aircraft instead? That would mean the seat you otherwise would have had on the A380 stays empty. If enough people do as you do, the A380 becomes too big and will be replaced by a smaller aircraft.

PatrickZ80 wrote:

par13del wrote:

So if the A380 was created as a people mover for congested airports why are the bulk of them not configured as people movers, they should all be configured for over 500+ seats.

This doesn't matter, the problem is that the aircraft can only be in one place at one time. Instead of one aircraft having 500 seats you can have two aircraft having 250 seats and be more flexible. Offer multiple flights on different times of the day or to/from different airports.

There are very little routes on this planet where an A380 could be filled strictly on O/D passengers, by far most of them need a transfer flight at either end to get them to their final destination. But what if you can skip the transfer and have a direct flight to your final destination on a smaller aircraft instead? That would mean the seat you otherwise would have had on the A380 stays empty. If enough people do as you do, the A380 becomes too big and will be replaced by a smaller aircraft.

Almost straight out of the Boeing 787 marketing pamphlet.

neomax wrote:

The A380 is ahead of its time. China and Japan will need some sooner or later, as high congestion at airports is only going to get worse, and VLA's are the solution.

If Japan doesn't need them now, they never will. This idea that VLA's are the only solution to congestions is an idea created by Airbus to justify a poor investment.

It’s so ugly, it repels buyers, that’s why.

GF

SC430 wrote:

neomax wrote:

The A380 is ahead of its time. China and Japan will need some sooner or later, as high congestion at airports is only going to get worse, and VLA's are the solution.

If Japan doesn't need them now, they never will. This idea that VLA's are the only solution to congestions is an idea created by Airbus to justify a poor investment.

Umm...if you are talking about domestic flights, JL/NH already has 400+ seats in their 772A/773A.

And if anything, the A-segment (non-ER) 777 is created for high density, short routes, chiefly designed to replace domestic widebodies (DC-10, etc). Same can be said for 744D (Can you imagined Boeing designing 1 specific plane for 2 customers now? I can't) or earlier, 747SR.

You cannot say such thing about A380 at all. Operating it at short range is a money drain even if you fill up the plane 100%. If anything, there is not really a replacement for A-Segment 777 either, since it is such a small niche market that A or B won't spend too much R&D money on without huge commitment from multiple airlines.

P.S. And NH is getting 3 A380s. Yes, it is purely politics rather than economics behind that order, but you can't say Japan is not getting them.

MHG wrote:

There´s just a single reason why:
The A380 is a terrible aircraft for short haul operations
In particular for the fact that its over all structure is too heavy for short hauls (basically the same applied even to the special 747´s that were used on Japanese domestic flights).
The structure is optimized for a very high MTOW (think of all the fuel to be carried on long hauls) and a relatively limited number of cycles.
You can´t simply trade in one advantage for another. The airframe of the A380 is ill-suited for short haul ops.

I believe that A380 has a super slow approach that would mitigate and preserve heavy structure. I am not an expert so I want to hear someone with an insight.

In one word...frequency...


Faro

PatrickZ80 wrote:

This doesn't matter, the problem is that the aircraft can only be in one place at one time. Instead of one aircraft having 500 seats you can have two aircraft having 250 seats and be more flexible. Offer multiple flights on different times of the day or to/from different airports.

This sort of argument is trotted out here far too regularly. The simple fact that average aircraft size has been steadily increasing year-on-year, for at least 30 years, disproves it. On huge numbers of routes, it is simply not possible for airlines to just add frequencies.

par13del wrote:

So if the A380 was created as a people mover for congested airports why are the bulk of them not configured as people movers, they should all be configured for over 500+ seats.

And people would love to fly on an airliner packed with 500/600+ people for short haul flights. How long does it take to turn an A380 with 500+? Not really cost effective like turning a B737-700.

A sample of one here, I fly 100+ segments a year and waiting on a plane to disembark is one of the most frustrating things I ever do. For the very few times I check a bag waiting at the luggage carousel is also very frustrating. This is flying on aircraft with less than 180 seats, bump that up to 500/600+ and what fun that will be.

speedbored wrote:

PatrickZ80 wrote:

This doesn't matter, the problem is that the aircraft can only be in one place at one time. Instead of one aircraft having 500 seats you can have two aircraft having 250 seats and be more flexible. Offer multiple flights on different times of the day or to/from different airports.

This sort of argument is trotted out here far too regularly. The simple fact that average aircraft size has been steadily increasing year-on-year, for at least 30 years, disproves it. On huge numbers of routes, it is simply not possible for airlines to just add frequencies.

It's somewhat of a myth that airlines are just buying the largest size anyway. Some planes simply hit the "sweet spot". A320 still outsale A321, this is with A321 selling really well. A359 outsell A35K, although A358 didn't sell at all. Same for B789 vs. B78X.

B77W is a little bit of an exception. I don't think Boeing even expect it to outperform a B77E in terms of both range and fuel burn. There's absolutely no drawback from going to B77W at all.

Lastly, economics still comes in play. Do they really need the 100 extra seats on an A380 vs. that of a B773/77W? It's still MUCH cheaper to operate a B773 than an A380, add onto the fact that B773/77W does not required special ground equipments/infrastructure, etc. (You can substitute A350 into the role of B777 if you're such an Airbus fanboi ). Then the B777/A350 can still operates routes that couldn't quite fill an A380 MUCH easier.

itchief wrote:

par13del wrote:

So if the A380 was created as a people mover for congested airports why are the bulk of them not configured as people movers, they should all be configured for over 500+ seats.

And people would love to fly on an airliner packed with 500/600+ people for short haul flights. How long does it take to turn an A380 with 500+? Not really cost effective like turning a B737-700.

A sample of one here, I fly 100+ segments a year and waiting on a plane to disembark is one of the most frustrating things I ever do. For the very few times I check a bag waiting at the luggage carousel is also very frustrating. This is flying on aircraft with less than 180 seats, bump that up to 500/600+ and what fun that will be.

A380 is literally two airplanes in one , passengers don't see nor feel the other floor

Faro wrote:

In one word...frequency...


Faro

Most people prefer or need a specific times of travel, namely morning and afternoon. And frequency is problematic as it creates a gridlock, just look at highways at rush hour.

I do believe BA should copy EK's example to a degree. If BA turned all its New York flights to A380 there would be an advantage over American airlines because passengers far prefer to fly the A380. They just need to be more adventurous.

aviationaware wrote:

neomax wrote:

The A380 is ahead of its time. China and Japan will need some sooner or later, as high congestion at airports is only going to get worse, and VLA's are the solution.

The Japanese population is shrinking.

And JAL/ANA are retiring their 773 Domestics with no direct replacement.

rutankrd wrote:

PatrickZ80 wrote:

The thing is that where there's lots of people there's also lots of airports all within a relatively small distance from each other. Passengers will spread out over all these airports. If you could consolidate all passenger demand from a densely populated region to one airport, an A380 would make sense. But you can't, and that's why an A380 doesn't make sense. The same destination is served from multiple airports on smaller aircraft, which contributes to the convenience of the passengers. They got the freedom to choose what airport to fly from.

First world view . West Africa , Brazil, China and India aren’t actually burgeoning with airports every 30 miles !

And Indonesia is an atoll of a million islands !

China is increasingly burgeoning with airports now (and HSR) and I think many Chinese would not like to be excluded from the "First World". Now Brazil and India aren't anywhere close to China in terms of HSR.

goosebayguy wrote:

If BA turned all its New York flights to A380 there would be an advantage over American airlines because passengers far prefer to fly the A380. They just need to be more adventurous.

I don't agree with that. I don't think passengers prefer to fly the A380 over another aircraft. To most passengers all aircraft are equal. They don't care about the size of the aircraft, only about the size of their own seat.

Plus, as I've said before, the A380 only works on high density routes. London - New York might be a high density route where an A380 would work, but what if your final destination isn't New York but let's say New Orleans. You got the choice to fly an A380 to New York and then a feeder flight from New York to New Orleans, or a direct flight from London to New Orleans on a smaller aircraft. That seems like an obvious choice to me.

I thought the A380 would be the perfect aircraft for India, but well by the looks of it, Jet Airways is struggling even with their B777's and most of routes have been covered by ME3.

Vladex wrote:

MHG wrote:

There´s just a single reason why:
The A380 is a terrible aircraft for short haul operations
In particular for the fact that its over all structure is too heavy for short hauls (basically the same applied even to the special 747´s that were used on Japanese domestic flights).
The structure is optimized for a very high MTOW (think of all the fuel to be carried on long hauls) and a relatively limited number of cycles.
You can´t simply trade in one advantage for another. The airframe of the A380 is ill-suited for short haul ops.

I believe that A380 has a super slow approach that would mitigate and preserve heavy structure. I am not an expert so I want to hear someone with an insight.

To be a bit more specific, the airframe of a long-haul aircraft such as the A380 is sized for 20000 to 30000 flight cycles (by comparison, the short haul aircraft are sized for up to 80000 flight cycles or so). Sizing it for more cycles would make it heavier, which would be detrimental and of no use since the aircraft is intended for long-haul flights anyway. Low approach speed isn't of any help for preserving most of the structure from metal fatigue phenomenon. Lowering the MTOW (taking advantage of the reduced fuel loads) might slightly relief the non-pressurized part of the structure, but that's it. Using an A380 exclusively on short haul flights would send it to the scrapyard within less than 10 years of operation.

The problem is, that it's a long range aircraft and the market for longe range VLAs is already satisfied.

The best Airbus could do, ist to stretch the A380 without increasing the MTOW. This would be a very cheap strech, because only hull and appenage would be affected. On the other hand, it would be the aircraft with the best CASM on the market. This could create a new market in India, China and would be a superior A388 replacement on many established A380 routes like DXB-Europe where range is not needed.

Vladex wrote:

A380 is literally two airplanes in one , passengers don't see nor feel the other floor

Indeed, if you have a 3 airbridge setup on a dense config it's 200 passengers/door, so the same as an A321.

In reply to the OP, High Speed Rail, in Western Europe and Japan the number of city pairs where it is faster to go via train than plane is significant. China is building a lot of HSR, so only longer routes will be faster by plane. In France now, only Toulouse (perhaps appropriately with the Airbus base) and maybe Nice of the major cities are faster to get to by plane than train when you allow for getting from the city to the airport, security and the actual flight. You can get a fair distance from London on a train in the time it takes to taxi out at Heathrow.

Overthecascades wrote:

It’s such a beautiful bird. I want it to last as long as possible!

I agree with you, but unfortunately most airline companies don't.

Turnhouse1 wrote:

In reply to the OP, High Speed Rail, in Western Europe and Japan the number of city pairs where it is faster to go via train than plane is significant. China is building a lot of HSR, so only longer routes will be faster by plane. In France now, only Toulouse (perhaps appropriately with the Airbus base) and maybe Nice of the major cities are faster to get to by plane than train when you allow for getting from the city to the airport, security and the actual flight. You can get a fair distance from London on a train in the time it takes to taxi out at Heathrow.

As for Chinese HSR - the airspace restriction (aka delay) means if the distance is good enough, people travel by HSR instead of trying to deal with the consistent delay. On Beijing <-> Shanghai (The busiest route in China), HSR share is only increasing, especially now the speed of HSR is back up to 350km/h, reducing the time b/t the two back down to 4.5 hrs. The Japanese "golden" rule for HSR vs. Airplane is 4 hour (aka anything over 4 hrs on train; plane has an advantage, below HSR has an advantage).

JoergAtADN wrote:

The problem is, that it's a long range aircraft and the market for longe range VLAs is already satisfied.

The best Airbus could do, ist to stretch the A380 without increasing the MTOW. This would be a very cheap strech, because only hull and appenage would be affected. On the other hand, it would be the aircraft with the best CASM on the market. This could create a new market in India, China and would be a superior A388 replacement on many established A380 routes like DXB-Europe where range is not needed.

Except CASM only works if you can fill the plane 100%. And people can dream on and on about short-haul A388, it's NOT happening, period.

flee wrote:

ElroyJetson wrote:

zakuivcustom wrote:

First, is it just me, or is all these A380 threads just plain annoying.

And I don't really understand the original point - what does the density of the country has to do with whether they got A380 or not? A380 is a terrible short-haul plane, period.

Why not India as well? They're going to pass China in population by 2025-ish anyway.

Yes, all the A380 threads are annoying.

Yes, very annoying - especially those weekly "A380 death" threads. Now that we know that the A380 should be still in production till at least 2030, we should hopefully have more meaningful discussions.

I have not participated in any death of the A380 threads. It is a white elephant that is a drain in Airbus as is the 747-8 for Boeing. Personally, I am much more interested in the newer generation and more efficient widebodies like the A350, 787, 777X and A330 Neo. Those are the future imho. Boeing and Airbus producing 6 examples each of their older four engine frames does not sound like success to me.

But hey...to each his own I guess.

StudiodeKadent wrote:

The thing is that there are multiple solutions to this problem; competing transportation methods, using alternative airports, expanding megahubs, and point-to-point flying (bypassing megahubs).

All of these separate alternate solutions have occurred (or will occur) to some degree. High speed rail is a big thing in many densely populated, modestly sized nations. LCCs began aggressively using alternative airports to megahubs and more airlines have been willing to use these alternative airports over time. Heathrow and Hong Kong are getting additional runways and I think the only thing stopping Haneda from being able to receive more traffic is politics. Finally, planes like the 787-8 and 787-9 have made much more point-to-point travel economically feasible.

Indeed, the biggest user of the A380 used it to create their own megahub. This was not what Airbus envisioned..

That is the issue. While anti-growth people wanted the solution to be up-gauging and limited at that, the open market found other solutions.

I personally rooted on the A380, but it needs other new flights to help fill it.

There was the issue. Only EK embraced the modern connecting model with the A380.

Lightsaber

It amazes me no US carrier placed an order for the A380 even though some have B747 in their fleet.

Operational costs per hr not including airport and navigational charges.

A333R/787-10 - $8K-$10K/hr (400 sardines)
A388 - $26K-$29K/hr (525 sardines)

This is not rocket science, it is simple math.

compare apples to apples please.

with 436 actual sardines in 333 will be about 845 in 388, still having more room for each.

Ok, let's use 436 vs 845.

Even with twice airport/navi charges, A333/787 will be more profitable.

The probability of filling 436 seats is a lot higher than filling 845.

An A333/787 can go to almost any airport in the world, A388 needs special infrastructure.

A330 series is easy to maintain workhorse. 787 is getting there.

dtw2hyd wrote:

Ok, let's use 436 vs 845.
Even with twice airport/navi charges, A333/787 will be more profitable.
.

yes. if you transport sardines only. and even here for 333 better comparing with 8-abreast

actualy. a380 have much more room for unique leisure options comparing with any current plane.
so its more complicated.

but, we all know, for a380 in current confuguration difficult to compete modern airliners.