TheSonntag wrote:

I never understood why the A380 did get so bad engines. They were already outdated 4 years after delivery. .

Think that was the biggest misstep.

Not to go exclusive, and have a size that didn't fit with twin engined jets, so it could get a much cheaper neo.

Focusing on the engines is an anet myth to me. A few percentage points less fuel burn wouldn't change the facts that the airplane was way too large and in a quad layout. Mho.

The A330neo engines would have been perfect for an A380 upgrade. They were even flight tested on the A380.

frigatebird wrote:

I recall that Airbus offered so many cabin options, about every single airline that ordered the A380 had their own specifically customized cabin. This not only made the A380 far too labor intensive to build, but also affected the resale possibilities of the aircraft.

That certainly played into it. There were rumours that BA/IAG were very interested in the Malaysia Airlines A380 fleet of six RR aircraft. The cost of reconfiguration proved to be prohibitive though at around 30-50 million per frame and that was BA out. Even at the peak of the 2019 market BA could see that the A380 was not going to reach old bones in their service, that maintenance was going to become expensive and I guess that poor residual values make the lease rather expensive too. Even BA who seem to be able to make a fleet of 12 work, struggle to make the case work beyond that, it seems for a host of operational, maintenance and financing challenges, in addition to the commercial challenge of filling the aircraft.

https://viewfromthewing.com/why-ba-wont ... -problems/

Its a real shame, as the A380 is a pleasure to fly on.

2175301 wrote:

iflyabunch wrote:

Thank you for the CATIA explanation, but as an engineer, I’m not so sure I understand. Both France and Germany use the SI metric system. What happened to confuse that?

It had nothing to do with the units of measurement used.

It had to do with the newer version was not backwards compatible with an older version. At least one of the versions could not properly read the files of the other version... and modified parameters without an obvious warning.

Similar things happen with various software versions in the USA for many things.

Key lesson is to make sure that everyone is using the same version of software; or that backwards compatibility actually exists.

Yes, and to take this a step further it was a known issue early in the program. Airbus had been trying to make software to bridge the two versions but in short that effort failed, and no one seemed to understand how important making that bridging software work was so its failure wasn't adequately addressed.

PolarRoute wrote:

About time we got another A380 thread, cuz avgeeks can't go without an occasional debate on this machine! The whole saga of double-deck-hype-and-then-fail is too amusing to avoid, isn't it?

True, yet IMO new threads arise as various insiders add just a bit more info to what is/was known about the saga. I tried to highlight some of this stuff in my earlier posts. Some of the interviews we've seen from Jurgen Thomas ( see link in my first post ) and John Leahy have been quite worthy of commentary.

PolarRoute wrote:

I truly believe that had the A380 been more efficient, it would have made for a revolutionary means of mass transport. Think of it this way: wouldn't airlines go for the A380 over, say, B789 any day if the two planes burnt the same amount of fuel per hour?

The A380's failure doesn't lie within the size of the airplane itself; rather, it's the cost per seat advantage, or the lack thereof, it provided with its extra capacity. Simply, the inclined cost was too great for airlines to risk it and try filling all the added seats.

I do really hope OEMs take second attempt on double deck 4 hauler. It's just nice to have some characteristics around on the apron. But I guess Airbus blew any confidence for any manufacturers to build such aircraft away

Even that A380 with 789 costs would have negative effects in that it would cause yield dilution. Each seat you fill adds incremental revenue so there's always a temptation to fill it, and the only reliable way to do that is to cut prices. However when you do this you also lower what you can charge on other airplanes in your fleet and on other routes in your network because you've reset passenger expectations.

TFA said:

There was greater pressure on yields, with literally hundreds of additional seats to fill on every flight. Once Lufthansa started flying the A380 across the Atlantic, the airline found that the yield on its Frankfurt-New York route fell by almost as much as unit costs.

Note how A380 caused yield to drop not just on its flights, but on the entire route!

In the world of supply and demand, lack of supply drives prices up. A380 simply creates more supply than most routes can handle. There's a limit to how many people want to go FRA-NYC at a given instant of time. Making them compete for a smaller number of seats drives prices up.

TheSonntag wrote:

I never understood why the A380 did get so bad engines. They were already outdated 4 years after delivery. Obviously the world financial crisis did not really help the plane either.

It's pretty simple: Airbus could have had better engines if they waited those four years but they did not. I realize this is counter to what Leahy has said, but IMO he's dissembling. GE knew the first generation GE90 had a lot of room for improvement. If Airbus didn't understand this, they were not asking the right questions. As above, GE offered to put GE90 on A330 at its expense but Airbus said no. That's something I don't understand.

TheSonntag wrote:

I believe from a project management and technology point of view, Airbus learned a lot from this programme, and the investments into XFW are also useful for a new production line of the A321 series.

So while the A380 as a standalone program is a failure, in the overall context it isn't. Only with the A380 Airbus really became a full scale airplane manufacturer, and with the A350, they got a gread product.

All true. The A380 failure transformed Airbus as a business and provided key technology and infrastructure for the A350. It was an extremely expensive and painful way to achieve that end result, but some times that is what it takes.

Noshow wrote:

From the outside the A380 debacle looks similar to what Boeing went through with the 787.

IMO not true. The A380's problem is they built the wrong plane. The program was doomed when they decided they were going to build an -800 that already had the space for the -800F with tall main deck and stretch for -900 built in. There was no technological approach that could fix that. Jurgen Thomas said the base -800 did not scale as well as they hoped and they ended up using more costly materials to meet the original targets. There was no magic fix available to it. We saw that proposing a move to next generation engines did not create a market opportunity for it.

Boeing built the right plane with 787, we can see that it still gets orders and will for many years to come. They just went about it the wrong way. Saying more would take us too far off topic so I will leave it at that.

I was thinking about construction and fabrication errors and then rectifying them. I agree, that the 787 looks more promising concerning long term market success.

Noshow wrote:

The A330neo engines would have been perfect for an A380 upgrade. They were even flight tested on the A380.

That was the basis of the proposal for A380neo, but the market was not interested in such a plane, they had already fallen in love with the big twins.

BrianDromey wrote:

That certainly played into it. There were rumours that BA/IAG were very interested in the Malaysia Airlines A380 fleet of six RR aircraft. The cost of reconfiguration proved to be prohibitive though at around 30-50 million per frame and that was BA out. Even at the peak of the 2019 market BA could see that the A380 was not going to reach old bones in their service, that maintenance was going to become expensive and I guess that poor residual values make the lease rather expensive too. Even BA who seem to be able to make a fleet of 12 work, struggle to make the case work beyond that, it seems for a host of operational, maintenance and financing challenges, in addition to the commercial challenge of filling the aircraft.

https://viewfromthewing.com/why-ba-wont ... -problems/

Its a real shame, as the A380 is a pleasure to fly on.

Yes, also the AF CEO stated that the cost of changing the cabin on the A380s was in a similar price range and was the main reason they decided to retire the aircraft, along with some pretty expensive maintenance costs too.

9Patch wrote:

flyingclrs727 wrote:

The Germans and French could not agree on a software version for the CATIA software. This necessitated conversion of files shared between the French and Germans. The conversions introduced rounding errors into the dimensions. Unfortunately after many iterations of down conversions by the French and up conversions by the Germans, the dimensions of the wiring harnesses were decreased so much that they were too short to fit in the aircraft. The designs had to be altered, but even worse many early aircraft had to be retrofitted with a different wiring harness. This decreased the value of first 20 aircraft off the production line as they had differences from each other and later standardized aircraft.

In addition to the CATIA delay the article mentions a delay caused by a 'cabin installation disaster.' Are they the same thing or was there a different cause for the subsequent delays?

It was even worse than that. I met a German engineer skiing in Austria who worked on the 380 program, early days, in Hamburg. He stated they would route cabling following the wiring schematic to locations that should have been pass-throughs only to find a bulkhead blocking. He said it was a disaster, that the French and German teams just couldn't get aligned properly. Had to have added huge costs to the program.

Revelation wrote:

Noshow wrote:

The A330neo engines would have been perfect for an A380 upgrade. They were even flight tested on the A380.

That was the basis of the proposal for A380neo, but the market was not interested in such a plane, they had already fallen in love with the big twins.

The basis of the A380neo was actually updated Trent XWBs (presumably some Ultrafan tech with reduced thrust). IIRC at the time Airbus was saying the 787/A330neo engines would not have provided enough of an improvement to be a worthwhile investment. Post mortem that position has changed somewhat (now Airbus should have waited at program CATIA delays for 787 engines? Come on) because it allows [former] Airbus executives to shift some of the blame to the engine manufacturers….

Polot wrote:

Revelation wrote:

Noshow wrote:

The A330neo engines would have been perfect for an A380 upgrade. They were even flight tested on the A380.

That was the basis of the proposal for A380neo, but the market was not interested in such a plane, they had already fallen in love with the big twins.

The basis of the A380neo was actually updated Trent XWBs (presumably some Ultrafan tech with reduced thrust). IIRC at the time Airbus was saying the 787/A330neo engines would not have provided enough of an improvement to be a worthwhile investment. Post mortem that position has changed somewhat (now Airbus should have waited at program CATIA delays for 787 engines? Come on) because it allows [former] Airbus executives to shift some of the blame to the engine manufacturers….

Thanks. You are correct on the lineage. The main point still stands, there was no engine tech that could have made up for the main issue that the A380 was too big and too heavy for its application, and there wasn't enough interest in that application to sustain the program.

Any engine you could produce that would make the A380's economics improve enough to make it worth the investment of putting that engine onto the plane would mean you could instead put that engine on a big twin and end up with even better economics.

For instance if you could produce a variant of TXWB that would change A380s economics in a significant way, then you could just put that engine on A350 and its economics would kill the A380neo proposal.

This is why in the end A380 was shut down, there was no path forward for it.

There was greater pressure on yields, with literally hundreds of additional seats to fill on every flight.

This cannot be true. Around one hundred additional seats, okay, but not hundreds of additional seats. Lufthansa's A380 has room for 509 passengers, 116 more than its B747-400.

In the contest of 400 seat airliners versus 300 airliners, that final 100 seats (at a single point in time) are very low-yielding. The percentage of time those last 100 seats are filled is also lower than necessary. Those revenues do not cover the incremental cost of A380 flight versus a comparable A350-1000 flight or 777-300ER flight.

I think Airbus simply looked at CASM and thought it guaranteed success. Certainly, from the sales literature, one got the impression. The 77W, with a bit higher CASM, was a nightmare for the A380, and ended its career. Because, even with higher CASM, the 77W made more money for most airlines.

Revelation wrote:

The program was doomed when they decided they were going to build an -800 that already had the space for the -800F with tall main deck and stretch for -900 built in. There was no technological approach that could fix that.

Didn't Boeing essentially do the same thing with the 787?
Build the shrink 800 first and the optimized 900 later?

I did some calculations on how the A380 would have performed with nominal 787 engines. For this I ran my model with the A380 with standard engines rated with cruise SFC of 0.525lb/hr/lb over a near spec range flight. Then the SFC was dropped to 0.5 to represent a 787 technology level engine. Finally the geometry and weights of the A380 were optimised so that the excess performance afforded by the lower SFC engines was not there.

The simple addition of the lower SFC engine reduced fuel burn on the spec mission by 5.8%. When the airframe was optimised around this new engine the fuel burn dropped 8% from original.

The MTOW required dropped from 575t down to 550t. The empty weight dropped from 277t down to 272t.

Fred


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

9Patch wrote:

Revelation wrote:

The program was doomed when they decided they were going to build an -800 that already had the space for the -800F with tall main deck and stretch for -900 built in. There was no technological approach that could fix that.

Didn't Boeing essentially do the same thing with the 787?
Build the shrink 800 first and the optimized 900 later?

The difference with the 787 is with that plane the variants were launched together, so the 7E7-9/787-9 was available to purchase from day 1. Same story with the A350-800/900/1000 (although the -800 was later dropped). The A389 was not launched with the A388, but the capability was baked in to the design with the belief that the A388 would be enough of a success to warrant launching the A389 in the later but nearish future. That obviously never happened, and Airbus apparently had enough hesitation about the A389’s size to not include it at program launch. Which suggests they probably shouldn’t have optimized the plane around it.

flipdewaf wrote:

I did some calculations on how the A380 would have performed with nominal 787 engines. For this I ran my model with the A380 with standard engines rated with cruise SFC of 0.525lb/hr/lb over a near spec range flight. Then the SFC was dropped to 0.5 to represent a 787 technology level engine. Finally the geometry and weights of the A380 were optimised so that the excess performance afforded by the lower SFC engines was not there.

The simple addition of the lower SFC engine reduced fuel burn on the spec mission by 5.8%. When the airframe was optimised around this new engine the fuel burn dropped 8% from original.

The MTOW required dropped from 575t down to 550t. The empty weight dropped from 277t down to 272t.

Very interesting. Unfortunately one can't just re-optimize in the real world by changing a few numbers in a spread sheet. The sub-optimal geometry and weight were baked into the design right from the start. 787 era engines were only available even later than 77W era engines. Airbus tried offering TXWB era engines on the actual A380 and got no takers. They even tried tweaking the staircases and adding winglets and a misery-inducing 11 across cabin and got no takers.

TheSonntag wrote:

I never understood why the A380 did get so bad engines. They were already outdated 4 years after delivery. Obviously the world financial crisis did not really help the plane either.

I believe from a project management and technology point of view, Airbus learned a lot from this programme, and the investments into XFW are also useful for a new production line of the A321 series.

So while the A380 as a standalone program is a failure, in the overall context it isn't. Only with the A380 Airbus really became a full scale airplane manufacturer, and with the A350, they got a gread product.

Airbus could have learned those lessons less expensively had they studied previous aircraft development programs. Both the A340-500/600 and A380 programs should never have been undertaken. The writing was on the wall in the mid-1990's. Big twins were the future. A larger A330 model should have been developed using engines developed for the 777. The A340-500/600 differences from the original A330/A340 did little to help the overall A330/A340 program.

flipdewaf wrote:

I did some calculations on how the A380 would have performed with nominal 787 engines. For this I ran my model with the A380 with standard engines rated with cruise SFC of 0.525lb/hr/lb over a near spec range flight. Then the SFC was dropped to 0.5 to represent a 787 technology level engine. Finally the geometry and weights of the A380 were optimised so that the excess performance afforded by the lower SFC engines was not there.

The simple addition of the lower SFC engine reduced fuel burn on the spec mission by 5.8%. When the airframe was optimised around this new engine the fuel burn dropped 8% from original.

The MTOW required dropped from 575t down to 550t. The empty weight dropped from 277t down to 272t.

Fred


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

What would be interesting is to know the brochure range and fuelburn per seat mile delta if they had gone simply for an optimized 800 of say 505T MTOW.

- 15% less wing surface with both less induded and parasitic drag.
- lighter engines with less surface area
- lighter and smaller control surfaces
- weight savings for not having so much 900 capability built in.

Would it have had enough range and enough of an CASM advantage to sufficiently offset the yield and frequency advantage of the twins?

A lighter 800 could possibly have had a pathway to a 2nd generation that the actual unoptimized 800 did not.

Revelation wrote:

flipdewaf wrote:

I did some calculations on how the A380 would have performed with nominal 787 engines. For this I ran my model with the A380 with standard engines rated with cruise SFC of 0.525lb/hr/lb over a near spec range flight. Then the SFC was dropped to 0.5 to represent a 787 technology level engine. Finally the geometry and weights of the A380 were optimised so that the excess performance afforded by the lower SFC engines was not there.

The simple addition of the lower SFC engine reduced fuel burn on the spec mission by 5.8%. When the airframe was optimised around this new engine the fuel burn dropped 8% from original.

The MTOW required dropped from 575t down to 550t. The empty weight dropped from 277t down to 272t.

Very interesting. Unfortunately one can't just re-optimize in the real world by changing a few numbers in a spread sheet. The sub-optimal geometry and weight were baked into the design right from the start. 787 era engines were only available even later than 77W era engines. Airbus tried offering TXWB era engines on the actual A380 and got no takers. They even tried tweaking the staircases and adding winglets and a misery-inducing 11 across cabin and got no takers.

Agree completely, the agonising may have been over such decisions that would cause significant delays, I’m not sure at what point airbus realised the uptick in engine performance would be available.

When I was doing my aerospace degree there was significant involvement from airbus (I was studying at the time of the crisis) and the feeling was that any new design needed growth baked in to designs and that the fuselage is the most important piece. I would be inclined to agree on the fuselage piece but for me the bottleneck is the wingspan. One of the airbus engineers stated they would have liked a wing of 90+m.

Fred


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The A380 is the Ford Excusion to the 747's Chevy Suburban. They built it because they could and they wanted to; not because the market actually needed it.

The worst part of this failure is probably to think that the A380 had been designed with a cargo version in mind (including facilitating the P2F conversions) and now that loads of A380s are being retired and that the cargo market is as hot as hell, there is absolutely no talk about a P2F conversion program for the A380. Even in this field, the 77W is king.

flipdewaf wrote:

When I was doing my aerospace degree there was significant involvement from airbus (I was studying at the time of the crisis) and the feeling was that any new design needed growth baked in to designs and that the fuselage is the most important piece.

Every design has growth potential built in in two ways:

1 You alwas find/design some under used MTOW optimization after launch.
2 Efficiency gains over time (mostly engines), will increase payload range and ultimately by means of simple stretching also capacity. An ultrafan A380-850 at an optimized 505t would've been remarkebly efficient.

I would be inclined to agree on the fuselage piece but for me the bottleneck is the wingspan. One of the airbus engineers stated they would have liked a wing of 90+m.

Fred

In my view an efficient plane at the desired capacity and range with that generation engines within the 80m span was just not poosible. They should've awknoledged the limitation of the 80m span and design accordingly.and let it grow in payload range and capacity over time

flipdewaf wrote:

I did some calculations on how the A380 would have performed with nominal 787 engines. For this I ran my model with the A380 with standard engines rated with cruise SFC of 0.525lb/hr/lb over a near spec range flight. Then the SFC was dropped to 0.5 to represent a 787 technology level engine. Finally the geometry and weights of the A380 were optimised so that the excess performance afforded by the lower SFC engines was not there.

The simple addition of the lower SFC engine reduced fuel burn on the spec mission by 5.8%. When the airframe was optimised around this new engine the fuel burn dropped 8% from original.

The MTOW required dropped from 575t down to 550t. The empty weight dropped from 277t down to 272t.

Fred


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

In what way would one optimize the airframe for a small reduction in SFC? It would result in an even smaller reduction in gross weight that needed to be lifted, but on the A380 I cannot imagine you would reduce the wing area (or would you).

Revelation wrote:

TheSonntag wrote:

I never understood why the A380 did get so bad engines. They were already outdated 4 years after delivery. Obviously the world financial crisis did not really help the plane either.

It's pretty simple: Airbus could have had better engines if they waited those four years but they did not. I realize this is counter to what Leahy has said, but IMO he's dissembling. GE knew the first generation GE90 had a lot of room for improvement. If Airbus didn't understand this, they were not asking the right questions. As above, GE offered to put GE90 on A330 at its expense but Airbus said no. That's something I don't understand.

Or Airbus could have built what became the A380 a decade earlier instead of building the A340-500/600. Still that would have put the A380 coming to market about 1997 as passenger 747-400 orders were drying up. By 2010, an A380 NEO would be needed. Still I think it was the wrong plane at the wrong time. The 777's were showing that twin engined widebodies were the future not large quads.

Taxi645 wrote:

In my view an efficient plane at the desired capacity and range with that generation engines within the 80m span was just not poosible. They should've awknoledged the limitation of the 80m span and design accordingly.and let it grow in payload range and capacity over time

Or Airbus should have invested in folding wingtips in order to make a higher aspect wing but still park in an 80m box.

Taxi645 wrote:

flipdewaf wrote:

When I was doing my aerospace degree there was significant involvement from airbus (I was studying at the time of the crisis) and the feeling was that any new design needed growth baked in to designs and that the fuselage is the most important piece.

Every design has growth potential built in in two ways:

1 You alwas find/design some under used MTOW optimization after launch.
2 Efficiency gains over time (mostly engines), will increase payload range and ultimately by means of simple stretching also capacity. An ultrafan A380-850 at an optimized 505t would've been remarkebly efficient.

Totally agree, the problem was airbus didn’t seem to think that was the route, there appears to have been a want to build it up at current first design. During the design project where we were mentored by airbus they were adamant that we should assume a 10% growth in MTOW into both the aerodynamic geometry and some structural parts. Maybe they were scarred by the A345/6 process of adding the plugs etc.

Incidentally I think that even 505t would have been a bit high, something more along the lines of 475 would have been a reasonable target.

Taxi645 wrote:

I would be inclined to agree on the fuselage piece but for me the bottleneck is the wingspan. One of the airbus engineers stated they would have liked a wing of 90+m.

Fred

In my view an efficient plane at the desired capacity and range with that generation engines within the 80m span was just not poosible. They should've awknoledged the limitation of the 80m span and design accordingly.and let it grow in payload range and capacity over time

It’s all easy in hindsight but I would agree. The wing is very limiting and should have started from a point of what is a reasonable weight for an 80m wing to carry.

Also the fuselage, whilst having a remarkably efficient pax carrying cross section it also required too much nose and tail being empty to get to that efficiency. Not that efficient overall.

kitplane01 wrote:

flipdewaf wrote:

I did some calculations on how the A380 would have performed with nominal 787 engines. For this I ran my model with the A380 with standard engines rated with cruise SFC of 0.525lb/hr/lb over a near spec range flight. Then the SFC was dropped to 0.5 to represent a 787 technology level engine. Finally the geometry and weights of the A380 were optimised so that the excess performance afforded by the lower SFC engines was not there.

The simple addition of the lower SFC engine reduced fuel burn on the spec mission by 5.8%. When the airframe was optimised around this new engine the fuel burn dropped 8% from original.

The MTOW required dropped from 575t down to 550t. The empty weight dropped from 277t down to 272t.

Fred


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

In what way would one optimize the airframe for a small reduction in SFC? It would result in an even smaller reduction in gross weight that needed to be lifted, but on the A380 I cannot imagine you would reduce the wing area (or would you).

If you need less MTOW then you need less wing area (higher AR in this case with 80m span remaining) less wing area/higher AR means less thrust, less trust and less wing means smaller engines smaller v and h stabs. Once you have those things lower then you need a lower MTOW again and so you can have another go at reducing.

In my 20mins of ‘optimising’ last night I took it from 845m^2 to 808m^2. Still pretty poor AR.

Fred


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

flipdewaf wrote:

Agree completely, the agonising may have been over such decisions that would cause significant delays, I’m not sure at what point airbus realised the uptick in engine performance would be available.

When I was doing my aerospace degree there was significant involvement from airbus (I was studying at the time of the crisis) and the feeling was that any new design needed growth baked in to designs and that the fuselage is the most important piece. I would be inclined to agree on the fuselage piece but for me the bottleneck is the wingspan. One of the airbus engineers stated they would have liked a wing of 90+m.

Again, very interesting. I had not heard this during the 00s, I only heard it recently via the Jurgen Thomas interview done by Adreas Spaeth that I linked to earlier. As a part of this interview,John Leahy is saying the opposite, one optimizes the initial aircraft as best as one can, understanding that it won't be perfect, then uses the process of discovering unused margin and adding strength as needed to improve/stretch the follow-up aircraft. I think he's taking advantage of hindsight.

I still find the 2006 slides from Charles Champion to be interesting. It was no accident they ended up where they ended up. They said 8+6 and 10+6 cross sections did not take them where they thought the market was going which was 800 seats or more, so they went with 10+8. They also felt they'd eventually need 48/year production capacity. They really were all-in on the A380. In that context, perhaps making the initial model suffer for the future benefit of the program was plausible.

Revelation wrote:

flipdewaf wrote:

Agree completely, the agonising may have been over such decisions that would cause significant delays, I’m not sure at what point airbus realised the uptick in engine performance would be available.

When I was doing my aerospace degree there was significant involvement from airbus (I was studying at the time of the crisis) and the feeling was that any new design needed growth baked in to designs and that the fuselage is the most important piece. I would be inclined to agree on the fuselage piece but for me the bottleneck is the wingspan. One of the airbus engineers stated they would have liked a wing of 90+m.

Again, very interesting. I had not heard this during the 00s, I only heard it recently via the Jurgen Thomas interview done by Adreas Spaeth that I linked to earlier. As a part of this interview,John Leahy is saying the opposite, one optimizes the initial aircraft as best as one can, understanding that it won't be perfect, then uses the process of discovering unused margin and adding strength as needed to improve/stretch the follow-up aircraft. I think he's taking advantage of hindsight.

I still find the 2006 slides from Charles Champion to be interesting. It was no accident they ended up where they ended up. They said 8+6 and 10+6 cross sections did not take them where they thought the market was going which was 800 seats or more, so they went with 10+8. They also felt they'd eventually need 48/year production capacity. They really were all-in on the A380. In that context, perhaps making the initial model suffer for the future benefit of the program was plausible.

This is a very interesting process looking back at what was happening at airbus and linking to what was happening whilst at university and the benefit of hindsight. One remarkable thing I didnt take much notice of at the time was a sudden departure of 'all' the controls specialists (not aircraft control surfaces but FBW/PID/signals/feedback loops type controls) during the latter part of 2006 and in to 2007.

Excuse me for this next part because to a certain degree I'm thinking out loud.
In terms of the growth to leave I believe it was 10% that was expected by the airbus guys but looking back the examples of the 767 growth over time as well as the A330, the 777 and the 747 there were some real fundamentals left out it seems. Most systems have bottlenecks and the aim is to work on the bottleneck until it is no longer limiting you and then you move on to the next and so on and aircraft are really no different. On the aforementioned aircraft the bottlenecks were technical in nature giving a development path as technology improved, it was mostly structural margin and available thrust (each started with the biggest engines available at the time, the A380 did not). The structural margin was then built in to a certain degree and not found through technology and opening up margins as was previously the case, the last and most devastating bottleneck was not a technical one but one of regulation; wingspan. You couldn't tech your way out of that one. had there been a regulatory limit of 90klb thrust would the 777 have been so successful? Had the A330 been forced to stay at 212t would it have done as well as it did? Had the 747 not been able to grandfather the nose section seating would the 744 been what it was? Airbus built in its own bottleneck.

Fred

flipdewaf wrote:

Excuse me for this next part because to a certain degree I'm thinking out loud.
In terms of the growth to leave I believe it was 10% that was expected by the airbus guys but looking back the examples of the 767 growth over time as well as the A330, the 777 and the 747 there were some real fundamentals left out it seems. Most systems have bottlenecks and the aim is to work on the bottleneck until it is no longer limiting you and then you move on to the next and so on and aircraft are really no different. On the aforementioned aircraft the bottlenecks were technical in nature giving a development path as technology improved, it was mostly structural margin and available thrust (each started with the biggest engines available at the time, the A380 did not). The structural margin was then built in to a certain degree and not found through technology and opening up margins as was previously the case, the last and most devastating bottleneck was not a technical one but one of regulation; wingspan. You couldn't tech your way out of that one. had there been a regulatory limit of 90klb thrust would the 777 have been so successful? Had the A330 been forced to stay at 212t would it have done as well as it did? Had the 747 not been able to grandfather the nose section seating would the 744 been what it was? Airbus built in its own bottleneck.

Your post makes me think of a different question: suppose you start with late 90s tech and want to build the biggest VLA you can build with as optimal wing as you could make with the aircraft fitting into the 80m box, and you then optimize the rest of the aircraft around that wing, what characteristics would the resulting aircraft have? Maybe one of Matt's threads answers that, I don't recall.

EDIT: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=774669&p=11173035#p11173035 is close to that idea, but not the same. This thread's idea is to keep the A380-800's (Al-Li) fuselage, but with new wing, empennage, landing gear, and engines based on 2014 tech. It fits in to the 80m box by using folding wingtips. In essence, it's a study of keeping the A388's fuse then replacing everything else with 2014 era tech.

I'm more interested in understanding what the optimal VLA would be if were designing a product to be launched in 2000, designed the most efficient wing shape and structure that could fit into the 80m box, then worked out what the fuse would look like in terms of cross section and length. As you wrote, Airbus engineers really would have preferred a 90m wing for the A380, therefore we know the A380 fuse is bigger than optimal for an 80m wing.

Revelation wrote:

flipdewaf wrote:

Excuse me for this next part because to a certain degree I'm thinking out loud.
In terms of the growth to leave I believe it was 10% that was expected by the airbus guys but looking back the examples of the 767 growth over time as well as the A330, the 777 and the 747 there were some real fundamentals left out it seems. Most systems have bottlenecks and the aim is to work on the bottleneck until it is no longer limiting you and then you move on to the next and so on and aircraft are really no different. On the aforementioned aircraft the bottlenecks were technical in nature giving a development path as technology improved, it was mostly structural margin and available thrust (each started with the biggest engines available at the time, the A380 did not). The structural margin was then built in to a certain degree and not found through technology and opening up margins as was previously the case, the last and most devastating bottleneck was not a technical one but one of regulation; wingspan. You couldn't tech your way out of that one. had there been a regulatory limit of 90klb thrust would the 777 have been so successful? Had the A330 been forced to stay at 212t would it have done as well as it did? Had the 747 not been able to grandfather the nose section seating would the 744 been what it was? Airbus built in its own bottleneck.

Your post makes me think of a different question: suppose you start with late 90s tech and want to build the biggest VLA you can build with as optimal wing as you could make with the aircraft fitting into the 80m box, and you then optimize the rest of the aircraft around that wing, what characteristics would the resulting aircraft have? Maybe one of Matt's threads answers that, I don't recall.

EDIT: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=774669&p=11173035#p11173035 is close to that idea, but not the same. This thread's idea is to keep the A380-800's (Al-Li) fuselage, but with new wing, empennage, landing gear, and engines based on 2014 tech. It fits in to the 80m box by using folding wingtips. In essence, it's a study of keeping the A388's fuse then replacing everything else with 2014 era tech.

I'm more interested in understanding what the optimal VLA would be if were designing a product to be launched in 2000, designed the most efficient wing shape and structure that could fit into the 80m box, then worked out what the fuse would look like in terms of cross section and length. As you wrote, Airbus engineers really would have preferred a 90m wing for the A380, therefore we know the A380 fuse is bigger than optimal for an 80m wing.

Very interesting question indeed.

What is important to differentiate in here is the physical size of the fuselage but also the capability built in. Yes, an A380-800 sized fuselage with capability (partly) built in for an 900 and 8.000Nm range was too much for the 80m span, but would an A380-800 sized fuselage without that growth potential built in and optimized for say 7.000Nm - 7.200Nm range (the minimum for commercial success I reckon) still be too much for the 80m span?

At around 505T MTOW that same fuselage size (length and cross section) yet optimized for that size alone would have had about an 8.9 aspect ratio wing, which is not as good as a 787, but still not bad for it's time and still with plenty options to grow even bigger time long term. Something people with some clout within Airbus apparently wanted very badly.

A smaller capacity 475T 10+6 fuselage could have had a 9.5 aspect ratio wing, which is right up there with a 787 and A350. More efficient still, but with less growth potential.



This is my take on an alternative path for the A380, initially optimized for the 800 size. Other people could do a very more solid job at the numbers, but should be ballpark.

Revelation wrote:

flipdewaf wrote:

Excuse me for this next part because to a certain degree I'm thinking out loud.
In terms of the growth to leave I believe it was 10% that was expected by the airbus guys but looking back the examples of the 767 growth over time as well as the A330, the 777 and the 747 there were some real fundamentals left out it seems. Most systems have bottlenecks and the aim is to work on the bottleneck until it is no longer limiting you and then you move on to the next and so on and aircraft are really no different. On the aforementioned aircraft the bottlenecks were technical in nature giving a development path as technology improved, it was mostly structural margin and available thrust (each started with the biggest engines available at the time, the A380 did not). The structural margin was then built in to a certain degree and not found through technology and opening up margins as was previously the case, the last and most devastating bottleneck was not a technical one but one of regulation; wingspan. You couldn't tech your way out of that one. had there been a regulatory limit of 90klb thrust would the 777 have been so successful? Had the A330 been forced to stay at 212t would it have done as well as it did? Had the 747 not been able to grandfather the nose section seating would the 744 been what it was? Airbus built in its own bottleneck.

Your post makes me think of a different question: suppose you start with late 90s tech and want to build the biggest VLA you can build with as optimal wing as you could make with the aircraft fitting into the 80m box, and you then optimize the rest of the aircraft around that wing, what characteristics would the resulting aircraft have? Maybe one of Matt's threads answers that, I don't recall.

EDIT: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=774669&p=11173035#p11173035 is close to that idea, but not the same. This thread's idea is to keep the A380-800's (Al-Li) fuselage, but with new wing, empennage, landing gear, and engines based on 2014 tech. It fits in to the 80m box by using folding wingtips. In essence, it's a study of keeping the A388's fuse then replacing everything else with 2014 era tech.

I'm more interested in understanding what the optimal VLA would be if were designing a product to be launched in 2000, designed the most efficient wing shape and structure that could fit into the 80m box, then worked out what the fuse would look like in terms of cross section and length. As you wrote, Airbus engineers really would have preferred a 90m wing for the A380, therefore we know the A380 fuse is bigger than optimal for an 80m wing.

It would be something slightly bigger than the 77W but it might not be something more competitive than the 77W. This is because at that time the 77W was using the largest and most efficient engines available so anything larger would have been a trijet or a quad and this would have weighted on the CASM (*). Was there also a way to make a 80m wing light enough with the available manufacturing techniques of the time? We can see that more than a decade later, the full composite wing of the 779 doesn't exceed 72m in span and it makes use of folding wingtips to remain within 65m span on the ground. It seems foolish to go to 80m span even today.
(*) Or else, going slightly over 65m span combined with folding wingtips and the same engines (which were actually not available for Airbus) would have allowed to design a sort of optimized 777W which was considered slightly underwinged but at the same time it hasn't prevented it to dominate the market. This is a lesson that is also valid for the A321NEO: underwinged aircraft are more versatile than aircraft carrying optimized wing for the upper end of their operating envelop.

tomcat wrote:

Or else, going slightly over 65m span combined with folding wingtips and the same engines (which were actually not available for Airbus) would have allowed to design a sort of optimized 777W which was considered slightly underwinged but at the same time it hasn't prevented it to dominate the market. This is a lesson that is also valid for the A321NEO: underwinged aircraft are more versatile than aircraft carrying optimized wing for the upper end of their operating envelop.

Doesn't the 'cost' of being under winged increase with size, weight and range? Surely a few current and prospective 787-10 customers would be keen for more?

Revelation wrote:

PolarRoute wrote:

About time we got another A380 thread, cuz avgeeks can't go without an occasional debate on this machine! The whole saga of double-deck-hype-and-then-fail is too amusing to avoid, isn't it?

True, yet IMO new threads arise as various insiders add just a bit more info to what is/was known about the saga. I tried to highlight some of this stuff in my earlier posts. Some of the interviews we've seen from Jurgen Thomas ( see link in my first post ) and John Leahy have been quite worthy of commentary.

No sarcasm intended, I myself enjoy these A380 threads that pop up once in a while. I was just amused to see the apparent potent attraction the A380 has to keep these discussions coming!

Revelation wrote:

PolarRoute wrote:

I truly believe that had the A380 been more efficient, it would have made for a revolutionary means of mass transport. Think of it this way: wouldn't airlines go for the A380 over, say, B789 any day if the two planes burnt the same amount of fuel per hour?

The A380's failure doesn't lie within the size of the airplane itself; rather, it's the cost per seat advantage, or the lack thereof, it provided with its extra capacity. Simply, the inclined cost was too great for airlines to risk it and try filling all the added seats.

I do really hope OEMs take second attempt on double deck 4 hauler. It's just nice to have some characteristics around on the apron. But I guess Airbus blew any confidence for any manufacturers to build such aircraft away

Even that A380 with 789 costs would have negative effects in that it would cause yield dilution. Each seat you fill adds incremental revenue so there's always a temptation to fill it, and the only reliable way to do that is to cut prices. However when you do this you also lower what you can charge on other airplanes in your fleet and on other routes in your network because you've reset passenger expectations.

All true about the idea of yield dilution. But my assertion was that an A380 with the cost of the B787 would be highly profitable, even at the face of steep yield dilution; the extra capacity such A380 provides is going to be basically free over the 787, so no pressure for airlines to fill those seats. This not only helps with the yield but allows airlines to draw market share away from competition and to themselves with lowered prices, should they so wish. Again, because the additional seats come with no incremental cost (not accounting for airport fees, navigation charges, etc.), one can sell those seats at 10 bucks and still be more profitable than the 787.

Obviously, it was just an analogy and no A380 will match the 787's costs. But you get my point; VLA's problem does not lie in its innate size itself, rather, it's the additional cost at which the extra capacity comes.

Speedy752 wrote:

The only efficiency comes in if the plane is full and has a sufficiently dense cabin. New engines wouldn’t resolve this issue, you’d still have 4 A330neo engines vs 2, they would never be on par on a per trip basis

If we're talking about the current A380 specifically, true. But a proper double decker aerodynamically and structurally optimized to its size and performance should be able to have distinctive advantage on its fuselage; it packs people more efficiently. Matt has discussed this in the past, I don't seem to be able to find it.

PolarRoute wrote:

If we're talking about the current A380 specifically, true. But a proper double decker aerodynamically and structurally optimized to its size and performance should be able to have distinctive advantage on its fuselage; it packs people more efficiently. Matt has discussed this in the past, I don't seem to be able to find it.

Are you talking per seat economics or raw trip costs? Because your first post made it sound like you were talking like the later, and a A380 (even a properly optimized one) would never match that of a 787’s unless it was a significantly newer generation of aircraft (in which case we would be comparing to 787’s ultimate successor).

Even then yields will still be an issue. The reality is while a A380 size plane can be great in the summer, for most airlines it is a complete albatross in the winter, and it’s hard to configure it in a way that satisfy demand in both seasons (in winter routes that have high loads are typically sun routes packed with tourists, where having large premium cabins is less desirable than what is wanted on trunk routes in summer).

There’s another point that I don’t think I’ve seen made in this thread, and it strikes VLAs regardless of manufacturer: market downturns. Since the A380 was launched we’ve seen at least three noteworthy events that impacted air travel— 9/11, the 2008 GFC, and COVID. An aircraft that already wasn’t going out full really becomes an issue with no flexibility. Then factor in the fact that all of these projections just assumed the airport capacity would stay the same because the political environment in some European countries made expansion and building of new airports sclerotic. A market that Airbus hoped to sell a lot of A380s, China, has an authoritarian government that has the will and the ability to unilaterally build an airport wherever and whenever desired. And they did. Meanwhile FRA and CDG have continued to expand.

PolarRoute wrote:

All true about the idea of yield dilution. But my assertion was that an A380 with the cost of the B787 would be highly profitable, even at the face of steep yield dilution; the extra capacity such A380 provides is going to be basically free over the 787, so no pressure for airlines to fill those seats. This not only helps with the yield but allows airlines to draw market share away from competition and to themselves with lowered prices, should they so wish. Again, because the additional seats come with no incremental cost (not accounting for airport fees, navigation charges, etc.), one can sell those seats at 10 bucks and still be more profitable than the 787.

Obviously, it was just an analogy and no A380 will match the 787's costs. But you get my point; VLA's problem does not lie in its innate size itself, rather, it's the additional cost at which the extra capacity comes.

Others pointed out the proposition defies the laws of physics, now I'll add the idea that there would be no pressure to fill empty seats defies the laws of business. Even you are saying they'd still sell seats at $10 so there is some pressure to fill empty seats, no? Selling seats at $10 would also mean you'd have to offer them at $10 on every other flight on the route so it'd crater the profitability of other planes in your fleet. That's one reason why VLA's problem does lie in its innate size itself. The other is of course such a plane is impossible to create.

Years ago we used to discuss something we called Zvezda's Law on a.net, named after a member of the forum. This seems to have finally fallen off of Google's database. The only cite I could find is "airlines will always go for (a) the lowest CASM and (b) the smallest package available at that CASM". One reason the "law" held was because of yield dilution. The other is to use supply vs demand to drive up prices at periods of high demand. People simply are willing to pay more to go directly where they want to go when they want to go.

A380 actually has slightly lower CASM than 77W, but the statement I quoted from LH points out its huge capacity created yield dilution so whatever it saved on CASM it lost due to yield dilution. Now that 787 and A350 has lower CASM than A380, Zvezda's Law has kicked in at full force and A380 is no longer in production.

EDIT: Link to Zvezda's Laws, circa 2006: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=423357&start=150#p5558227 which I found using our own forum's search engine. Crazy that this stuff is still around.

luckyone wrote:

There’s another point that I don’t think I’ve seen made in this thread, and it strikes VLAs regardless of manufacturer: market downturns. Since the A380 was launched we’ve seen at least three noteworthy events that impacted air travel— 9/11, the 2008 GFC, and COVID. An aircraft that already wasn’t going out full really becomes an issue with no flexibility. Then factor in the fact that all of these projections just assumed the airport capacity would stay the same because the political environment in some European countries made expansion and building of new airports sclerotic. A market that Airbus hoped to sell a lot of A380s, China, has an authoritarian government that has the will and the ability to unilaterally build an airport wherever and whenever desired. And they did. Meanwhile FRA and CDG have continued to expand.

Overall I agree with you, but it's interesting to consider that COVID took out Norwegian which was a threat to undermine airlines flying VLAs, so it's not like down turns are only negative things for VLAs. COVID also took out a bunch of VLAs on airlines such as LH, AF, MH, TG, etc that did not really need the capacity and/or were already buying smaller aircraft with similar or better CASM than A380. Yet those that truly need the capacity and/or have constrained airports such as EK, BA, SQ, QF are keeping some if not all of their birds. It seems to me like the down turns are overall culling of the weaker members of the hurd, but the weaker members tend to be those that are operating bigger and/or older airplanes just because they have them. We saw a similar thing after 9/11 where most of the 747 classics and 727s went to the desert and most never came back.

The reason this thread topic keeps popping up is because the fundamental question Revelation asks up thread, has never been definitively answered by someone who knows what he’s talking about and instead we go into the usual religious/fanboyistic debate about point to point vs hub and spoke or hub to hub, twins vs. 4-haulers etc.
Could a competitive A380, with viable next generations have been built with that generation engines within a 80m box?

To answer that question two main sub questions have to be asked:
1 At what CASM does the revenue potential of such an A380 start to outweigh the yield dilution and frequency drawback vs. a smaller twin?
2 What CASM could’ve been achievable for the A380 given the 80m span limitation and that (engine) generation technology?

1 At what CASM does the revenue potential of such an A380 start to outweigh the yield dilution and frequency drawback of a smaller twin?
This one is hard to answer, because it’s based on complex airline modelling of fleet use. What we could say is that an A380 at equal CASM to a smaller twin would always loose out to the smaller twin. Conversely, a twin at equal trip cost of a larger A380 would always loose out to the 4-hauler. The reality is that the truth is obviously somewhere in the middle, but how big the efficiency advantage of the A380 would have to be, I think is probably too complex to definitively answer in the context of a forum discussion.

2 What CASM could’ve been achievable for the A380 given the 80m span limitation and that (engine) generation technology?
This question the more knowledgeable among us, like Fred can give a good indication of. We do know that the original A380 was double hampered by having so much unused potential built in:
1 The overly large wing, MLG etc, increased weight, fuel burn and thus cost.
2 This extra unneeded weight hit extra hard because it strongly increased induced drag due to the limited 80m span.
This means that if you do optimized the plane and get the weight down the economics quickly start to improve quite drastically as well.




Explanation of the columns/models in the table:

2nd column: A380-800 490T:
Decription:
Engines, MLG, wings and control surfaces optimized for 500T instead of the growth option of 600T in the original A380. MLG with 16 instead of 20 wheels, not only saves weight but also frees up cargo space. The original A380 had the additional problem that it had good payload but no cargo space. With this optimized 800 payload and cargo volume are more in sync.
Trip fuel compared to original A380: -10%
CASM compared to original A380: -5%

Sales: 250
Some airliners would have required the payload range, but I think it is likely that at least an equal amount would have valued the lower CASM of this version.

3rd Column: -3% SFC engine PIP with MTOW increased to 497T:
Description:
Payload range significantly expanded by the engine PIP and the MTOW increase.
Trip fuel compared to original A380: -13%
CASM compared to original A380: -6%

Sales: 100
Some follow on orders, some from customers that required payload range that the 490T plane lacked at launch.

4th Column: NEO, stretched 3 rows with plus style scimiters and MTOW increased to 502T:
Description:
Simple stretch to increase fuselage geometric efficiency. SFC in relation to PIP -4%, aero efficiency -4%.
Trip fuel compared to original A380: -16%
Trip fuel per set compared to original A380: -22% (-26% for the partial 9/11-abreast configuration). For reference, the 777X is supposed to be -16% compared to the 77W.
CASM compared to original A380: -15% (-19% for the partial 9/11-abreast configuration)

Sales: 300
Most sales would’ve been follow on/replacement orders from mostly Emirates. That said, the CASM is so much lower than the original that it would have most likely impacted the overall market.


5th Column: Ultrafan with MTOW increased to 502T:
Description:
With it’s 4 engines, adopting the large bypass GTF engines would’ve been much easier/cheaper on the A380 than the already huge engines on the competing twins, which would have translated into an acquisition cost advantage. SFC a conservative -8%
Trip fuel compared to original A380: -23%
Trip fuel per set compared to original A380: -29% (-32% for the partial 9/11-abreast configuration). For reference, the 777X is supposed to be -16% compared to the 77W.
CASM compared to original A380: -19% (-22% for the partial 9/11-abreast configuration)

Sales: 250?
Hard to say, many A380’s would’ve still been parked during COVID. Who knows what the appetite for such a larger airliner would be in 2030?

[quote="Taxi645"][/quote]
I totally understand the approach to what you want to do here, I can assure you I want to do this (and think I am capable with my models) I just wish I had the time at the moment. I will be thinking about how to start the process over the next few days that's for sure. I just wish Covid travel was opening up for me as I did my best analysis while on a long haul flight.

Fred

I don't have sophisticated programs to evaluate the A380, but I follow a quite reliable substitute - following what airlines actually get ordered. LH knows aviation backwards and forwards, they chose both the 748i and the A380, while keeping the 748's in service while retiring a number of A380's. During the pandemic, EK kept the 77W's flying but parked the A380's. Actual operators of the A380, with the exception of EK ordered more after having a decent fleet in service, so the pipeline dried up. Actual operators of the 748i didn't order more and it dried up. For what seemed like forever, orders for the 789 and 77W kept rolling in, both with multiple waves of orders. They were choosing what was best for their specific routes.

flyingclrs727 wrote:

The Germans and French could not agree on a software version for the CATIA software. This necessitated conversion of files shared between the French and Germans. The conversions introduced rounding errors into the dimensions. Unfortunately after many iterations of down conversions by the French and up conversions by the Germans, the dimensions of the wiring harnesses were decreased so much that they were too short to fit in the aircraft.

I'm not sure that's true. What I was reading at the time was that the conversion tools were not working (which may be the rounding errors) and while waiting for that to be fixed teams continued to design their bits using different models. These had started out the same but were slowly diverging from each other since people couldn't keep track of each others' edits.

In the end, the loss of configuration control meant parts didn't fit together. Team A was designing around a part from team B which they didn't know had been redesigned in the mean time to fit round another part by team C etc.

flipdewaf wrote:

Taxi645 wrote:

I totally understand the approach to what you want to do here, I can assure you I want to do this (and think I am capable with my models) I just wish I had the time at the moment. I will be thinking about how to start the process over the next few days that's for sure. I just wish Covid travel was opening up for me as I did my best analysis while on a long haul flight.

Fred

Cool!

Didn't the average three class cabin go down to a nominal seat count of 525 seats from 555?

Noshow wrote:

Didn't the average three class cabin go down to a nominal seat count of 525 seats from 555?

For the purpose of this table/question; to compare how much better the CASM of an optimized 800 sized A380 and it's successors would have compared to the original, it doesn't matter much at what seat count precisely you start at.

Taxi645 wrote:

TCould a competitive A380, with viable next generations have been built with that generation engines within a 80m box?

Then you have the folding wingtips option and everything should be re-calculated.

flyingclrs727 wrote:

TheSonntag wrote:

I never understood why the A380 did get so bad engines. They were already outdated 4 years after delivery. Obviously the world financial crisis did not really help the plane either.

I believe from a project management and technology point of view, Airbus learned a lot from this programme, and the investments into XFW are also useful for a new production line of the A321 series.

So while the A380 as a standalone program is a failure, in the overall context it isn't. Only with the A380 Airbus really became a full scale airplane manufacturer, and with the A350, they got a gread product.

Airbus could have learned those lessons less expensively had they studied previous aircraft development programs. Both the A340-500/600 and A380 programs should never have been undertaken. The writing was on the wall in the mid-1990's. Big twins were the future. A larger A330 model should have been developed using engines developed for the 777. The A340-500/600 differences from the original A330/A340 did little to help the overall A330/A340 program.

Go one step further: the entire A340 program should not have been done.

Anyone paying attention to ETOPS rolling out in the late 80s should have seen the writing on the way. Some seasoned aviation veterans just couldn't buy into ETOPS. I once had a debate on another website with renowned aviation writer Rene J. Francillon on the very topic. He just kept talking about what would happen when the "inevitable first crash" happened.

And at least one customer (LH?) is rumored to have wanted 4 engine jets for overwater flights. They were wrong. Many people were wrong on the future of ETOPS in the 1988-90 time frame.

Thus, imho, the A380 is emblematic of the flawed thinking at the time.....the A340 and A380 were both mistakes imho. Fortunately, Airbus recovered and now is leading the marketplace with superb products.

TaromA380 wrote:

Taxi645 wrote:

TCould a competitive A380, with viable next generations have been built with that generation engines within a 80m box?

Then you have the folding wingtips option and everything should be re-calculated.

I considered folding wingtips for the ultrafan model. The scimiter wing-end devices of the plus proposal extend the effective aspect ratio of the wing already so much that the folding wings would have to be considerable bigger still than on the 777X, that I question if it would be worth the weight and development cost.

SteelChair wrote:

flyingclrs727 wrote:

TheSonntag wrote:

I never understood why the A380 did get so bad engines. They were already outdated 4 years after delivery. Obviously the world financial crisis did not really help the plane either.

I believe from a project management and technology point of view, Airbus learned a lot from this programme, and the investments into XFW are also useful for a new production line of the A321 series.

So while the A380 as a standalone program is a failure, in the overall context it isn't. Only with the A380 Airbus really became a full scale airplane manufacturer, and with the A350, they got a gread product.

Airbus could have learned those lessons less expensively had they studied previous aircraft development programs. Both the A340-500/600 and A380 programs should never have been undertaken. The writing was on the wall in the mid-1990's. Big twins were the future. A larger A330 model should have been developed using engines developed for the 777. The A340-500/600 differences from the original A330/A340 did little to help the overall A330/A340 program.

Go one step further: the entire A340 program should not have been done.

Anyone paying attention to ETOPS rolling out in the late 80s should have seen the writing on the way. Some seasoned aviation veterans just couldn't buy into ETOPS. I once had a debate on another website with renowned aviation writer Rene J. Francillon on the very topic. He just kept talking about what would happen when the "inevitable first crash" happened.

And at least one customer (LH?) is rumored to have wanted 4 engine jets for overwater flights. They were wrong. Many people were wrong on the future of ETOPS in the 1988-90 time frame.

Thus, imho, the A380 is emblematic of the flawed thinking at the time.....the A340 and A380 were both mistakes imho. Fortunately, Airbus recovered and now is leading the marketplace with superb products.

While I in general agree with your point that within the A340 and A380 programs similar misjudgement relation to ETOPS and the dominance of the twins, I reckon it goes too far the call the whole A340 program a mistake. The A340-300 was the right call at the time and a successful airliner. The A340-200 should not have been launched though and instead the A330-200 should've been launched at that time much sooner than it was launched. By the time the A340-500/600 was launched they were clearly not seeing the new reality of the large twins. They should've launched the A330-300ER and A330-400ER instead with the engine offer from GE. But I suppose this is all pretty off topic

The A340 had been made for the revolutionary IAE SuperFan engine. An engine that did not materialize. It had to finally use prêt-à-porter A320 engines and later on cousins of the A380 engine and the old wing with just odd modifications. Quite a surprise how well it did given this history.

Taxi645 wrote:

2nd column: A380-800 490T:
Decription:
Engines, MLG, wings and control surfaces optimized for 500T instead of the growth option of 600T in the original A380. MLG with 16 instead of 20 wheels, not only saves weight but also frees up cargo space. The original A380 had the additional problem that it had good payload but no cargo space. With this optimized 800 payload and cargo volume are more in sync.
Trip fuel compared to original A380: -10%
CASM compared to original A380: -5%

Sales: 250
Some airliners would have required the payload range, but I think it is likely that at least an equal amount would have valued the lower CASM of this version.

Very interesting. I too wonder about the value of the very long flights such as DXB-LAX that STC holds up as necessary for the A380 to do reliably. Presumably lower MTOW means lower fuel too. The best fix for this would be better engines, but unfortunately those were not on offer circa year 2000.

I presume the cross section is not changed? The A380-800 left room for a longer family member. Maybe a "tighter" 10+6 or 8+6 aircraft would have enabled more cargo (more length plus less pax per unit length of fuse) and helped that issue too.

TaromA380 wrote:

Taxi645 wrote:

TCould a competitive A380, with viable next generations have been built with that generation engines within a 80m box?

Then you have the folding wingtips option and everything should be re-calculated.

I suppose, but we really don't know if regulators in Y2000 were willing to allow them back then. Also we don't know if they are as beneficial in Y2000 as they are with current CFRP wing tech.

Taxi645 wrote:

While I in general agree with your point that within the A340 and A380 programs similar misjudgement relation to ETOPS and the dominance of the twins, I reckon it goes too far the call the whole A340 program a mistake. The A340-300 was the right call at the time and a successful airliner. The A340-200 should not have been launched though and instead the A330-200 should've been launched at that time much sooner than it was launched. By the time the A340-500/600 was launched they were clearly not seeing the new reality of the large twins. They should've launched the A330-300ER and A330-400ER instead with the engine offer from GE. But I suppose this is all pretty off topic

I think the early A340 gave Airbus important "mindshare", it made airlines move away from thinking of Airbus as the vendor of short haul wide bodies such as A300 into a vendor that did long haul too. The early A330 would not have served that purpose IMO. It used the same engines as 767 and was bigger/wider/heavier so it lacked the range to compete until both engines and airframe were optimized further.

I suppose this should have given Airbus the insight that engine tech was crucial. Leahy has complained that the engine makers optimized for Boeing then adapted for Airbus. Could be, but we saw what happened with A340-500/600 and A380 when you go ahead with a sub-optimal frame mated to sub-optimal engines. As above, I wonder what would have happened if Airbus got closer to GE by putting GE90 on A330. Maybe they would have been in a better position to understand what was about to happen to the market once GE90-115B was released. It seems odd to me that GE was offering to do this for free yet Airbus said no. Seems Airbus was reluctant to get too close to GE? Regardless of the reason, the outcome was they were stuck having to sell products with sub-optimal engines.