Airbus Reconsidering A.380

[Garry Russell]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-1 ... ndrum.html

[Vancouver]

Good I'd rather walk. Ugly thing compared to the 747-800

[Garry Russell]

The 747-800 is in an even more dire situation.

[cstorey]

Lovely Aeroplane according to my sons who are on them regularly to Sydney and back. In any event, one hardly regards Bloomberg as a reliable source of anything, and I do not suppose Airbus thought they would sell 1200 in a single decade - it took Boeing nearly 30 years to sell that many 747s . The big twins are all very well where suitable diversions are handy , but the ever expanding ETOPS regime is a recipe for trouble sooner or later . I suspect the article is an attempt by Boeing protagonists to skew the market and salvage something from the 787 disaster

[thomasburnside]

The thing is what if Airbus decide not to make it anymore and then all of a sudden theres a high demand for it the 748 I cant see being successful it been ok in the freighter market. Who knows maybe orders will pick up.

[Garry Russell]

I think Airbus would be more than happy to wind up production. It is slow and difficult to build them. With the 330 and 350 selling in large numbers and the 320 where they can sell as many as they can build, the capacity resources would be more profitably spent on other projects.

I feel Airbus is looking at ways to slip out and save face.

Even if no more were ordered it still has sold a fair amount and is very good at what it does. It continues to be limited by the numbers of airports that can handle the type and where airport do see regular ops there are only so many that can be handled at once.

[SkippyBing]

I think it's Emirates that have said they'd like to order another 50 or 60 if Airbus makes some tweaks, mostly to improve the engines. That's on top of the 140 odd they've already got, which is 45% of production to date.

[Garry Russell]

Since this thread was started they have announce they are looking into a 380NEO and a long fuse

I guess they'll just balance up all the options

As always, a lot of forums are reading a lot into this, citing the project as a failure etc. because they are not thousands of them, but an manufacturer of any project will, periodically take a whole fresh look at the product line in general and certain products in particular.

Soap powder or aeroplanes this is what they do.

It would take a while to run down production so it's good to look ahead a see if there is viability beyond a certain date. If Emirates do want a tweaked version the that would be sufficient to move down that line.

There was a time when Boeing looked at the sluggish 737...early 70's I think, but decided to continue, but were on the other hand prepared to walk away from the project.

The economy is still recovering, many of the 380's were ordered before the crash and Some airlines no longer want them or all of them, not now at least, so are deferring and may cancel. Some already have, but in the future there could be a shortage of these along with expansions at airports to take them. They do go some way towards relieving runway congestion if they are used as high capacity and replace several rotations by smaller aircraft like LHR Madrid with many flights by both BA and Iberia following each other down.

[airboatr]

What I don't understand is if the Industry is expected to grow by 2017, some claim a thirty percent increase, even if the newer.ish a350 and B787 handling some of the a380 traffic they'll still be some out threre who want more a380s and B747's. so if there are more travelers. I'd expect there'll be a incressed demand for freight as well.

yes.?

[Tomliner]

ThomasBurnside wrote

The thing is what if Airbus decide not to make it anymore and then all of a sudden theres a high demand for it the 748 I cant see being successful it been ok in the freighter market. Who knows maybe orders will pick up.

I don't think that the 748 would be an ideal substitute condsidering that it's so much smaller and slower with only 2 RR Darts for power. I'll get me coat EricT