Airbus A380 family

Virgin appears to cancel long-dormant A380 order

Virgin Atlantic appears to have cancelled its order for six Airbus A380s, the airframer's latest backlog data indicates.
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https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/virgin-appears-to-cancel-long-dormant-a380-order-446556/
 
I always sort that order as a "me too" type of thing. Virgin has been running those 747s for so long now, they probably wanted to replace them with the A380 as much because BA were as because it was the right aircraft for them.
 
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/urgent-a380-flight-measures-aim-to-avert-duct-ruptur-450948/
 
RIP a great aircraft that hit the market at the wrong time.

The last deliveries of the A380 are scheduled for 2021, the 747 has some deliveries scheduled for 2022......
 
Admittedly, Boeing did a fine job with the 747-8. Respect to them. Far less expensive to develop, sold a hundred vs three hundred for A380 - a small chunk of the passenger variant but the totality of the cargo market. Not bad.
Future belongs to large twin jets. It is amazing to think how huge did the 777 grew, on two engines only.
 
sienar said:
RIP a great aircraft that hit the market at the wrong time.
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It was not a great aircraft. It was a failure, right from day one. Bad management, complacent assessment of design performances and blindness at team leader level got this disaster in motion as soon as the money poured in. A vast side of the industry has been also contaminated. The great danger today is that Airbus, as a brand, has lost its hard gained rigorous image. The never acknowledged failures undermines their daily restrained future. We had a taste of this with when endless lines of stacked airframe were lacking proper engines.

Free flying gremlins are never a good sign in this any industry...
 
Archibald said:
Admittedly, Boeing did a fine job with the 747-8. Respect to them. Far less expensive to develop, sold a hundred vs three hundred for A380 - a small chunk of the passenger variant but the totality of the cargo market. Not bad.
Future belongs to large twin jets. It is amazing to think how huge did the 777 grew, on two engines only.
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And half of that total to a single, small middle east airline with a fraction of the passenger traffic of large European flag carriers who only ordered handfuls. Like the real estate skyline of Dubai, I just don’t understand the underlying economic logic. I get you can do anything with oil subsidies but you would figure some exquisitely credentialed financial advisors are raking in big bucks with a grand scheme of how it all becomes self-sustaining once those revenues cease.
 
TomcatViP said:
sienar said:
RIP a great aircraft that hit the market at the wrong time.
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It was not a great aircraft. It was a failure, right from day one. Bad management, complacent assessment of design performances and blindness at team leader level got this disaster in motion as soon as the money poured in. A vast side of the industry has been also contaminated. The great danger today is that Airbus, as a brand, has lost its hard gained rigorous image. The never acknowledged failures undermines their daily restrained future. We had a taste of this with when endless lines of stacked airframe were lacking proper engines.

Free flying gremlins are never a good sign in this any industry...
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A weird over-reaction to what everyone, especially Airbus, has known has has been coming.
Airbus has long moved to compete very effectively in the long-range efficient twins sector that has effectively cannibalized projected sales of the A380.
The A350 and even earlier the A330 have been competing effectively with the B787 & B777. Though the B787 does appear to have the advantage of the latest upgrade of the A330 the A350 is doing well against the latest upgrade of the B777 and they all have different sweet-spots re: combination of capacity & range.
And, allowing for the well publicized engine delivery issues, the A320 family continues to have a relatively clear advantage versus the B737.

The A380 v B747 has long been a irrelevant side-show. Praise for the B747-8 should be tempered (as should criticism of the A380). Both where technical successes but were relative commercial failures but not ruinously so - Airbus gambled more but were more successful, Boeing gambled less but almost certainly also will be doing very well to break even on the overall B747-8 program.

So reports of Airbus’s demise (on the back of the A380 going out of production?) are rather ridiculous and say a lot more about the agenda and prejudices of the individuals making such claims than they do about Airbus and it’s future.
 
TomcatViP said:
The great danger today is that Airbus, as a brand, has lost its hard gained rigorous image.
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The bread and butter business of Airbus - twin jets, narrowbody and widebody - has plenty of customers lining up. Shareholders seem to be happy too. See graphic,
TomcatViP said:
The never acknowledged failures undermines their daily restrained future.
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Err... whatever.
 

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I believe the results coming from the project are not simply the sales but the solutions they came up with during it, which ill be used on other projects to improve THEIR efficiency so not everything is lost.

If the Rolls Royce Merlin was only used in the Supermarine Spitfire,would it be remembered and judged as highly as it is today? Still a great engine but attitudes are often formed around parts of the story rather than the whole.
 
Too bad :/ Well this nice monster came too late anyway I believe. Hope I'll the opportunity to fly in one this year.
Don't think it's a bad plane, was just a mistake from Airbus to do such a big thing in the first place at that time.

Our KittyVIP here has a systematic negative bias toward anything European (Airbus) or French (Dassault), while showing great enthusiasm toward anything from the US or BAe, mockups included… well why not, we all have our bias, but can be tiresome sometime. Cause it’s expressed hard and systematically.
The funny thing is I believe the guy is French :D… So he would be one of the rare (if not the only) "inverted nationalistic fanboy" character sailing on aviation forums. Rare.
 
What nobody expected in 2000-2006 was that the 787 and 777 could get a virtually free ~11% economy-class capacity boost, as one airline after another went from 9-across to 10-across on the 777 and ordered 9-across on the Screamliner.

This resulted in narrower seats than the 707/737 standard - which itself was designed when airlines dreamed about >70% load factors (so the middle seat was often vacant) and was moreover based on the "best available" anthropometric data. Which in turn was drawn from the WW2 draft intake, which was full of Depression-era kids.

Fortunately, the airline biz can pack the one-trip-per-year cattle in the back and use "premium economy" (that is, what the econ seat used to be) to reward business travelers for favoring their brand when they spend their employers' money. Even more fortunately, this is not classified as bribery, although the ethical distinction between this system and (for example) Fat Leonard is hard to discern.
 
My two cents is on the fact that global growth has petered off, especially in the wealthy west as a result of governments pushing trendy neoliberal budgets. Add to that that many industries have capitalised on the benefits of globalising their supply chains and reducing their labor costs with the result that a lot of relatively wealthy westerners who five years ago might have considered a transcontinental vacation, simply can't afford to any more or don't feel secure enough in their employment to take that time off.

The A380 success plan was always based on the hope that the booming tourism business of the 80s and 90s would continue on, global growth would keep up and more and more people would be vacationing at destinations at least one ocean away. Sadly, that hasn't happened and, as pointed out above, modifying B777, B787 class aircraft to carry slightly more people, has covered the slow increase in people still travelling.

In the long run, I guess Boeing betted on the winner, that the B787 was the way to go. Although, not for the reasons they originally thought.
 
LowObservable said:
What nobody expected in 2000-2006 was that the 787 and 777 could get a virtually free ~11% economy-class capacity boost, as one airline after another went from 9-across to 10-across on the 777 and ordered 9-across on the Screamliner.
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Unexpected: smaller aircraft Boeing was pitching as replacements for the 747 getting high density seating configurations.

Unexpected: responding to airport congestion (on which the A380 "business case" was premised) by building new airports and or/new alleviation measures

Unexpected: the above uses of the word "unexpected"
 
Was this a Disaster clearly to see Happen ?

way back as A380 program started, Boeing and others not follow the idea either
Yes Boeing was spending there budget needed such Plane, on buying Rockwell and McDonnell/Douglas
so they no could follow Airbus into Competition.

Here at Airbus could overthink the Idea scale it down or do serious review on concept
But no they wanted the Biggest Airliner the World had Ever seen...
Already here began the trouble, Yes Biggest, but for what market ? mass people carrier or extreme long range airliner ?
Here had Airbus to make a decision on how to build the Plane and mess things up with a compromise
using Heavy fuselage of Long range for people carrier and heavy planes are thirsty on fuel
suicidal for aeronautical company see issue Pan Am with Boeing 747 and Oil crisis...
(yes i know there were also other issue that let to downfall of Pan Am, but that start it all)

Next to that are additional cost the A380 brings like maintenance & equipment for that or
building new Terminals at Airports to deal with those Mastodons.
That why most aeronautical company cancel there Orders for A380, there operation too expenses are to high to make profit.

Also play the change in Air Traffic a role in dead of A380. As Airbus start the program, it's look bright future for Air Traffic are coming
But it turn in similar way like the Concorde: build for future, then crash and burn in harsh realty that follow
Aeronautical company going for smaller cheaper to operate airliner
with higher density seating configurations, less service and more brutal personal (i looking on you, United Airlines and Ryanair)

That leave the Market for Airliner like Boeing 787, Airbus 350 and upcoming Chinese airliner of same class
Boeing is adapting to that new Market by phase out the production of legendary 747 in 2022,
Due to insufficient demand and market for the aircraft. They got only 25 orders for 747-8Fs
 
@ Galgot : I sent you a pm regarding your incivilities. Thank you for taking the time to read it. .

@Michel Vans : IMOHO, the mass transportation intends were not really their biggest mistake. The way they butchered the project with incoherent inputs from desioneer was what killed the intends*.


*I have voiced my opinion extensively during the years, so anyone that would want to know more can just google internet - or trail back the hideous stray of corporatism fed [size=8pt]insults[/size]
 
https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/pictures-ana-receives-first-japanese-a380-456785/
 
"How could that happen? It was just dysfunctional."
(an interesting 5min read)
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/airbus-supersalesman-blames-engines-a380-failure/
Sad to see that John Leahy fails even to understand at the dusk of his career the simple enfantine rule that engine only counteracts drag and that's where you mesure their efficiency at cruise.
If the said so engines have now to function beyond their nominal parameters because the airframer failed to adhere to their own design objectives in drag (and weight inducing drag) by such a large margin, then consumption will be higher. He can well point to anecdotical failures or the sneaky Amerikans comploting with engines manufacturer, but the point is that, at the end, thrust Vs drag being such a fairly basic principle and simple to understand, everyone can be flabbergasted that a top Airbus manager hasn't that encrypted in his head after decades cashing substantial paychecks.

In anyway, what end would you expect from the largest farcical aerospace program ever to be seen (and paid for by public money)?
 
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The Qatari flag carrier's CEO Akbar Al Baker told an aviation industry forum this week that the decision is motivated by concerns over environmental impact.
"The A380, I think, is one of the worst aircraft when it comes to emissions that is flying around today," Al Baker said, speaking at the CAPA Live aviation event on January 13.
"This is why we have decided that we will not operate them for the foreseeable future and even when we operate them, we will only operate half of the numbers we have."
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https://edition.cnn.com/travel/amp/qatar-airways-a380-retirement/index.html
 
TomcatViP said:
The Qatari flag carrier's CEO Akbar Al Baker told an aviation industry forum this week that the decision is motivated by concerns over environmental impact.
"The A380, I think, is one of the worst aircraft when it comes to emissions that is flying around today," Al Baker said, speaking at the CAPA Live aviation event on January 13.
"This is why we have decided that we will not operate them for the foreseeable future and even when we operate them, we will only operate half of the numbers we have."
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https://edition.cnn.com/travel/amp/qatar-airways-a380-retirement/index.html
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sad news i like A-380
 
TomcatViP said:
"How could that happen? It was just dysfunctional."
(an interesting 5min read)
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/airbus-supersalesman-blames-engines-a380-failure/
Sad to see that John Leahy fails even to understand at the dusk of his career the simple enfantine rule that engine only counteracts drag and that's where you mesure their efficiency at cruise.
If the said so engines have now to function beyond their nominal parameters because the airframer failed to adhere to their own design objectives in drag (and weight inducing drag) by such a large margin, then consumption will be higher. He can well point to anecdotical failures or the sneaky Amerikans comploting with engines manufacturer, but the point is that, at the end, thrust Vs drag being such a fairly basic principle and simple to understand, everyone can be flabbergasted that a top Airbus manager hasn't that encrypted in his head after decades cashing substantial paychecks.
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How did you draw that conclusion from the article? Airbus' failure was in not anticipating RR and GE, right after selling engines to Airbus they claimed were state-of-the-art, would turn around and say 'we've now got an engine that's 10% more efficient'. Nothing do do with L/D.
 
That's your personal opinion. And I will respect that. But this is not factual. RR and the Amerikans are for nothing in the ridiculous loss of revenue endured by the airliner industry due to beyond normal fuel consumption, lack of a suitable paying cargo bay and inappropriate aircraft handling configuration among other...

The post above illustrates genuinely how the blinds had what seems to be a tremendous time at the expense of an entire industry, Airbus included.
 
Hobbes said:
What are your sources then? This is the first I've heard of "beyond normal fuel consumption".
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he draws a conclusion, anyway pretty sad they stopped production of a beautiful machine, they should keep its production in a few fuselages a year, at least re-engine it, but well reality hurts sad to hear that, such a beautiful aircraft
 
Contenance, s'il-vous-plait !

or

Keep calm, folks !

The next step would have to be warnings, warning points, and so on ....
 
did airbus released picture of the A380 with this livery beside the A380F?
122489-10189-pristine.jpg

from https://www.scalemates.com/fr/kits/revell-04230-airbus-a380-800--122489
 
As it turns out, yes. They did concept art and models with that livery.

_1078240_a3xxinflight_airbus300.jpg


rawImage.jpg

By the time of the first flight, they'd switched to the new blue house style.
download-2_crop.jpg
 
There is Interview with John Leahy in german Magazin STERN
about the Failure of A380

He blame 3 things
1. chaos between French and German Teams that design the A380
2. Airbus and customer were more interest in A380-900 series and it's improvement.
3. the Jet-engines manufacturer were unable to build Engines that were 12% more economic as used one
if read between the lines, Leahy imply that Airbus was Stab in back by Roll&Royce and General Electric
because they worked secretly on Engines for Boeing 787

source in German:
https://www.stern.de/reise/fernreis...lar-einen-designfehler-gemacht--30512342.html
 

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