It was frightening the smaller aircraft:
Ego trip for wannabe Euro-businesspersons.
Look at us! 50 years after Boeing created the 747, we made something even bigger!
Of course, Boeing made a great big airplane, and we made a great big pile of excrement, but I still feel like a boss, so it’s all good!
paywall
The one and only time I rode on an Airbus product was enough for me. On the takeoff roll in Munich the thing shook so bad that pieces of it fell off.
I don’t know how it got into the air, but after it got airborne I came to the realization that it must return to the earth. It was a LONG flight.
How about all the airports that had to build special loading ramps for the A380.
Should have forced Airbus to pay for all that.
I saw a couple them parked at gates at the Paris airport in 2014. They didn’t seem that big to me.
It is all about fuel burn per seat mile. Click on the link to see the stats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft#Long-haul_flights
The A380 had inferior fuel burn to the 747, the 777 and it is not even close to the 787. In addition if you can not fill that monster up with passengers its fuel burn per seat mile is obscene.
The A380 is a technological marvel. It is an economic disaster due to a state run business designing airplanes instead of market forces.
It was frightening the smaller aircraft:
The A380 was a solution in search of a problem. “Because we can” is not a sound business model.
CC
Airbus, Europe’s answer to Brazil’s Embraer...
Two aircraft companies that make even the Russians seem competent by comparison.
Not a surprise. Airlines couldn’t fill the plane. Only a limited number of airports could accommodate it. There is also a huge lack of a secondary market. The big airlines bought them at a massive price tag and couldn’t sell them down to anyone else. No budget airline sure as hell doesn’t want one of these things.
It’s one of those situations where an idea is bigger than common sense. This plane was supposed to represent the new European unity and rising economic might. It was supposed to take over the market dominated by the 747 and put Boeing in trouble of the rising Airbus. But in the end, it never made any economic sense.
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Nope.
Boeing 777 X
Twin engine vs 4 on A380
Extremely fuel efficient, longer range than A 380
One cool feature - folding wingtips to allow it to use
existing ramps and gates
The French are saying Trump threatening China with tariffs scared the Chinese from further A380 buys... ho ho ho
Meanwhile Airbus shot itself in the foot because now China is building a copy of the current most used of airliners, the A320
Rode an A380 to Frankfurt a few years back. About 20 seconds after takeoff the thing suddenly nosed down for a few seconds and then started back up again. It felt like a commanded maneuver, not turbulence. Odd. The rest of the flight was not remarkable, and the plane didn’t seem any “better” or more comfortable than any other 2-aisle I’ve flown on. Lufthansa does do a great job of taking care of their passengers though.
Bottom line: Airbus got rick-rolled by Boeing. Boeing made the announcement that they’re getting into the super-jumbo business, let Airbus go all-in, and then said, “Just kidding, we’re doing the 787. The super-jumbo business is all yours.” Boeing and Lockheed did all the studies in the 1980s that showed that a jet comparable in size to the C-5 would actually reduce ramp capacity, be less efficient, and move less people. Airbus didn’t do their due diligence and was buoyed by an adoring media and European public. A380 just never lived up to the hype.
The A380 quickly became an example of how not to develop an airliner. I still think Boeing should’ve ran an advertisement showing 600 people milling around the baggage claim area.
There’s other problems with the A380 that weren’t covered in the Wall Street Urinal article. As usual, their reporters are lazy and only glossed over the surface of their Google search.
The ongoing wiring problems of the A380’s entertainment system was a crock that the adoring media was more than happy to rationalize. The fact is, the entire electrical system had a lot of problems and had ghosts in the machine that were never fully solved.
Airbus’s biggest sin was their minimization and poo-poo-ing of major structural problems. The article does mention premature cracking in wing structures, which really shows that Airbus’s structural engineering, testing, and knowledge of fatigue prevention just never was what it should be. There were early signs of poor structural engineering. During the big wing-bending test where the wing is flexed upwards on the jet until it breaks, the wing didn’t break in the part of the wing predicted during the design phase and also broke earlier (less deflection) than predicted. The wing was beefed up with stiffeners, which was really just a band-aid solution to the problem. The jet also had structural problems and premature cracking in the tail that needed to be beefed up. The fact is, the A380’s structural engineers just didn’t do a good job on this aircraft and they were always chasing problems. It’s classic engineering rookie mistakes: beefing up and strengthening one part just pushes the problem somewhere else, Airbus never solved it as a system problem, they just chased symptoms around like a below-average doctor that’s in over his head.
I flew on an A380 from Brussels to JFK. It’s an amazing plane. The jetway has an escalator for passengers sitting “upstairs.” I upgraded my seat to “upstairs.” It was a little more spacious (more leg room).
Flight was uneventful, but when I landed, I felt rotten.
A visit to the doctor a couple of days later revealed I had e-coli.
Did I contract this on the plane?
I’ll never know.
But I enjoyed the A-380, but I still prefer a conventional wide body, especially the 747.