Posted on 04/08/2007 9:40:26 AM PDT by Paleo Conservative
It was 1969 and the airplane designers having lunch in the conference room of Pan American World Airways were standing by the window overlooking New York's Park Avenue when Charles Lindbergh came over. The famous aviator was a consultant to the airline at the time and he had something to say about the 747 Joe Sutter and his team at Boeing were creating for Pan Am." 'This is one of the great ones.' " Sutter recounted Lindbergh saying, "I mean the 747, this is an airplane that will go down in history."
Thirty-eight years later, as hundreds of journalists watched the brand new Airbus A380 descend onto runways in the United States for the first time, they were encouraged to compare it with the 747. My advice to Airbus: Don't go there.
There are similarities between the A380 and the 747 of course. Both airplanes have shattered beyond imagination the limits of how much weight can be safely lifted off the ground and flown around the world. And like the 747, the A380 with its $300 million price tag is a high-stakes gamble.
But the A380 cuts a lumbering silhouette with its unrelentingly bulbous fuselage and large vertical stabilizer. Inside, the wide staircase connecting the two seating decks is the only flourish to an otherwise conventional passenger cabin.
In contrast, when the first Boeing 747 entered service in 1970, a domed front that gradually tapered to the tail balanced its historic girth. The 747 also went faster than any previous passenger plane, improved airline economics by reducing the cost-per-seat mile and created a new class of twin-aisle jetliner called the wide-body.
Steve Hatch worked on the 747 as a young aeronautical engineer. On the 30th anniversary of the airplane, he told me about the day the jumbo jet was displayed to the public for the first time. "They were all going to be awed by it, like we were ourselves because it was the greatest undertaking of that time." It was like no other airplane ever produced and it glamorized an entire industry.
That's why it seems foolish for Airbus executives to invite comparison between a portrait of elegant sophistication and the startlingly ordinary, albeit humongous airliner they've produced just because both airplanes broke records for size.
In some ways the A380 is better than the 747. It generously incorporates lighter composite materials. Its jet engines produce more thrust and lift more weight. By minimizing fuel consumption, the A380 gives its operators slight but much appreciated wiggle room in the binding that ties them to oil prices.
Those are the kinds of benefits the accountants appreciate. The intangible factors that turned the 747 into the "Queen of the Sky," while a Lockheed L-1011 is relegated to a footnote in aviation history are harder to understand.
"I don't think anybody really understood the impact that the 747 was going to have." Sutter admitted. "Airline ticket prices dropped 30 percent (because) everybody wanted to fly." Pan Am was the 747's largest customer in the 1970s, taking possession of 21 in the first year. But even Pan Am chairman Juan Tripp thought the airplane would be a short-termer, a 10-year bridge between the jet age and supersonic air travel. Boeing already was working on a commercial SST.
Ironically, the French-British government consortium that produced the Concorde beat Boeing to the goal. The SST plane flew from 1976 until 2003 and was not a financial prize for its makers.
An economically successful supersonic commercial airplane remains aviation's Gordian knot, but the Boeing 747 is still being produced in Everett, with more than 1,500 sold.
"The business was unpredictable back then and it's unpredictable now," says Kevin Darcy, a retired Boeing engineer and private aviation consultant. "It could be that it will be a very wise decision to develop the A380 because the market will go that way. Or maybe not."
Airbus made the decision to build the 800-seat capacity airplane believing the commercial carriers want to carry more people on fewer airplanes on point-to-point long-distance flights. Though none of the A380 launch customers have chosen a passenger cabin fitted anywhere close to that many seats.
Take an airplane 33 percent bigger than a 747 and fill it with just 25 percent more passengers and a slightly more spacious environment will be the result.
This may be enough to win over international air travelers, but in terms of glamour, the A380 is no closer to the 747 than a bedroom slipper is to a Manolo Blahnik designer shoe.
But just when I'm about to conclude that there's little panache in Airbus's ungainly whale of an airship, Robert Ditchey, the now retired founder of America West Airlines, who is also a pilot and aeronautical engineer, waxes lyrical about the plane's nuts and bolts.
"I marvel at the machine that it has such wonderful capabilities it can fly across the Pacific and carry so much weight," he said.
From palm-sized computers to cell phone video cameras, technological marvels have become somewhat routine these days. While revolutionary style can elevate an iPod or a designer sandal to the status of icon.
That's what the 747 has been for decades and the A380, for all its size, will not change that.
Scheduling problems as you describe are probably why the A380 has had such dismal sales.
All passengers have some importance for an airline, or we’d see all first class airlines. I think we actually have but as I recall they haven’t done too well, which actually is a bit surprising to me.
I really appreciated EVA Air’s Evergreen Deluxe class, which is about $200 more than tourist class and gives you business class seats but only slightly over tourist class amenities. It made my flight to the Philippines via Taipei, Taiwan a great deal more pleasant, even though only the long LAX to Taipei flight is formally Deluxe Class(*).
I wish more airlines would do something like that. If the A380 was designed with that type of service in mind, I’d probably cheer it on — but from what I’ve seen it looks like EVA Air with its Boeing 747s is more innovative than Airbus in this regard.
You would think EVA would love the A380 since they run two flights with 747s from LAX to Taipei that leave within about an hour or two of each other, but I haven’t seen them in reference to the A380 at all.
D
(*) As an interesting sidebar, the Taipei, Taiwan airport is one of the most inhospitable airports I have ever visited despite being sleek, ultra-modern and conspicuously expensive in design and construction. A gleaming, shiny, conspicuously efficient looking bottled water vending machine that appeared to accept no known currency, even currency it claimed to like, was just one of the ugly surprises.
Can it run out of fuel at its upper altitude and still survive like the “Gimli Glider”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
True, but the routing and timing of nonstop flights is driven by sales of premium seats. Economy seats get sold to at whatever the market will bear to fill up seats. At the margin someone in San Antonio can get tickets to London at the same price whether making a longer connecting flight but shorter transatlantic flight at IAD or JFK or a shorter connecting flight but longer transatlantic flight at DFW, IAH, or ATL. KLM actually charters an all business class 737 BBJ between IAH and AMS just so they can have an additional business class departure time without hauling around any more cheap seats. All the economy seats on KLM are put on a daily 747-400M which is a combi passenger/freighter derivative.
As a follow-up question on this ... why is it that First Class fares provide about double (or maybe even 1.5x) the seating space for about 5-7 times the cost?
Why can’t First Class be sold at less outrageous prices?
I’d love to have a more comfortable flight if the cost could be brought a bit further down to earth.
I guess the short answer is that there is a large enough population that would pay just about anything to avoid the cattle car. But I’d be curious to know more details on how the fares are determined.
(It is interesting to note that First Class fares are approximately the same as the cost of one seat on a filled-up Gulfstream V, and that may be no coincidence.)
D
EVA Deluxe class is a welcome relief for the long haul traveler. Also North Wests’ Business World Class(something like that) offers larger seats w/cocoon like almost flat reclining. I just did Taipei to Detroit 2x’s last week and it was very much welcomed.
Also Singapores’ Business class makes the trip much easier. If you fly that route much consider joing their Kriss Club.
Absolutely, wake turbulence is so extreme they have to double space them and this is the real reason the Toulousse Goose will fail.
Maybe what they need is a large auxiliary vert stab that folds down from the nose with the forward gear during landing.
Or possibly yaw control thrusters. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Why can’t First Class be sold at less outrageous prices?
They're bundled with other amenities. The extra space and better seating allows passengers to arrive in a condition where they are able to work after getting off a long flight. Being at the front of planes first and business class passengers are the first to exit the aircraft which can be important for making tight connections between flights. The luggage for premium passengers may also be put on the baggage claim ahead of other passengers baggage allowing them to take less time to leave the airport after a flight. The tickets are much more flexible. A discounted economy ticket usually can't be changed without paying an addtional fee. They're also not refundable. Large companies often negotiate discounts on business and first class fares that aren't available to individual consumers. They do have the flexibility to change flights and get refunds without incurring penalties. Airlines are just exploiting differences in elasticity of demand to extract as much revenue as possible from customers.
I think you're correct about the pricing of first class tickets. If they were priced higher, it would be cheaper and more flexible to charter business jets. The availability of multiple flights per day between destinations discourages companies from chartering business jets on heavily travelled routes. Multiple flights per day between a pare of cities cause airlines to decrease the size of the planes they buy. Rather than one 747 per day on a route, an airline might prefer to fly two or more 767's.
“....the width, especially at the rear wing roots, disrupts airflow to the stab at approach angles, ruining directional stability.”
Watched the A380’s crosswind landing films, and from the looks of the wingrock on final, you may have a point there.
Also, if that set of configurations is typical of the breed, how would that relate to the Aerobus crash in New York that was blamed on rudder/vert stabilizer failure?
I’m wondering about too much yankin’ and crankin’ on the rudder during landings causing accelerated fatigue........with nothing but a couple of videocam shots and a load of WAG to generate all this stuff, I know. (Ducking my punkin head and running for cover.)
Also,my first overseas flight was on a 747 and I bought two Pan Am "round-the-world" tickets on Flight 1....747 all the way.
She'll always be the "Queen of the Skies" to me.
I wonder if they will end up putting "supplemental rudders" on it like on the 747 Shuttle Transport.
Won't do the empty weight or fuel consumption any favors.
What do you think of the new generation of business jets that sell for about $1.5 million and are designed for air taxi services? Shouldn’t that have a significant impact on first class domestic flights? I would think that with horrible delays, humiliating security and other problems with flying today, business executives would be scrambling for a jet at that price point.
(I know those planes are probably not well suited for long haul international flights).
I noticed an interesting oddity with pricing. EVA Air was offering Evergreen Deluxe service from LAX to MNL for about $800 with restrictions, $1,200 unrestricted. The restriction was that I would have to pay $100 to change my ticket. Why would someone buy an unrestricted ticket for $1,200 if for $900 they would have effectively the same thing?
D
They're interesting, but due to limited numbers of seats might have more appeal to businessmen who are also pilots. One huge advangtage of them is being able to fly directly to smaller airports with limited commercial service nearer the destination.
I had a friend who flew a Mooney prop plane with a maximum speed of about 200 knots, and he bragged that it was faster to fly the plane than to sit and wait for the big jets at the airport.
That was before 9/11, so it’s probably doubly true today that a prop plane can actually beat a big commercial jet for convenience.
It sure was nice to determine our flight time by when we wanted to leave, and he could load an amazing amount of stuff on the plane for trade shows and the like.
I always looked wistfully at the private jets, though - there’s something very glamorous about them that his Mooney seemed to lack.
I’m afraid I was better at using the navigation gadgets and flipping the frequency on the radios than I was at flying the plane, though!
D
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