well Good luck to them and i hope it remains on schedule, but as Airbus have found innovative ideas can sometimes bite you in the ass. For the record the A380 when its up and running will be a contender just so long as theres no further foul ups.

To bad that  Gustav Humbert who was ousted along with EADS co-CEO Noel Forgeard screwed Airbus up. Somebody should have eased those bastards out long before the company faltered. Christian Streiff hadn't been a smart choice either.
  

Herald 

Streiff came up with a plan that was vetoed on 2 counts 1 he wanted to chuck more money in and 2 his planned  restructuring would see frech redundencies. Legend has it that his parting remark was on the lines of "the biggest problem at airbus is the French. I think he meant union and goverment interferance rather than any slur.

 

 

Unfortunatly the whole workshare issue is highly politicized. ( Here i will use random arbitary figures) A prime example they determined they were overmanned by say 1000 German and 3000 french the french unions and goverment declared job losses to be 50 50 to prevent one country owning to much. The damn things supposed to be a private busines they need to keep the goverments out.  Mind you the french strike for the least little thing its almost a national passtime.

 

Hopefully in the not to distant future the Germans will sort out the electrical installation design and the damn thing can enter production proper.

 

 

I have to congratulate the Boeing people on a job so far well done on the 787. From all appearances, everything is going suprisingly smoothly. Of course, we'll see just how well the whole thing works out when they get a few dozen up and flying, but so far everything appears to be going much better then what you'd usually expect on a project like this.

 

As far as Airbuses 380 goes, I am rather dissappointed, but I must refrain comparing the 380 to the 787. The 787 strikes me a regular sized airliner whose main innovations is in its technologies. The electronics, the mass use of carbon fiber, its engines, the 787 is a wonder of modern technology, showing up all the current aircraft in the world, but from the outside it doesn't really look like anything special.

 

The 380 now, is entirely different. The Europeans are taking a stab at building the monolith. Something bigger then the Famed 747. Airbus has never done anything like this before. Boeing hasn't done it in a hell of a long time. Along with the technological issues, come massive logistical issues such as handling and constructing an aircraft of that size, testing all its hardware. If airbus can pull off the whole thing successfully, it will be an outstanding feat in aviation engineering. I can easily see this program as making or breaking Airbus. They either win, or they are dragged down under the weight of the massive aircraft. One thing is for certain, when you see an A380 on the ramp, you will know for a fact what it is.  

The big selling point for airlines right now is fuel efficiency.  Let's compare Passenger-Miles per Gallon (PMPG)

 

Name                       PMPG

A380-800                    82

787-9                          67

747-8                          65

 

So it looks good for the A380, right?

 

Not so fast!

 

This assumes the A380 is maxed out at 823 seats (all full). 

The airlines however don't want to cram their passengers together cheek to cheek.  Quantas, for example uses a 555-seat capacity, which has a PMPG of 56.

 

Again this also assumes all the seats are full every day.  You can see how much the value goes down as the number of occupied seats goes down.  You might manage it on high-capacity routes, like New York to London.  However, there are only so many huge cities out there.  Small and medium-sized cities are more common.  I recently flew from Austin to Des Moines, Iowa.  My flight was delayed and I spent most of the day in the Des Moines airport.  I doubt I saw 555 passengers there all day & they certainly weren't all going to the same place.

 

My point being that there is such a thing as a hypothetical value versus a real one.  The A380 has an outstanding hypothetical efficiency.  But it's real-world value is more down-to-earth.

 

Here's an interesting claim from Boeing for the 747-8 (from their website):

 

"The 747-8 is more than 11 percent lighter per seat than the A380 and will consume 10 percent less fuel per passenger than the 555-seat (A380) airplane"

 

If this is really true, why bother ordering the A380 except for perhaps more space for passenger comfort? I assume the 747-8 requires no additional runway, gate mods, or new baggage handling equipment, and will use 787 engine technology.  This means the 747-8 will have easier access to airports and save a whole bunch of money in not modifying airports.

 

So why aren't more companies ordering the 747-8 for passenger service?  From what I recall, all the 747-8's ordered so far are freighters. Airbus decided not to proceed with their A380 freighter for now.

 

To date, there have been 87 ordered, including 24 passenger versions.  Of those 24, 20 were ordered by Lufthansa and the remaining 4 were VIP corporate jets.  In addition, there are 44 options and 15 purchase rights.

 

Considering that Airbus projects the market for these super-jumbos at about 900 in the near future, that's a significant number.  The A380 has 174 orders (163 firm) and 42 options.

 

This means the 747-8 is getting about 40% of the market.  At that pace, Airbus would sell 540.  They need 429+ to turn a profit.  So if all goes about without further problems, Airbus should turn a profit on the A380 about 2016.

 

Boeing piggy-backed the 747-8 off the 787 program and so had much lower development costs ($4 billion for the 747-8 vs $14 billion+ for the A380).  While the makers are tight-lipped about how much of a markup their aircraft have, based on the media reports I estimate the A380 would have a markup of about $32 million above cost (reduced from $40 million before their last delay--suggesting deep discounts to keep customers happy).  At that rate, it would leave Airbus with a $3.2 billion profit by 2018 (or a 23% return on an investment over 11 years--not very good).

 

By comparison Boeing would have to sell 125 aircraft to break even and projects to have a $7.5 billion dollar return on a $4 billion investment or 188% return on investment over the same period.

 

Maybe Airbus should have just invested the money in Boeing stock.

not to nit pick but you cite the A380 efficiency then state this is hypothetical but seem to accept the 747 as given. Both will be nominal yes its possible a 747 with 450 pax (which is pretty near full on an all economy layout) will be more efficient than 450 on an A380 but

1. That many passengers on an A380 is still a 3 class layout so potentialy a lot more revinew. (We used to say on the aircraft that were mainly economy class that 1st class payed for fuel, business for the aircraft and crew costs, the rest was profit.

2. 747 normally only has 365 ish pax on a transalantic run (here a use BA as a fairly typical example) and sometimes a few as 260 if its a high business/ first class porpotioned aircraft.

 

So all figures are hypothetical because few airlines will operate an all economy class aircraft, fewer passengers may mean greater passenger costs per mile but the more 1st class youve got the less economy class you need. As for boeings claims they are hardly likely to state wer 11% more efficient unless we have the same passenger configuration.

 

regards