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Old 18th Jul 2018, 21:29
  #18 (permalink)  
msbbarratt
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: UK
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Who knows what the future may hold. It's interesting that Emirates decided to buy more airframes rather than see it go out of production, so there's at least one major customer who believes in it. And having ridden it as a paying customer, I can fully understand why Emirates likes it. It was a totally full flight, and it was excellent. Had RR engines too which was nice, but I'm biased...

Time will, of course, tell. There's some studied opinions here and there that suggest that a properly optimised, NEO version would have very good economics provided you could fill it. However it's clear that buying A380 requires the customer to have been taking very large brave pills; buying big is a once-in-a-lifetime bet. Perhaps when (if?) the world economy gets properly back into the swing of things... Anyway, I suspect that if an A380neo turned up operating in competition on your most profitable long haul route, you'd soon be waving goodbye to your passengers. That kinda happens now with the A380 as it is today.

Personally speaking I hope that it does succeed in the long run. It's not reasonable to call it a failure at the moment, even if you do take a one-model-at-a-time approach to company accounting. Has Airbus made a profit out of it? Likely not. Has Airbus got endless free marketing out of it (for it's luxury, passenger popularity, etc)? Oh yes. Have they re-used a lot of the engineering on other models? Yes.

Regarding the public popularity of it, when an aircraft is so good that my aged mother knows what it's called and makes flight purchasing decisions based on who is operating it, then that aircraft has made a deep impression on the public. Nothing else in the sky has ever done that! I'd also heard that Emirates a while back had to replace their 777 service Manchester-Dubai because no one was buying tickets for it; they were all buying tickets for the other two services of the day which were A380.

Maybe that's why Emirates are so keen to keep the production line going. They know that if they stop operating A380s and replace it with something inferior, their passenger share will likely suffer.
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