Originally Posted by
Recidivist
In our case, heading from east coast of Aus to Europe and back a couple of months later, I stipulated that it MUST be an A380. Same thing last time. Will be the same thing next time, as long as the A380 is an option.
Which is another of the A380's problems - it only serves a small number of airports. If you're not flying from and to one of those few airports, flying an A380 automatically means a transfer someplace - instantly adding several hours to your travel time and increasing the likelihood of some transfer related problem such as missing a connection or misplaced baggage compared to if a non-stop is available. In my case, A380's don't serve Seattle - a couple years ago I intentionally skipped a Seattle - Inchon non-stop and flew to LAX to take an A380 so that I could try it out (and yes it was quite nice and impressively quiet). But it increased my travel time by over six hours compared to a non-stop 777. I don't know many people that would do that just to fly an A380 (and I'm unlikely to do it again, although if I do need to make a transfer anyway I'd look at getting an A380).
As others have pointed out, until the mid 1990s, if you needed the range of a 747, you needed a 747 - there literally were no other options. But that hasn't been the case since before the A380 entered service - so unless you needed 500 seats, you didn't need an A380 - you could use a smaller, more economical twin engine aircraft.