Originally Posted by
EGPO
It arrived too late, is it not true that the excellent A340;is also quietly being withdrawn?.
The era for ' four engines ' seems over , apart from military and the continued use of the Avroliners .
The A380 is a bit like Marmite , you either live or hate it .
Personally I thought it really showed the age of the 747 , it's a pity those giant new GE engines destined for the huge 777X , couldn't allow the 380 to operate as a Two engined airliner ( I'm not an expert so not sure if that could work), just I was under the impression, and remember the launch in 2005 , ( watched it live ) , as they made much of how much of it was built using lightweight materials.
It just seems to be a collosal waste of money, plus the lost jobs in maintanence and the supply chain, it really must not be the greatest ever built after all .
With the production line being closed and airlines disposing of their A380 fleets I wonder what the resale value will be of the existing airframes. Perhaps there may be a commercial future in bulk airfreight, or even outsize cargo, but that will require major structural alterations which may not be a viable option.
However Boeing did it with it's 747, and I understand it's 747-800 Freighter helped to keep it's production line open and used some of the unsold hulls. Apart from Lufthansa I don't think the pax version of the 800 sold at all. But Boeing sold thousands of 747s over the years and made billions of dollars. Airbus has committed billions of euros in a vanity project to be bigger and better than the US and sold about 400 A380s, losing a fortune in the process, Im just sorry for the employees