Originally Posted by
old,not bold
Maybe so, but there is no prospect of major hub airports being designed (ie rebuilt) to manage that. It's bad enough with the volumes being dumped all at once at immigration queues now, to say nothing of 2 - 3 hour waits for baggage. Unless most, if not all, major hub airports start a redesign and rebuild programme now, to come on stream in 20 years time, to cope with an imaginary large aircraft that exists only on its designer's future projects drawing board, if it exists at all, there will be no demand from airlines for anything bigger than the current range of heavy twins. And quite right too; these mega-aircraft are an abomination.
PS remind me of how long it takes to disembark a full A380, from stopping at the gate, through one hole at the front of the aircraft, or two if you're lucky. And then imagine 1,000 passengers doing that. The industry has gone mad; air transport is supposed to be quick and efficient, and here we are, even now, adding up to 3 hours to each end of a long-haul flight. It's madness.
Immigration queues have nothing to do with the aircraft type you fly in on. Spent well over 2 hours at LHR T2 recently Inter Europe on a narrow body!!!