I hold in my hot little hands an Airbus brochure entitled "The Future has Arrived" which was in the entry to the Constellation Cafe on the QF Jet Base.
Basically this Airbus propoganda brochure really attempts very unconvincingly to stick the knife into the B747-800.
It basically has a photo of a QF A380 on the cover and shows unproven statistics of the A380 compared to the B744 as well as B748.
Airbus claim it to have a 12% cost advantage to a B748 for a 6000nm sector and also state that Boeing's cost analysis for the B748 are "incredible".
Isnt this pretty brazen from an aircraft manufacturer that has never produced one aircraft that lived up to design specifications.......ever?
Jesus H !! When you hear about a company like Air France being launch customer for the B777-300ER and then publicly stating how thrilled they are when they find it to be about 3% more efficient in terms of fuel and range above what Boeing predicted then you really have to sit up and take notice.
Besides, the A380 is down from about 550 pax to 450 pax now......not a huge improvement over the B748 in my book.
Maybe the stretch A380 will offer an improvement but that is years away.