All over the world, airlines are downsizing their aircraft in order to give the high yield business class passenger what s/he wants - and that's frequency. Look at BA for example: dumping 744s in favour of 777s.
The A380 was envisioned as a mass-transit mover (despite what all the publicity blurb said about shops, lounges, bedrooms etc - those will never be seen outside VVIP versions). With the DVT situation, the cost (at more than quarter of a billion dollars each) is just too much for most airlines to handle.
And
Payscale - if you think that whale of an aircraft is beautiful, you need your eyes checked!
