Don't worry, Wino is just a Unionized American who believes that Airbus is taking jobs from good ol' Americans. And nobody else in the world should have a job other than Americans "cuz that just ain't fair, boi". He's sore that it's not only the U.S. that can produce jetliners.
Now if we're talking about RANGE, a coupl o' facts fo' ya, there boi:
1) It was the A340-500 that offered a longer range than the 747 fbefore the 777-200LR. Airbus played the range game before Boeing did. 777-200LR came more than 2 years after the A340-500. The A340-500 beacme the world's longest ranged airliner.
(By the way, I love thae markeitng schpeel from Boeing that says that the -200LR will fly from the U.K. to Australia nonstop. It never talks about the return flight, does it?)
2) How many A340-500s have been sold? How many 777-200LRs? And how many 747s? If it's range that the airlines want, how come the A340-500 and 777-200LR, when you add their sales figures TOGETHER, have sold less than one tenth as many units as the 747?
Hmm, doesn't quite add up, does it?
Wino seems to believe that the air traffic saturation situation will magically become a non-issue and that slot constrained airports like LHR, FRA, MUC, AMS, CDG etc. will find a solution - he doesn't seem to realise that Europe is not like the U.S. and that there is only a finite amount of land available for expansion. He therefore can't see past the slot constraint argument that larger aircraft become necessary in order to reduce traffic congestion.
Now, let's look at the A300/757 argument, shall we?
A300 - getting old. Quite inefficient. 767 the same. Relatively high fuel burn, certainly high maintenance costs. 757, ditto but even worse on the fuel burn front - very inefficient but great performance. Being replaced by? 737-800s, A320s and A321s. Why? Because there's nothing in the market to replace them of the same size. 787-3 is too much aeroplane for what it does, hence not a bestseller. Why have a -3 when you could have all of that capability in a -8? Northwest bought A330s as did USAirways. Continental took 767-400s (bet they wish they hadn't now - residual values must be disastrous). These have effectively replaced the DC-10 size category. A step down in capacity? Erm, no, not really. American is making do with 767s and abusing 777s. Well, Ok, but is that really beacuse they haven't had the disposable income to buy into the slightly larger airfcraft? Or after Sept 11th did they see demand drop and therefore smaller aircraft to be used?
No market for the A380? Get out of here! I guess you believe that Elvis is working in Wal-Mart?