Originally Posted by
skyhawkmatthew
I don't think it's in any way a 'mistake' - they bought an aircraft which, at the time, and for a couple of years after initial delivery, performed perfectly adequately on their long-range routes to LAX.
I think this issue really has nothing to do with Qantas and their choice to operate the A380: surely you could easily brand this as 'Airbus' mistake' having chosen to power the A380 with the Trent 900, considering this engine is supposed to scale to 80,000+ lbs of thrust (for the 380-900) but can't even supply 72,000 reliably?
Seems like the A380 and Airbus were the failure when you read this quote:
"The funny thing is that Qantas didn’t even want the more powerful engines in the first place. It opted for the same ones as Lufthansa and Singapore originally, but then Airbus announced the A380 would weigh 5 tons more than planned. That pushed Qantas to order the higher-thrust engines in order to make the airplane viable on the LA route."
Weight promises not kept. Should have gone for the 747-8.