A380 Truth comes out finally...
Extract from article basically condemning the A380 to an early grave...
The Airbus A350 and the B777X will make them a ghost, parked at Victorville..no one will want them..
Airbus™ Future Headache: Emirates™ dumped/retired A380s
Posted on May 6, 2014
Strategic Aero Research
Emirates™ A380 retirements will force asset value plunge
Second hand A380 market non-existent
Emirates 777X impact on gas-guzzling A380
Continued A380 wing angst
For all the gimmickry that Airbus aligns with the A380, the impending countdown to the arrival of the 777X at Emirates delivers some unwelcome news.
Putting aside the commercial superiority of the 777X family, the Emirates' hold on the A380 order book poses questions as to how the second hand market will cope with near-zero demand for used A380s.
Emirates will be handing back two-dozen A380s to Doric/Amedeo as well as expediting the retirement of the overweight and several-times-over-rewired A380s as it inducts more of the type around the time the 777-9X also enters their fleet in 2020.
Amedeo™s dubious order for 20 A380s is already in jeopardy because Emirates doesn't want them and Amedeo has failed to place even a solitary unit elsewhere. Once these ageing A380s come out of Emirates fleet * where will they go? Who will buy them? Will Airbus further underwrite a depreciating asset and thereby kill off interest in new-build A380s? And then there is the leasing market in general* after ILFC ditched the A380 order, except the Amedeo order¯, no leasing firm has ponied up to this toxic airplane.
Lets cut to the chase;* the possibility of the A380 getting new engines is nil. Such a move would kill any interest in the loss-making jet and would also compound Airbus™ financial capability to put a lid on the continued cost escalation to this $27bn-plus disaster. If Airbus does make the stupid move to give the A380 new engines, who exactly will stump up the cost?
Pratt & Whitney has no new large engine to offer. Its GTF engines are proving troublesome, GE will not be partnering with Pratt to provide an updated GP7200 engine and Rolls-Royce has eyes on new engines at the start of the next decade, which by all accounts would be too late for the A380.
Emirates™ savvy in commanding the near 50% of the entire A380 backlog speaks to its desire to access Europe (or threaten to dangle A350 and A380 orders) as well as making the most of its frequency-based model to use Dubai as a global transit nexus that could frankly be served with any large, long haul airplane the A380 has no exclusivity here.
Current A380 operators and customers have found that filling the A380 is not easy* and even on the rare flights that they have filled, they are not profitable.
Malaysia Airlines, Thai Airways, British Airways, Air France, Qantas, Lufthansa, Korean Air, Singapore Airlines, China Southern Airlines all have succumbed to John Leahy Kool-Aid that it takes an A380 to compete with an A380” nonsense, only to discover that they have slowed, not sped up A380 deliveries and in the case of Virgin Atlantic, have continually deferred it until they can fathom what to do with an obsolete airplane post-2018.
Airbus has spent over $1bn trying to fix the wing cracks already.
Emirates is feeling the strain here as the biggest victim to this design flaw that is compounded now by the metal fatigue in the wing spars* this will impact operational life, cycles and values.
Emirates was shrewd to conduct sale-leaseback deals to cash in on the then high value exclusivity of the A380 back in 2008 because so few examples were in service at that time.
Fast forward to today, Airbus is struggling to even give them away because airlines are wising up to the fact that the A380 has old technology engines, it's not a money spinner even if you fill it (yield is king, not capacity) and that the limitation of use restricts deployment.
While the 777-9X will deliver a mortal wound to the A380, it is actually Airbus™ biggest customer (Emirates) that is shaping up to be its biggest nightmare with its biggest flop of an airplane and there is nothing Airbus can do about it.
That no one is even discussing this inevitability points to an abject
understanding of how fatally flawed the entire A380 program and process was when it was launched back in 2000.
Emirates will be dumping A380s as Airbus railroads the program into yet another brick wall.
Ben Rich, M.C.C.
Latitudes Unlimited
International Maritime & Aviation Consulting
QF had the chance to order B777 and B777x but instead when the buy one get one free (every A380 gives you a discounted A330 - at a special price)
Time for QF Management to go, bad decisions after bad decisions...