Perhaps the A380 is the right aircraft at the wrong time. In ten years, fuel prices and slot availability could be completely different and the A380 could have been the right aircraft.
That seems unlikely to me. They've struck oil in Texas and North Dakota. The Texas field alone is estimated to hold more than 3 times the oil than the Saudi fields BEFORE they started pumping it out. The N Dakota field is nearly as large. Canada also has huge new oil fields and once the much delayed pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast is completed, we'll be awash in oil. North America will be a HUGE oil exporter not tied to OPEC, with OPEC already disintegrating. The predictions of continued oil scarcity were way way off. In my opinion, with supply going up considerably faster than demand, the only thing that can drive oil prices up is massive carbon taxes. I don't see the national governments having the nerve for that.