Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
One of the main (Airbus) argument to launch the A380 was that the increase in demand for travel, in an environment lacking airports expansions , and slots in those, would " naturally" favor VLAs . This has not come as fast as Airbus had forecast , but it will come , also in Singapore.
The other was not to leave Boeing alone in that market and possibly force them out of the VLA business. That they apparently succeeded .
As someone in Toulouse recently said : the fat lady as not stopped singing yet...
Despite the claims that the airports need expansion, it might be easier to take steps to maintain runway acceptance rates in IMC by for example using RNAV/RNP procedures to GBAS-GLS rather than ILS and to increase acceptance rates by really monitoring wake turbulence rather than using default worse case WTC separation minima.
Then the VLA aircraft must be economic making as much profit as the standard wide-bodies - they aren't and they don't. Relying on poor airport performance and low runway acceptance rates to force acceptance of uneconomic aircraft is not really the right way to go.