During the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg back in April, Airbus announced various cabin modifications to increase the number of passenger seats on the A380. These included the NFS (New Forward Stairs Option) and the AGSM (Aft Galley Stair Module).
Between now and then, these concepts have failed to gain any traction with A380 operators with STC publicly rebuffing them for EK airframes. Whilst Airbus obviously felt this was a clever concept, their positivity has not been shared by A380 operators.
The whole idea of the A380 winglet seems to be an idea that was hurriedly conceived in time for the Paris Air Show, on the back of the lacklustre interest in the A380 cabin modifications program that was announced back in April.
I recall reading an article from the first day of the Paris Air Show, which has a quote from an Airbus spokesman that stated that the winglet modification was not available for retrofit and STC was quoted two days later talking about a retrofit option. A quick Google search will lead you to the relevant articles if you are interested. You would expect that your biggest A380 customer would at least be well briefed about the finer details of the A380 Plus program, before this concept proposal went public. This does not seem to be the case.
I fly the 777 but I have nothing against the A380, as I enjoy flying on it as a passenger and it goes to the places that I often want to fly to on staff travel which is great. However no matter how full your glass is, the harsh reality is that Airbus continues to witness a drought in new A380 orders and the end of the current order backlog moves slowly closer. As time passes, Airbus has to work harder to create and maintain interest in the A380, as the industry has evolved significantly since the A3XX was even thought of nearly 20 years ago now. There are no new quads in the pipeline from any of the airline jet manufacturers around the globe.
Perhaps the initiative of the A380 winglet is nothing more than a catalyst to keep the A380 in the headlines and to get people talking about the type and especially at the Paris Air Show. Airbus have claimed that the A380 Plus will have a new wing with minor modifications to wing camber and twist with a number of under the skin changes as well. This will all come at a cost and the seriousness of Airbus in delivering this new concept has to be questioned, when their highly tuned
PR machine is not in sync with that of their biggest existing and future customer of the type.