Future of the A380

[ATC Watcher]

Not sure if right forum but this morning the Airbus CEO announced 3 new A380 firm orders from ANA ( a first in Japan) in addition to 12 for Iran Air , and discussion with some more "interested parties" . He also said that Airbus hoped more orders from the other Iranian airlines.
This combined with the fact that Boeing decided last week to halve its 747-8 production and probably stop it after the US Presidential order for AF1 replacements, is probably reshuffling the dices regarding the short term future of the A380.

[ATCO1962]

http://www.airbus.com/newsevents/news-events-single/detail/iran-deal/

[Rwy in Sight]

Given the size of the order, I am sure a kind of bulk discount is probable. I am wondering what discount Iran Air got for ordering the A380. And how many units this discount added to the break-even factor of the model. It used to be in the 600's but I feel it has moved somewhat.

[recceguy]

Every time Airbus does announce a nex contract, some people come on the forums or magazines, with always the same interrogation: "I'm sure the customer got a good discount for them" .....
It has been like that for the past thirty years, starting with the A300 and A310 - so nothing new, I see. It's in fact comforting that the world is still turning in the same direction !

Remember the A 320 development - that little aircraft with FBW ? very unlikely they will sell it in sufficient numbers ... :)

[ATC Watcher]

On the price , the CEO said the ANA order was 1,2 Billion " at current catalog prices " , so 400 Mo a piece.
The reporter asked what discount they got, he replied " about the same we gave Iran air" standard answer. and as said here, everyone gets a discount since the beginning of times.
If the Iran Air order was expected, the ANA order however is far more valuable as a symbol and indicative of a new trend.

[tdracer]

This combined with the fact that Boeing decided last week to halve its 747-8 production and probably stop it after the US Presidential order for AF1 replacements, is probably reshuffling the dices regarding the short term future of the A380.


Boeing still thinks there is a good market for the 747-8F. There are a whole lot of 747 freighters out there that are approaching retirement (north of 100,000 hours, and freighter cycles are typically more abusive than passenger since they typically operate close to MTOW and Max Landing weights). The only real competition to the 747-8F is the 777F, but the 747 can carry about a third more and with the nose door can better handle outsized cargo. The trick now is to keep the line going until the freight market picks up again and operators order more -8F.


If Boeing really believed the 747 was dead, slowing down the line wouldn't make financial sense - it would be cheaper to go ahead and build the order base (with a few white tails for AF1) and shut it down.

[Bobman84]

Find it saddening that no US carrier wants to order the 747, nor Australia or NZ, when the 747 made so much money for these carriers over the decades.

The sky is becoming an incredibly boring place with less 4 holers gracing the clouds.

[ATC Watcher]

tdracer : thanks you for your views, I am definitely not a Freight aircraft expert but note the following from an airline I know well :

Lufthansa is not very happy with the performance of their 747-8.
On routes where both types are operated in parallel ( like FRA-SIN) there is a huge difference in passengers booking preferences for the A380. I believe SQ has the same experience. ( but OK, passengers preferences are probably not the major deciding factor)
Finally Lufthansa Cargo replaced it 747Fs by 777-F

.

[bannercounty]

A lot of non factual rubbish in your post. How could you say Lufthansa replaced their 747-200F with 777F when the 747's were retired in 2005 and the 777's entered service in 2013? The 747's were former Lufthansa passenger jets converted to freighters.
Lufthansa were initially disappointed with the 747-8 but that is to be expected with every launch customer and every new airliner experiences the same. Improvements were made to the 747-8 and googling will allow you to read about these improvements which has made Lufthansa a happy customer and one that endorses the aircraft freely on the Boeing website. Possibly the A380 experienced more issues than 747-8 when it entered service.
FRA- SIN is not operated in a parallel as you state since Lufthansa has one daily flight. If the 747-8 is operating the route it is most likely due to the fact that the bookings for the A380 are dire since the A380 is the aircraft assigned.
Another fact is Lufthansa cancelled 2 of their A380's on order. How many 747-8's did they cancel?
SQ have never operated the 747-8 and their last 747 passenger aircraft left in 2012.

[rutankrd]

Another fact is Lufthansa cancelled 2 of their A380's on order.
How many 747-8's did they cancel?

One 748 not delivered/accepted by LH:ok:

The LH 388/748 are deployed on differing routes and seasonally - The 388 has 127 more economy seats ideal for the likes of Miami/LAX India and Hong Kong for instance.

The up front yield capacity is actually pretty similar - The 748 does have the greater cargo capability.

BTW Lufthansa Cargo operate a declining number of MD-11F freighter delivered between the 747 and the limited number of 77F frames,

A number of 77F frames are actually operated by a joint venture with DHL under the Aerologic AOC.

[El Bunto]

Contract for long-lead activities for VC-25B was signed yesterday:

AF awards contract for next Air Force One > U.S. Air Force > Article Display (http://www.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/223/Article/646632/af-awards-contract-for-next-air-force-one.aspx)

Congress still has to authorise the actual airframe procurement but this looks like a useful way of keeping Boeing engaged until the big-ticket contract comes through. In turn Boeing can try to keep the suppliers idling, other than those that have already bailed.

Once that's done and the VC airframes built... well, we'll see. Personally I think they'll gracefully shut-down the production line at that point, on a high note.

[PAXboy]

The A-380 will survive. It's the only one of it's kind and, despite low numbers, it will plod along the production line for a long time. I predict.

As to discounts, which you can experience if you buy a new car 'Your road tax paid/cash back' it's all the same. When working in IT, I recall a company who did much business with the late (unlamented) Robert Maxwell. It was well known that Maxwell would call in the MD of the supplier and bluster about prices and how he would not sign blah-blah. The MD then reduced the price and Maxwell signed.

The company had, of course, put up the price in the quotation as they knew that they would be asked for a ridiculous discount for the privilege of supplying Maxwell and they did not wish to be driven out of business. I have worked with men who 100% 'got off' on negotiating a discount as proof of their manhood and domination over the other man, who was just trying to sell his product.

Nothing new under the sun ...

[Una Due Tfc]

FRA- SIN is not operated in a parallel as you state since Lufthansa has one daily flight. If the 747-8 is operating the route


LH and SQ codeshare flights, SQ run the A388 on FRA SIN and FRA JFK, I suspect ATC Watcher was referring to this.

[INKJET]

I think Willy Walsh best summed up the A380 this week when talking about leasing some 2nd hand ones, along the line of great aircraft, but not very flexible route wise due to its size. It is perfect for slot restricted airports like LHR, but lets be frank without EK support where would it be?

I was surprised by the Iran Air order for the A380 I can't see the business case, yes flying an Iran Air A380 into Washington or JKF will be putting 2 fingers up to the hawks in congress who doubt that the deal on nuclear containment and the lifting of sanctions is in US interests, anyway lets see how they finance this order given the low price of crude.

I'm inclined to agree with PAXboy the production line will plod on and probably out live the B748-I, but just like Concorde I suspect the 747 program will have made more money for Boeing than the A380 will ever earn for Airbus.

[Heathrow Harry]

lets see - the 747 was a serious money loser for Boeing for many years

it was only really when the -200's arrived that they started to make cash on them

more people are flying and it's getting harder and harder to expand airports anywhere in the first World = more and more slot constraints = need for bigger and bigger aircraft

[striker26]

Not to go off topic, but Boeing introduced the 777X wing-fold option (no airline has picked up this option due to higher maintenance costs i think) but i do believe this will be a crucial upgrade more airlines will look at in the future, and maybe even Airbus for the a380.

[dude1882]

Didnt Boeing patent the wing-fold design?

[nigel osborne]

Striker26

Think you are wrong, the folding wingtips of the new B777X will come as standard so the planes can keep within Code E stand width.

There was a plan years ago to put folding wingtips on the initial B777-200 but that one was dropped, you may be getting mixed up with that.

It isn't whether we like planes or not in relation to the 4 holers ,its all about efficiency. The modern planes with 2 engines are more economical than those with 4.

Boeing said last week that they expect the VLA market in the future to be just 1% of all long haul orders.

So on that back drop interesting to see what happens to the A380 in the future.

EK say they are planning to park A380s in the desert once they reach just 12-14 years of age.They then would replace with new ones.

However Airbus would need a lot more carriers than just EK to be willing to order a substantial number of A380NEOs before they launched such.

If they don't get them, then the 380 will fold. Goodness knows what EK do then, they would have to order 25-30% more 777xs just to keep the same capacity they have now with all their A380s.

Nigel

[Heathrow Harry]

"Boeing said last week that they expect the VLA market in the future to be just 1% of all long haul orders."

This is the Boeing whose only VLA is, according to this weeks's Flight, about to die of old-age - right?

Of course they're not going to paint a future for a market in which they have no viable contender nor any plans to compete in................ :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

[Andy_S]

more people are flying and it's getting harder and harder to expand airports anywhere in the first World = more and more slot constraints = need for bigger and bigger aircraft

I’ve never been entirely convinced by this argument.

I don’t think it’s entirely correct to say that it’s difficult to build new airports in the First World; Spain seems to have found it far too easy for example…… The real problem lies with major hubs, particularly in areas that are already highly developed. Let’s call them mega-hubs. I would agree that the A380 is ideally suited to flying between mega-hub pairs, but how many such pairs are there really? Willie Walsh, who I would guess knows more about running an airline than most of us, seems to think that the scope is limited. And the A380 isn’t the only aircraft that airlines can upsize to if they need more capacity.

Another issue which needs to be considered is point to point travel. Ever larger aircraft flying between hubs isn’t the only solution to increased passenger traffic. Modern twin jets can increasingly fly point to point economically to and between regional airports thereby relieving some of the pressure on the major hubs.

Finally, let’s not overlook the second hand market. Some airlines are handing back A380’s, and Emirates may start to retire theirs in the not too distant future. Won’t the availability of these dampen demand for brand new A380’s?

Don’t get me wrong – I can see the usefulness of the A380 and I’m not condemning it to a slow death, but I don’t think it’s the only game in town by any stretch of the imagination.

[Fairdealfrank]

I don’t think it’s entirely correct to say that it’s difficult to build new airports in the First World; Spain seems to have found it far too easy for example…… The real problem lies with major hubs, particularly in areas that are already highly developed. Let’s call them mega-hubs. I would agree that the A380 is ideally suited to flying between mega-hub pairs, but how many such pairs are there really? Willie Walsh, who I would guess knows more about running an airline than most of us, seems to think that the scope is limited. And the A380 isn’t the only aircraft that airlines can upsize to if they need more capacity.

Ideally suited to flying between mega-hubs pairs that don't need frequency. For example, there are hardly any A380s between LHR and JFK because several daily flights are required for the needs of business pax.

[Hotel Mode]

As far as LHR-JFK goes, the US carriers don't have any A380s and BAs terminal at JFK cannot (yet) accept the aircraft.

If it could you'd see 2-3 BA 380s a day on the peak departures,

[Longtimer]

Too big to fail? The future of the Airbus 380 megaplane, once secure, is now very shaky (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NP_Top_Stories/~3/2c0e3_rCjw8/too-big-to-fail-the-future-of-the-airbus-380-megaplane-once-secure-is-now-very-shaky)‎Today, ‎August ‎20, ‎2018, ‏‎2 hours ago Washington Postres://ieframe.dll/feedarrowtrans.png (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/NP_Top_Stories/~3/2c0e3_rCjw8/too-big-to-fail-the-future-of-the-airbus-380-megaplane-once-secure-is-now-very-shaky)It was designed to become the grande dame of aviation, an enormous modern plane that could seat 544 passengers — 853 if you squeezed people in — on two decks, replacing the venerable Boeing 747 with a new standard of luxury in flight.Just 11 years later — almost a nanosecond in the life of a commercial airplane — two Airbus 380s can’t find a home and are about to be broken up and sold for parts.The A380 may still be the future of aviation — Airbus makes that argument — or it may be the relic of an era from which aviation has spun forward with startling speed. But there is no question that the giant aircraft is hanging by a thread after it was first delivered in 2007 with fanfare that suggested it was the Next Great Thing.Moreover, what happens to the largest commercial aircraft on Earth may reflect an evolution in air travel caused, to put it most simply, because smaller planes can fly longer distances.If you live in a big city, which is pretty much any city that is home to two or more major professional sports franchises, it’s a safe bet you’re in a hub for at least one airline, and maybe several.Most of the rest of America is in a spoke city.The hub system is one reason a flight from Boston to Denver might go through Chicago on United Airlines, Dallas on American Airlines or Atlanta on Delta Air Lines.The hub-and-spoke system isn’t going to evaporate from domestic travel anytime soon, but there are several signs that over time it may erode.The chairman and chief executive of Southwest Airlines, Gary Kelly, likes to say that “point-to-point is a scheduling philosophy.” While Southwest has hubs in 10 big-city airports, its planes fly an average of six flights each day, so it also provides direct flights between a lot of cities that are spokes for the three other big U.S. airlines.The Boeing 737 has been Southwest’s plane of choice since the outset, but today’s Boeing 737 Max is a very different airplane from the one that first flew 51 years ago. Among the biggest changes, the 737 Max has more than doubled the distance it can fly. The plane that once had to make a refueling stop to get across the United States can fly from Philadelphia to Dublin.For Southwest, the range of the 737 means later this year or early next, there will be flights to Hawaii from four California cities that aren’t San Francisco and Los Angeles, the state’s two big airline hubs.“What the Max does for us,” Kelly said in an interview, “is it’s 40 per cent quieter, it burns 13 to 14 per cent less fuel, so the range is extended from the current model by about 15 per cent.”Two other twin-engine, fuel-efficient, long-range planes have entered the commercial market recently. The Airbus A330 Neo (about 250 or more passengers with a range of 10,900 kilometres) and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (upward of 240 passengers depending on seating configuration, and a range of more than 14,000 kilometres).At a mega-airline show in Britain last month, Airbus sold 34 A330s to AirAsia, while Boeing signed orders for 52 of the 787 Dreamliners. Boeing says it has received 1,365 orders for the 787. Not a single A380 was purchased.It costs more for airlines and passengers to land at a hub airport, with London’s Heathrow setting a record a couple of years ago when a slot changed hands for $75 million. It’s generally cheaper, particularly for low-cost airlines, to fly to U.S. cities such as Austin, Texas; Hartford, Connecticut; Tampa, Florida or Oakland, California.Throw in Providence, Rhode Island, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and that’s what Norwegian Airlines is doing with a fleet of primarily Boeing 787s and the Boeing 737 Max.Although foreign airlines fly dozens of A380s to hub airports in the United States each day, none of the three major U.S. carriers has bought one, even as they phase out their use of the Boeing 747, relying mostly on another Boeing, the 23-year-old 777, which can carry close to 400 passengers.Delta, United and American own hundreds of other planes built by Airbus, a European multinational corporation with headquarters in Toulouse, France, so it’s not an aversion to Airbus that keeps them from buying the A380.“It just doesn’t make sense to have a single big airplane as much as it does to have something like a 777 that’s a meaningfully large airplane without being a huge airplane like the 380,” said a spokesman for one of the big U.S. carriers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. “Taking an airplane like a 777 really would be too big to fill just on local demand alone, but when you collect people from spokes all over the place, you can run an airline.”[img]https://nationalpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/516849245.jpg?w=640A technician works on the engine of an Airbus A 380 airplane on January 28, 2013 at the maintenance hall of German airline Lufthansa in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany.He acknowledged, however, that foreign airlines are providing point-to-point service that “we have to compete with.”The Boeing 747 and the A380 have three things in common: They can carry several hundred passengers, passenger volume demands that they fly to hubs rather than spokes, and they both are four-engine planes.Airlines total their profits based on a per-passenger yardstick, and by that margin the A380 provides the best profit bang for the buck – if it is full.“The most expensive part of the aircraft is the engine,” said Bijan Vasigh, a professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Daytona Beach, Florida, campus. “The Airbus 380 has four engines. If you don’t fill it up with 550 passengers, you may have lost your profit share.”Emirates Airlines, the Dubai-based carrier that has bought 102 of the 222 A380s delivered thus far, cast Airbus a lifeline to keep the plane alive in January, when it placed a firm order for 20 more of the aircraft and an optional order for an additional 16.

Want a proper nap while you fly? Airbus will soon let passengers sleep in the cargo hold (https://nationalpost.com/news/world/want-a-proper-nap-while-you-fly-airbus-will-soon-let-passengers-sleep-in-the-cargo-hold)

That will extend A380 production until about 2029.Unless economic or global catastrophe of some sort intervenes, air travel is expected to increase exponentially in the next decade. By Airbus’s calculations there are 58 megacities with more than 50,000 long-haul daily passengers. By 2036, Airbus says, the globe will be dotted with 95 megacities, boosting the number in the United States to 16 from 11.“The market is going to very much drive more customers to this aircraft,” said Frank Vermiere, the Airbus marketing chief for the A380. “If we look at [air] traffic worldwide, it usually doubles every 15 years. That certainly will continue going forward.”Vermiere says 80 per cent of the current 58 megacities face stifling airport congestion.The solution for megacity airport congestion, he says, is the A380’s ability to deliver more passengers than any commercial plane.“The case is getting stronger and stronger for an A380-sized aircraft,” Vermiere said. “While we also see that there is a growth in point-to-point, the bulk of the market is still traveling through major hubs because, simply put, it’s the most efficient way to get people from A to B.”

[DaveReidUK]

Recent long PPRuNe thread on prospects for the A380 here:

A380 - the best is yet to come (https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/611211-a380-best-yet-come.html)