A380 Super Jumbo

[AN2002]

Three airlines have confirmed they are buying them - Emirates, Singapore and QANTAS.

Huge planes, 500 seats. How much more is it going to cost in fuel with heavier loads? The way QANTAS are going, they'll probably need A380s to sufficiently service the East Coast of Australia. (BNE-SYD-MEL)

Will the planes have a longer range than a 747? If so, then landings at Changi will decrease significantly because they won't need to stop so soon when flying out of Australia.

I don't know if many remember, but didn't Airbus make a prototype plane that had a swimming pool in it or something? Can somebody shed more light on this?

[Hand Solo]

Great idea, lets have 5000 litres of water sloshing around in an electronics filled aircraft, not to mention carrying an extra 5000kg of ballast. Still, the number of seats they'd have to remove to allow that would mean there's plenty of space for changing rooms and showers!

The QF aircraft may not need to stop at Changi, but they're going to have to stop somewhere on their way to Europe and the only other half decent airport on the way is Dubai. As they already have a hub of sorts at Changi why change?

As for fuel burn the A380 is intended to be cheaper to operate than the 744, so presumably will have proportionately lower fuel burn than the jumbo.

I don't think you'll see anything of that size on Aussie domestics. The only nation that really operates that size of aircraft on domestic routes is Japan, which has the benefit of infinitely patient passengers. Given that the beast will probably take the best part of two hours to turn around you'd be better off doing an hourly service on two aircraft half the size.

[cargosales]

An2002

Additionally, Lufthansa and ILFC (International Leasing Finance Corporation) have now placed orders for A380. I think these are all PAX versions. Freighter variants have also been ordered by Emirates (x2) & FedEx (x10). The ILFC a/c (x5) may actually be freighters. Total order book is reportedly 97 confirmed.

Hand Solo is right about A380's being cheaper to operate. Don't know about PAX versions but for freighters the A380 works out at 35 cents per kilo over 7000 miles, versus 43 cents per kilo for the 747. Boeing dispute that (they would wouldn't they), saying that under certain conditions the 747 is cheaper but it doesn't sound very convincing.

A fully loaded passenger A380 will have a range of 8000 miles which is way more than a 747. Will change the face of routes across the globe. At max payload the A380 (150 tonnes) will have a 1200 nm range advantage over B747 (120 tonnes) but I think this will drop to around 700nm when the 747-400ER comes into service. Can anyone confirm that?

Don't know about the pool. Nice idea in principle. Maybe in one of these mega-money VIP conversions?

[Covenant]

This has to be a joke! A swimming pool?? :)

How exactly would they propose to prevent water sloshing all over the place in even the most gentle of banking manoeuvres?

[boris]

Covenant

Whilst there are many reasons why a swimming pool is not viable, your contention that 'the most gentle of banking manoeuvres would have water sloshing all over the place' gives the lie to your profile, or perhaps you didn't think about it before you wrote it?

[BryanC123]

SWIMMING POOL - Yeah I have heard that. I also heard that they were thinking of putting a tennis court, ice rink and a 5 a side football pitch. You must excuse the tone i have used but each of these three suggestions are just as stupid as the pool.

:rolleyes:

ps rest of info rather interesting thou

[Standard_Departure]

Seriously though,

They are talking about having a duty free shopping area, small exclusive rooms (bed, shower) and most important for us parents, a play area (supervised I hope) for kids.

Apparently, it will not be possible to utilise all the space for freight, pax and luggage, because that would exceed the MTOW, and thus there will be room for the "open area" type stuff.

[World Traveller]

What about the Virgin Atlantic order? Or is that just a LOI at the moment?

WT
<VS fan>

[flyingfrog]

I think I remember reading that there would be a McDonald's on board.

After all, they do turn up everywhere!!!!

[G-OOFY]

Somewhere for the pilots to work prehaps!

[Rabbit]

What has been said about swimming pools and the like may not be too far off the mark if certain individuals have their way. There was a program on the tube last year where this group indicated that they were investigating using that future streached version of the A380 in much the same way as a cruise ship. In other words flying from airport to airport and having stopovers of suitable duration where the people live on the aircraft in the same way as they do with cruise ship travel. They were also talking of offering similar facilities. If that involved a pool then anything is possible but maybe that type of facility might only be available on the ground after a suitable preparation period.

Now this is probably only pie in the sky stuff at the moment but you never know.

Have a nice day

[Covenant]

Excuse me boris, but you are wrong.

I grant that during a steady turn, the resultant acceleration vector on the water would ideally be sufficient for the water to remain level.

This is an ideal situation, however, and is almost never perfectly achievable. What I was referring to is that any manouevre, even one which the pilot may consider gentle, be it pitch, yaw, or roll, will induce transient accelerations that will be felt by the body of water in the swimming pool. Any kind of emergency manouevre would just be worse. Include in these the regular occurrence of turbulence, the significant and very normal high pitch up attitude and forward acceleration during take-off and climb-out, and the vigorous deceleration after landing. None of these accelerations would be perpendicular to the surface of the swimming pool surround.

Water will very quicky find its level perpendicular to the net force acting on it, and even a very small and brief imbalance of forces will cause it to slosh all over the place, as I first stated.

If you believe that you have never felt any lateral accelerations while in an aircraft, then your experience of flying, as well as your knowledge of basic mechanics, is severely limited. To answer your question: no I didn't think about it very hard when I made the first post - it seemed common sense to me; but I have since analysed it as a professional engineer and have reached the same conclusion. I guess I didn't have the "benefit" of having received an elementary lesson in basic flight dynamics.

I object to your implication that I lied in my profile. It's easy to be insulting from behind an anonymous keboard. I note that you have absolutely no information in your profile to explain why you feel it necessary to make smartarsed posts for no other apparent reason than to try (and fail) to make yourself look clever at someone else's expense. That is a very sad way of occupying your time. :mad:

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.