A reduction in fuel cost would help the entire aviation fleet just not the A380 so nothing would be gained. The maximum A380 payload irrespective of fuel load is just over 80 tonnes.

Water bomber? A380? How big is the weed field you are planning to water?

Now that right there is funny, I don't care who you are.

An article from 2013 stated that the breakeven for the 748 was 200 aircraft. Development cost was around $4.1billion

Dont know of the accuracy of the article as it was about Lufthansa being the launch customer.

As a water bomber I'd have thought that might not be such a limitation.
You don't need aerobridges, just a big water tank and a long hose.

Whether it's a water-bomber or a passenger aircraft, it will still be a Code F and consequently be restricted as to where it can/can't taxy at many airports.

Fair call. I can't see it happening anyway.
All a bit pie in the sky.

I'd still think best chance would be some sort of freighter conversion if someone can come up with a way to make it work.
But even then it may be a very limited market.

Some Colombians would have a freight solution/s for a fleet of A380's.

Well, in 2006 Airbus announced the A380 break even point was 420 aircraft. And that was under extremely rosy assumptions like selling 750 units. :} . In reality the number is likely even higher, and by 2021 (when the program will be shut down) Airbus will not deliver even half the amount required.

Safe to say that both programs lost money, but the A380 was a financial disaster for Airbus of a different scale. They spent $25 billion on the program (six times what Boeing spent on the 747-8) -- and lost most of it.

errrrr.... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-t...AS222320061107

nope

hmmmm...which articles did you read

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-t...AS222320061107

This is nonsense, and gobbledeegook.
The climate has always been changing.

The global scam of the same name, "AOC I am only joking right?", is a cobbled together mishmash of BS.
It is forgetting conveniently that the MWP (medieval warm period) was 2C warmer than today, the 1st century even warmer than that (Romans growing wine grapes on the Scottish border), and that nobody appears to have discovered the Vikings freighting stuff with 747s to Greenland which was ice free & green in the MWP.

I really give a flying F, what drumbeats are supposed to be beating, the pressure to be fuel efficient has always come from the price of fuel.
That depends on politicos, and who goes to war against who, always has, always will be.

Proof of concept is amply visible looking at the parks of obsolete Tupolevs stuffed into every single corner of Russian A/Ps while the people ferries use Airbus or Boeing over there... and that despite the cheapo Russian gas used to fuel it all up.

It destroyed Transaero, mismanagement did the rest.

Same rules of gravity will apply to Airbus if they carry on killing off stuff that made loads of money for BA (Concorde), set them up with a fleet of A320 instead (also Gov't financed) then set out to show the world how to do it , relax on French govt cash, then take business decisions which are catastrophic for said tax payer. (not that Macron gives a damn really!).

It could be the beginning of the end for Airbus consortium much like other French fiascos such as Air Frantic or Super Phoenix.

The A380 would be the ultimate Fire bomber really. If you repurposed the centre fuel tank into a water tank.... smaller tanks on the upper deck you could spread the loads to avoid having to re-engineer the floors. It's certainly do-able. Perhaps California should buy one....Would certainly p155 Trump off...

The centre tank and upper and lower decks for fire suppressants is certainly a fine idea even some of the wing tank area, but they are very big mods and lots of fluid transfer internally required.

This needs to be offset against available airports that can fill such a craft in an efficient time frame.

The other issue is then the craft is limited by a very limited fuel load due to such modifications - so it is a fixed base aircraft basically. Most big bombers get a few passport stamps.

Is probably true. Though back then, there weren't hundreds of millions of people noticing their homes being threatened by the effects attributed to climate change, and demanding that the government take action to reduce those effects. Whether the government, or society can affect change to our climate is another question, but right now, it's public perception.

Like it or not, gas guzzlers, or machines perceived as such, will become environmental pariahs.

It's the ATTRIBUTION is the problem.
This "climate change scam within 5yrs or so will all have blown over.
Each time I ask some young green bloviator, how much is the exact percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere they invariably get it wrong by a factor of between 100-1000%, or don't dare answer.

The simple fact is the earth is POOR in CO2, it's just enough to make plants grow, and a little more as we have can only have +ve effects such as to make more plants grow better.
0.04% of the atmosphere is totally incapable of generating the claimed results of course, so let's hound people to death who dare to claim the airline industry makes no difference whatsoever to global temps, which in any case have been falsified and corrected more or less continuously for the last 20-30yrs too.

Then comes the utter bollox bit about homes being threatened by "more frequent hurricanes" (slight problem being that US hurricane activity is at an almost 100 year low), people insisting "the sea level is rising faster than evah before" (totally false, it's not rising any faster than at any time in the last 150 years), and then what happens to people insisting on building on known river flood plains, or eg. not draining the somerset levels in the UK, & selling off the equipment to dredge ditches, building villas in alpine valleys which are known avalanche risks...

One could go on & on, but the sheer crass stupidity of such people who cry their tears when nature takes its normal course, I have ZERO sympathy with.
If any government could take action to reduce said effects, it can be simple.

Force the insurance companies NOT to insure houses built on the slopes of dangerous active Volcanoes such as Vesuvius, in Tornado alleys with homes made of cardboard, where there is serious risk of forest fires, or regularly violent earthquakes such as California.

Stand back, take a deep breath and say,-

YES we could have had lighter aircraft years ago,but we have cars today which weigh up to 30% HEAVIER with bloat and still getting heavier....and in any case it's a dumb society that hasn't evolved from the days of WATT and the steam engine, where we willingly throw away 85% of all the energy we generate, either in waste heat through steam, or through the ridiculously low efficiency of the Internal combustion engine (disregarding traffic jams, when 99% of it is thrown away).

As a society we haven't really advanced in 200 years, the actual exception being the aircraft which has seen fuel consumption drop by a quantum leap in just a decade, and the use of composites & complex metal alloys spiral.
So much is positive, but you daren't say anything positive dare you?

All is as bad or worse than it can possibly imagined to be...so declare a "climate emergency" shut down Heathrow, and export all the jobs to the continent shall we?

Oh let's demonise progress shall we??
It's about all we have to be proud of right now.

"ultimate" perhaps only in gallons carried. The certification, economics, crew training, contracting, and upkeep would be nightmare. Big Fire Bombers need big retainer contracts to make sense. Supporting a one off A380 far away from AIRBUS centers would be tough.

It's "Wan**r Tanker," actually.

Yeah, we're a bit special...

B