JFK to LHR in under 5 hours

[jcisuclones]

Used to be the big aircraft went for 25-30 years before being parked or parted out. Now you see a few that get parted out at the 10 year mark, when the first big scheduled maintenance costs hit. They can be worth more as spare parts than the cost of overhauling the engines and landing gear.

That, and they’re just not viewing massive planes like the A380 as economical anymore, especially since the improvements to the 777 came, along with the introduction to the 787. Airbus was smart, however, to release their 787 competitor, which I see has been, and will be a success.

 

[jbhtexas]

I've never quite understood why Airbus pursued the A380 in the first place. The demise of the jumbo airliner (i.e. 747) had been predicted for nearly two decades now. Airbus was estimated to have spent 25 billion Euro on development, and nearly all the production A380's were sold at a loss. Yikes...

 

[deadeyededric]

I've never quite understood why Airbus pursued the A380 in the first place. The demise of the jumbo airline (i.e. 747) had been predicted for nearly two decades now. Airbus was estimated to have spent 25 billion Euro on development, and nearly all the production A380's were sold at a loss. Yikes...

I assume they were building them with airlines like Emirites in mind. Long 10+ hour flights out of airports like Dubai. I flew an A380 from JFK to Dubai. Flew 777 from Dubai to cape town.

 

[somecyguy]

Used to be the big aircraft went for 25-30 years before being parked or parted out. Now you see a few that get parted out at the 10 year mark, when the first big scheduled maintenance costs hit. They can be worth more as spare parts than the cost of overhauling the engines and landing gear.

Cedar Rapids has two companies that are in that industry.

 

[Tre4ISU]

Not enough market segment demand to justify $5B in development costs for a new jet. Like the A380, there's a very limited number of routes that would support the flight profile, and in this case you'd have very few passengers willing to pay a 10x premium to save a few hours.

For those of you mentioning the Concorde from 30 years ago- just remember that 50 years ago we could put humans on the moon. Can't do that anymore either...

Are you sure?

 

[CascadeClone]

Cedar Rapids has two companies that are in that industry.

Four. Used to be five.

There's two others in Des Moines as well.

 

[CascadeClone]

I've never quite understood why Airbus pursued the A380 in the first place. The demise of the jumbo airliner (i.e. 747) had been predicted for nearly two decades now. Airbus was estimated to have spent 25 billion Euro on development, and nearly all the production A380's were sold at a loss. Yikes...

They thought it would be super low seat cost on the huge routes from the mega hubs. Unfortunately, there just aren't THAT many major hubs, therefore not that many routes to fill with an airplane this size.

The other thing that hurt it was infrastructure. A lot of even very large airports would have had to upgrade runways and terminals, and that is a lot of expense for a couple airplanes a day.

It does what it is supposed to do, and is a good airplane from what I've read. But there just isn't a market for more than about 200 of them, and that's not near enough to justify the production costs.