Purim

The fact that no US carrier has signed on to the A380 - with their woebegone service and preference for Boeing - makes me more sure that the A380 is a success. It's a great plane. Quiet. Well kitted out by most airlines and above all new. I have only had great experiences on it and I'll tune my schedule to make sure I fly on it.

tmiw

I don't get the feeling that US carriers prefer Boeing. Most of the LCCs seem to fly all Airbus (Spirit, Virgin America, etc.) for example.

geminidreams

Go fly to Jeddah they spent zero on infrastucture costs. Nothing like bussing 500 people to a plane.

rayikes

As I understand it the way Airbus' loans work, they really aren't on the hook financially; so financially no.

As marketing buzz, I do think so. Very expensive marketing but seems to be successful in terms of passengers/travelers noticing and Airbus orders--although that may be coincidence not correlation.

orbitmic

Exactly. I read the article and thought it was a lot of tosh. People seem to forget that the A380 has sold beyond most analysts' original forecasts, and exactly to the sorts of airlines (essentially Asian and Middle Eastern) and routes that they had identified. The 380 will reach breakeven point when the programme sells 420 planes and it will reach that point in the next 2-3 years which is an excellent result in the current conjuncture.

The truth of the matter is that there is a small but crucial market for very large capacity aircrafts to fly some trunk routes, and the A380 is capturing the vast majority of that market. As noted by AddictedTraveller, the A380 is not competing with the 787 (that is the A350's job) and the likes but with the ex-744 and now 748, and is slowly ruining the Boeing market share in that small but important segment.

It is also an excellent plane, airlines are happy with it are as customers.

LupineChemist

Also worth mentioning that the US/Canada is not a typical airline market as the domestic portion is so huge as to support multiple hubs. As most nations' airlines are based in a single city, the A380 will make more sense in a more concentrated hub rather than the spiderweb hub and spoke system that is the US market as a result of lots of geography in the domestic part.

rapidex

The US carriers have not flocked to buy the B748 either.I would bet that the only major carrier to order,Lufthansa ,also got a discount of around 50% to list price.No major airlines pay list price for their orders.

Swissaire

I have, travelling up from Jeddah to Yanbu, and you are quite correct about the airport in need of an update or 500.

joshwex90

Quite a strange barometer of success you've set up there

joshwex90

Definitely. The A380 seems much more suited for an airline like BA or LH than an airline like AA, DL, or UA. It would seem that the combination of some large (but not necessarily massive) planes with smaller planes (787) are great for building large route networks, and the A380 is almost an, "if you can't do that, then at least build a good hub-spoke system with massive planes to ferry people into/out of the hub."

ericcheung

I would say that the A380 does fulfill it's niche well, but there are still many airlines that prefer frequency over capacity.

For HKG-LHR, BA flies an A380 and a 777 within minutes of each other, arriving at a prime AM slot at heathrow. On the return, the flights are staggered a few hours apart from each other. Partner CX flies 4-5x per day 77Ws but staggered throughout the day. CX has a higher unit cost compared with BA, but also gets to charge a premium for the more flexible schedule.

Although the A380 is a low CASM plane - the 77W is pretty efficient as well, which has likely hurt A380 sales.

USA_flyer

This. With the largest 777 carrying almost the same number of seats as a 747, the demand for the A380 isn't what it could have been. The 777X is going to be even bigger with wingtips specially shaped to allow it to fit into a standard 777 bay.

There will be a niche for the A380 especially on long haul premium routes where the likes of SQ can put suites etc.

TOMFORD

For those who have flown on the Dreamliner... one of its selling points was the pressurization and humidity control and how it makes passengers less fatigued after the trip. How does the pressurization and humidity compare to the A380? I flew on the A380 on two legs recently (one 12 hours, one 5 hours) and the 747 (13 hours) and I must say, the 747 air was very very dry...

whlinder

You certainly wonder whether there are regrets in Europe over the A380 since it is driving the growth of EK in particular which is hurting the primary E.U. carriers. Maybe EK would still have grown at a similar rate but they would have been constrained a little more if the biggest plane they could fly was a 77W.

USA_flyer

The major EU airlines - AF, BA and LH are flying A380s. But they're also still flying a lot of older 747s bought when Emirates was still a puppy. I would imagine that as these reach the end of their economical life, we will see a mix of 777 and more A380 replace them.