Originally Posted by
Smid
I don't understand why you are saying this. What criteria makes it different from an A340 or a B777 or a B787, second deck?
Lots and lots more seats. They were already planning to be phased out BEFORE Covid because of that. Covid just accelerated it. By the time air travel gets back to 2019 levels they would have been mostly retired anyway.
Believe me, I am not happy about this; it is a lovely plane from a passenger PoV. But even in 2019 its economics barely made sense on most routes, as airlines were realizing, for reasons others have pointed out between this post and yours.
ETA (emphasis added):
A fully filled A380 has a pretty good cost/pax/mile.
The bolded is precisely the problem in the Covid and immediate post-Covid world. It was even the problem pre-Covid.