Originally Posted by SEA_Tigger
As WHBM noted, the A380 and the 7E7 serve different market views.
Airbus believes that the future of air travel is the world's current hubs (JFK, LAX, NRT, SYD, SIN, etc.) will handle more and more traffic. Since these hubs can handle only so many flights a day, the only way to move twice the passengers as now is to have aircraft that can hold twice as many people.
Boeing believes that passengers prefer direct service without having to connect through a hub airport with 100,000 other passengers at the same time in the same terminal building. Therefore, the 7E7's ability to connect pretty much any two points on the planet directly will both take the pressure off the hub airports and expanding service by not requiring time-consuming connections.
In the end, there is room for both.
The A380 offers compelling cost efficiencies over the 747 in it's current 555-passenger mode and the airlines can easily add an extra 100-300 Economy seats (depending on how much they want to scale back their premium cabins), which increases efficiency even more. So you can fly a great many people between two hubs for one of the lowest seat-mile costs around.
The 7E7 will allow airlines to fly 200-250 passengers direct between two points for a very low seat-mile cost thanks to the lightweight airframe and high-efficiency engines. So instead of having to funnel people from all over Europe into LHR, fly them to LAX, and then shotgun them out all over the United States, you can fly direct SEA-CDG and BCN-DTW and BOS-FCO.
I think Boeing is right. Why has the 747 virtually disappeared from US domestic and the Atlantic? Why is the proportion of 747 flights in the Pacific continually declining? Because airlines are offering more nonstop routes between city pairs that do not support 747 service. Even Japan, the 747 capital of the world, has not seen any airline order the A380. In fact JAL is very clearly shifting toward using the 777-300ER on major long-haul routes and is shifting many domestic flights away from the 747 to the 777 (because airports are expanding and opening up more takeoff and landing slots, enabling greater frequency on smaller planes).
Why are airlines shifting toward smaller widebodies? Because the overwhelming majority of business travelers prefer nonstop flights and higher flight frequency. Would I prefer an airline with one A380 flight a day on a particular route or two 777s? Two 777s give me more flexibility. Maybe there is a later flight that I can take after my business meeting and get home a day earlier, whereas I would have to stay an extra night in order to get the earlier A380 flight the next day.
Would I, as a business traveler with extremely limited time, prefer to change planes somewhere and add hours to my trip just to get on an A380? H*ll no!
Nothing beats a nonstop. Nothing.